My ultimate dream map of KC! (Kansas City, Leawood: appointed, living in, cost)

[Blue Earth]

Originally Posted by s.davis

Its an imaginary map for chrissakes. Lighten up.

Sorry you can't read, but we long ago ceased talking about the map.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by Blue Earth

Sorry you can't read, but we long ago ceased talking about the map.

Yea, we are both beating the same dead horses. You think everything is great and that kcmo residents should be writing letters to topeka to thank them for saving kc from what would have been a total exodus of tens of thousands of jobs and dozens of corporate headquarters from metro kc, while I think the whole thing is just stupid, unproductive and I'm simply amazed that so many people in kc are fine with such poor regional cooperation and waste of tax money.

So anyway. Back to the map?

[SPonteKC]

Originally Posted by Blue Earth

Sorry you can't read, but we long ago ceased talking about the map.

What? Speak up! I can't understand your strange and cryptic cypher because -- as you so ass-tootly noticed -- I don't have my letters.

[luzianne]

Originally Posted by aragx6

Yes, I definitely meant tongue in cheek, which, of course, you knew. How magnanimous of you to point out a meaningless typo.

Surely you must be entirely beyond reproach yourself, yes?

No, I didn't know that is what you meant - because I see people all the time who say things in a different way than the way I am used to hearing/saying them.

[luzianne]

Originally Posted by kcmo

Yea, we are both beating the same dead horses. You think everything is great and that kcmo residents should be writing letters to topeka to thank them for saving kc from what would have been a total exodus of tens of thousands of jobs and dozens of corporate headquarters from metro kc, while I think the whole thing is just stupid, unproductive and I'm simply amazed that so many people in kc are fine with such poor regional cooperation and waste of tax money.

So anyway. Back to the map?

See, this is what is really behind your "ultimate dream map" - your hatred for Kansas/Johnson County. Just like I said.

As I have said before, if KCMO wants to keep businesses, they need to do something to compete for them. You think it should just be handed to them. It's not Johnson County's fault if businesses want to move to Johnson County. Doctors have moved to Kansas because of Missouri's high malpractice insurance costs. I'm guessing people who live in Johnson County would rather work in Johnson County than have to drive downtown every day. I would much rather have an office in Johnson County than downtown Kansas City. I prefer suburban to urban. I don't like old city streets with no green space, traffic congestion, one way streets, having to pay for parking, seeing urban blight and panhandlers, old buildings, etc. That's just me.

[CrownVic95]

Originally Posted by Blue Earth

They moved to KS because it stabilized their financial position. Read this again:

Obviously they were considering moving to another city for financial reasons. The money from KS filled whatever financial hole they were seeking to make-up by moving, thus providing them with no financial reason to move to another metro area. That's what you are not seeing.

Are you privy to AMC's internal financial reports? Do you know how much more money they could have made by moving to a bigger theater market, considering that KC is only the 21st-largest market for AMC? No, you don't. You are assuming that you know things, when you don't actually have the data to make those judgments. I'm going by what the corporate officials have stated about their intentions and what they were planning.

And once again, KS didn't poach anyone's company. KS gave financial incentives for a company to stay in the the bi-state KS-MO metro area. I don't care whether a company is headquartered in an urban area or suburban area. You live in the Maryland suburbs and you're all "urban, urban, urban" on City-Data. Why don't you move to downtown Baltimore? Are you a hypocrite?

KS should "bring back" aging areas in KCK? When has MO done anything for the ghetto war-zone in east KC or north STL? The primary downtown area in Kansas is WICHITA, not KCK. The state of Kansas invests in downtown Wichita. Downtown Wichita is nice. They have things like a downtown baseball stadium, downtown basketball arena, parks and trails along the river, the historic Old Town and Delano districts, nice hotels like the Hyatt and Broadview, the Orpheum Theater. Overall, it's a clean and active downtown. There have been a lot of improvements in downtown Wichita in the last 20 years. In addition to that, the state invests significantly in Lawrence and Manhattan, which are both really nice college towns equal to nearly any mid-sized college towns anywhere in America.

And by the way, the state does invest in urban KCK, just not to the extent that it does in urban Wichita. The GM Fairfax plant gets a lot of support from state leaders. That's one of the largest GM plants west of the Mississippi and is a primary employer in urban KCK. The other main employer in urban KCK is the KU Medical Center complex, which gets almost all of its funding from the state. Overall, KCK is low on the list of priorities in Kansas. Wichita, Topeka, Lawrence, Manhattan, and Johnson County are all more prioritized, which they should be. The state is also a big rural state, so education funding, agriculture, and rural transportation issues take up a large portion of state funding and focus. But as you can see with things like the GM Fairfax plant and the KU Med Complex, the state of Kansas has not just pulled out of urban KCK entirely. The state focuses first on other places that are bigger priorities.

Once again, when has MO done anything for east KC or north STL? When has Illinois done anything for East STL? When has Nebraska done anything for north Omaha. There is more to Kansas than the little sliver of it that you are familiar with in your KC-area mindset.

Great series of posts, Blue Earth

Can't rep you again, so just wanted to thank you....and luzianne....for your efforts in airing out this forum as you do from time to time.

[luzianne]

Originally Posted by CrownVic95

Great series of posts, Blue Earth

Can't rep you again, so just wanted to thank you....and luzianne....for your efforts in airing out this forum as you do from time to time.

Thanks, CrownVic95. I can't rep you either, so

[kcmo]

^ wow you three should create some sock puppet accounts just so you can rep each other! Or read some of the other billion threads on this forum. lol.

[luzianne]

Originally Posted by kcmo

^ wow you three should create some sock puppet accounts just so you can rep each other! Or read some of the other billion threads on this forum. lol.

Hey, I've hardly been on this forum at all for a long time. I rep the people I agree with. I even repped you one time, kcmo. Probably just once though.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by Blue Earth

They moved to KS because it stabilized their financial position. Read this again:

Obviously they were considering moving to another city for financial reasons. The money from KS filled whatever financial hole they were seeking to make-up by moving, thus providing them with no financial reason to move to another metro area. That's what you are not seeing.

Are you privy to AMC's internal financial reports? Do you know how much more money they could have made by moving to a bigger theater market, considering that KC is only the 21st-largest market for AMC? No, you don't. You are assuming that you know things, when you don't actually have the data to make those judgments. I'm going by what the corporate officials have stated about their intentions and what they were planning.

And once again, KS didn't poach anyone's company. KS gave financial incentives for a company to stay in the the bi-state KS-MO metro area. I don't care whether a company is headquartered in an urban area or suburban area. You live in the Maryland suburbs and you're all "urban, urban, urban" on City-Data. Why don't you move to downtown Baltimore? Are you a hypocrite?

KS should "bring back" aging areas in KCK? When has MO done anything for the ghetto war-zone in east KC or north STL? The primary downtown area in Kansas is WICHITA, not KCK. The state of Kansas invests in downtown Wichita. Downtown Wichita is nice. They have things like a downtown baseball stadium, downtown basketball arena, parks and trails along the river, the historic Old Town and Delano districts, nice hotels like the Hyatt and Broadview, the Orpheum Theater. Overall, it's a clean and active downtown. There have been a lot of improvements in downtown Wichita in the last 20 years. In addition to that, the state invests significantly in Lawrence and Manhattan, which are both really nice college towns equal to nearly any mid-sized college towns anywhere in America.

And by the way, the state does invest in urban KCK, just not to the extent that it does in urban Wichita. The GM Fairfax plant gets a lot of support from state leaders. That's one of the largest GM plants west of the Mississippi and is a primary employer in urban KCK. The other main employer in urban KCK is the KU Medical Center complex, which gets almost all of its funding from the state. Overall, KCK is low on the list of priorities in Kansas. Wichita, Topeka, Lawrence, Manhattan, and Johnson County are all more prioritized, which they should be. The state is also a big rural state, so education funding, agriculture, and rural transportation issues take up a large portion of state funding and focus. But as you can see with things like the GM Fairfax plant and the KU Med Complex, the state of Kansas has not just pulled out of urban KCK entirely. The state focuses first on other places that are bigger priorities.

Once again, when has MO done anything for east KC or north STL? When has Illinois done anything for East STL? When has Nebraska done anything for north Omaha. There is more to Kansas than the little sliver of it that you are familiar with in your KC-area mindset.

I'm not talking about the east side and you know it. Even so, KCMO has invested more in its east side than KCK has in its entire city east of 435. I can sit here and list all the projects on the east side for you, but that would probably be a waste of time. Could they do more? Sure they could.

My point is that KCMO has used incentives to primarily rebuild its urban core, not build up its far flung suburban areas and in the few cases it has used incentives to greenfield development, I have been equally hard on them. The Farmland HQ near KCI is a prime example of this. But for the most part, KCMO has done well to focus incentives in areas that simply cost at lot more to develop because they have to redevelop an area and build structured parking.

The main reason cities created these incentives in the first place was to help level the playing field financially for urban areas so they can compete with suburban areas so when suburban areas started using them, it only widened the gap. It cost more to build just the underground parking garage of an urban building than it does to build the entire office in some joco office park.

Now KCMO (or MO) is forced to play the same game by using incentives to poach companies from Kansas to suburban areas of its city because urban areas are basically out of the question when they do so little to close the cost gap. KCMO just landed a Leawood company from across the street using quite a bit of city and state incentives.

That is asinine, and they would not have done that ten years ago. Now they are forced to because KS has declared economic war on their city and they have to fight back and try to at least make KS understand that they can do it too so maybe KS will stop.

It’s unproductive and I find it mind boggling that people just accept it as business as usual in KC.