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This article highlights many of the things I have been saying about KC for years. It's really having a difficult time competing with most of its peers nationally.
I can tell just by visiting KC compared to visiting other cities and keeping up with urban development nationally, that the city is still way behind when it comes to urban core revitalization (despite accomplishments). You can leave KC and come back in five years and very little will be different other than how much farmland has been gobbled up.
I mention all the time that KC is 10-15 years behind minimum (and the gap is actually widening) in creating the quality of life that young urbanites enjoy and demand. Compared to most large cities, urban recreation is non existent, way too much land is still terribly underutilized, and urban core investment by the local private community (both business community and residential developers) is literally embarrassing. (They are all about the burbs in KC). The actual economy of KC is really struggling.
Why is KC, a white collar, western leaning type city only outpacing a couple of rustbelt cities and that's all? I have said all along that KC should be enjoying a more rubust economy like Denver or MSP or Dallas. It has the room, it has the diversified employment, it has growing suburbs and a downtown with a ton of potential.
Why?
The same old reasons.
The border war. Metro KC is so busy competing with itself and handing out absurd tax breaks to local companies (mostly to move them to suburban office parks in KS and MO now). These tax breaks almost never actually improve the "city" and make it a more attractable place for younger generations of people. Metro KC now has high taxes for what you get and there is no room now in the sales tax to fund transit etc. Companies get a free ride in KC to move around town, but KC has not leveraged the use of these incentives to lure out of town jobs by making the "city" more livable. People in JoCo think that what they have is special. It absolutely is not, and KC will continue to be passed up as long as JoCo continues to be KC's economic engine (if you want to call it that, more like an economic siphon). Now the corporate welfare on the MO side is just as bad and it too is getting nothing in return. Freightquote and Cerner for example getting massive tax breaks for suburban developments (and not even modern suburban development) will do nothing to make KC a better city on a national scale.
Lack of regional cooperation. KC still can't get on the same page for anything regionally. Be it culture, transit, stadium venues etc. The metro just continues to throw new attractions in far flung locations, continues to ignore the the fact that it's 20 years behind on transit and regional cycling infrastructure. Things look great at village west and 135th and Nall and Zona Rosa, but as a whole, metro KC is failing because of a total lack of critical mass and focused regional attention on its central city.
Lack of regional urban core investment by the local community. Again, this part is embarrassing. The local business community treats downtown KC like it's Detroit or something. They not only ignore the city, the companies downtown now are always threatening to leave for the suburbs and often do even after a six billion dollar public investment downtown. I mean, you can't compare KC to Denver or MSP or Dallas or Seattle, but even places like Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Baltimore etc have a MUCH greater commitment by the local corporate community and KC is one of the only cities in the nation that has not seen a major investment by a local company in its urban core in the last 10-15 years with the exception of H&R Block which the city basically built the building for them after they too threatened to leave the plaza for JoCo. Even KC's plaza has been almost dead quiet now for years. At the rate downtown and the plaza are growing, they will add one new office structure between them every decade. In the same time period, millions of sq ft of office will be added to the suburbs. There is nothing wrong with suburban development, but KC needs to get to a more healthy 10-20% urban core investment. I would guess KC's regional private development is less than 5% in the core (it's even worse when you take out the federal developments such as IRS and Fed Reserve) and has been that way for a long time.
Finally. KC people are scared to spend money and change. Cities all across the country are building hotels, airports, transit lines etc. Even if the worst case scenario is breaking even or spending a lot of cash up front, these cities are adding hundreds of millions a year to their local economies by continuing to invest in infrastructure, tourism etc. I don't think it's a break even or money losing deal though in the long run. When cities invest, it creates tons of spin off economic development. Not only does having light rail and modern hotels and modern airports and bike lanes and pedestrian bridges etc make a city more desirable (creating more demand for more hotels, more condos, more office buildings), the investment puts people to work building light rail lines, convention hotels, condo towers, engineering firms stay busy, tourism picks up. In KC, everybody is so thrilled with the status quo that there is very little of this going on. People in KC spend more time fighting development (private and public) than anything else.
I have said all this a million times before though and nobody cares or listens which is fine. But it has not gotten better and I'm not sure it ever will. KC will just continue to scrap along and get by and totally miss one opportunity after another to take itself to the next level. It has the potential, that's what so irritating about it.
Wow, it's right on the money with our frequent discussions regarding poaching and the division, quite a bit to digest so I am going to read the article again but I hope it is a wakeup call and perhaps even lights a fire under the rumps of the joco officials who shrug it all off. This "who cares" mindset about the Missouri side might backfire and undermine the growth they worked so hard to achieve. Piggybacking KC has a price n they might end up going down in flames along with em.
Most everyone in KC knows (who follow it) that the Kansas poaching MO business is not good for KC metro overall economy and now it's starting to show. KC isn't recovering from the 2008 economic dump as fast as US avg as a result, except for a few areas like tech.
Is mostly at the KS state level that they don't think of the bigger picture. The MO side is forced to react and it takes away from growing the regional economy. I don't think we've seen anywhere here (and I haven't seen anyone anwhere) who is in support of the poaching across state lines, including KS residents. Screaming that on this site and demanding to be listened to isn't going to cause action, especially when most already agree.
Hopefully this changes things but I don't see any chance of that unless kicking the right people out in next election, starting with Brownback. And MO state level needs to start focusing on economy too and figure out how to get past polarized politics.
I agree Brownback is part of the problem, I've been following some of the Kansas threads regarding tax incentives, not just the joco stuff, but tax structure changes aimed at the rest of the state and it's very concerning.
As far as us screaming it on this site, I like to think City D'ers are an enlightened bunch and perhaps the occasional politician or developer might drop in from time to time.
This platform is a good as any to discuss this topic or at least put the info out there so people can be more informed. And people do read my posts. I get more private PMs than actual replies supporting my posts because people don't want to get involved publicly. But sweeping these topics under the rug and only disusing them on very niche sites (like kc rag) obviously isn't getting much done.
"Most" people that come to this forum are adults and can deal with threads like this and keep them separate from other issues. I don't think a thread like this has any impact on a person choosing KC or a part of KC to live in or move to. You can live in KC and ignore these issues as 99% of the people in metro KC do, which is most of the problem. You can also live in or move to KC and understand that these problems are real and be a part of the fixing the problem by saying the way things are is not okay.
It's good to see organizations like MARC finally stepping up and acknowledging some of these issues as they have been one of the worst at just blowing these issues off (if not indirectly supporting them) and they are one of the worst "regional" planning entities I have seen anywhere. All they know how to do is go after fed grants for sprawl projects. They spend more time talking up JoCo's eco stats then addressing how they are getting those stats. Like the KC Star etc, it may be because most people that work there live in JoCo and don't even get it themselves. MARC could be doing so much more to address some of metro KC's chronic regional urban planning and cooperation problems.
MARC should be a more powerful and aggressive organization that actually looks out for the best interests of the metro like the Metropolitan Council in MSP. But again, the state line will probably keep that from ever happening.
OH, and trust me, there are (were) plenty of people on this forum that are totally fine with what Kansas does and how the KC area functions so long as a certain county benefits. Same in real life too. A lot of people in JoCo don't give a crap about the metro as a whole, not all, but a lot and it's enough that it makes a difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Garethe
Wow, it's right on the money with our frequent discussions regarding poaching and the division, quite a bit to digest so I am going to read the article again but I hope it is a wakeup call and perhaps even lights a fire under the rumps of the joco officials who shrug it all off. This "who cares" mindset about the Missouri side might backfire and undermine the growth they worked so hard to achieve. Piggybacking KC has a price n they might end up going down in flames along with em.
Such an interesting/challenging subject. I own a small-and-growing business, currently at 3 employees and likely to be at 7 or 8 at the end of the year. I grew up here, but worked professionally on the coasts for almost 20 years before coming back so I've experienced some of the differences in mindset when it comes to regional development.
Several observations:
(1) Finding local talent is hard if you're looking for people with advanced technical or science skills, especially if you're a smaller employer. The center of gravity here is always towards stability, and small-but-growing companies are the antithesis of stability. I have more telecommuters employed in other states than I do in Kansas City.
(2) The psychological barriers between Northland, Missouri suburb, JoCo, and urban core residency are pretty fierce here. Try convincing someone in OP that they might like Parkville, or that Blue Springs and Shawnee are better/worse than each other, or whatever comparison you might like to make. This is a "big fish, small pond" sort of environment, and everyone wants their neighborhood to be the big fish rather than nurture the pond.
(3) None of our clients are in KC. Why? Because there's nobody to sell to. If you're building a business that sells to businesses, the target list here is pretty small, so it doesn't really matter where you place the office. If you're selling to consumers online, it matters even less.
Our office is in Crossroads right now, and I'm really hoping to be able to keep us there for a while. But the schools are bad and employees have children that need to go to school. It's all interconnected.
Hi jayscott, good post and welcome, you gave me some food for thought.
I think if I had a business and for the record I never have, but I do have a degree and a corporate financial history to approach the issue from this standpoint. If a city is in decline or heading in that direction, do I want to locate somewhere that might affect my bottom line, ability to attract top employees, and turn away clients? Will it have the amenities to serve my business, employees, and clients: good airport with international flight access, hotels, restaurants, solid schools, and stable neighborhoods? And how about future investment? Infrastructure?
These are the questions business interests should be asking among their peers and are probably not if there is an absence of commercial customers.
Overland Park or Joco in general not wanting ata bus service is a good example of the big fish depriving the smaller fish of sustenance. We'll take all the jobs but we can't make it easy for all those Missouri folks to access them now can we? And it certainly doesn't help top grads from MIT arriving from someplace where they didn't need a car. I've pointed out time and time again this inability to think outside the box; locals are too near the problem to see it, but it's very obvious to outsiders.
I was looking at google maps and kc metro looks ridiculous the way its grown, flat even borders on all sides except for the huge bulge of joco on the sw side. Not 100% relevant, but very telling in a lot of ways illustrating the uneven growth away from the downtown core/airport.
Hey KCMO, I think you may be pleasantly surprised at the amount of development and change that has happened lately. I mean, obviously things still move pretty slow in KC but it is a much different place than it was 5 years ago. The streetcar is actually being built as we speak and they are already pushing forward with 2 or 3 new lines. There is no way the KC of 5-10 years ago would be moving this quickly with later phases of a project, let alone a huge game changing project like the streetcar.
The whole attitude in KC has changed. You can feel the power of the youth right now, much greater than before. It feels to me like there must be many new, young people who have moved from out of town. I think Google Fiber has a lot to do with that.
Kansas City seems to actually be trying to become the best city in the nation as quickly as possible. Maybe I'm drinking a little bit too much of the KC kool-aid, but for real my friend, things have changed around here. I think in another 5 years this city is going to look quite a bit different, and with many new developments on the board ready to be built. Maybe we will see a skyline full of cranes!
Hey KCMO, I think you may be pleasantly surprised at the amount of development and change that has happened lately. I mean, obviously things still move pretty slow in KC but it is a much different place than it was 5 years ago. The streetcar is actually being built as we speak and they are already pushing forward with 2 or 3 new lines. There is no way the KC of 5-10 years ago would be moving this quickly with later phases of a project, let alone a huge game changing project like the streetcar.
The whole attitude in KC has changed. You can feel the power of the youth right now, much greater than before. It feels to me like there must be many new, young people who have moved from out of town. I think Google Fiber has a lot to do with that.
Kansas City seems to actually be trying to become the best city in the nation as quickly as possible. Maybe I'm drinking a little bit too much of the KC kool-aid, but for real my friend, things have changed around here. I think in another 5 years this city is going to look quite a bit different, and with many new developments on the board ready to be built. Maybe we will see a skyline full of cranes!
Yea I know what's going on in KC. I still follow KC very closely. One reason is because It's easy. I can't even begin to try to follow all development here. It's overwhelming. I'm not comparing KC to DC, just saying the slower pace is actually nice because you can actually follow what's going on, even from a distance. Other than similar sized rustbelt towns, most places have far more going on than KC in their urban core and places like Cincy, Cleveland etc are now blown way by KC, they may even exceed KC in urban core private development. (KC has plenty going on in its suburbs).
So I know what's going on and I hope you are right about the "attitude" changing. There are still major problems there though and no matter how much you want to view the glass as half full, people in KC need to acknowledge those problems and attempt to address them.
The state line, corporate welfare, lack of regional cooperation, terrible metro urban planning ideals, almost no urban recreation infrastructure (bike lanes, river trails, ped bridges etc) and abysmal support of the urban core by the greater business community IS hurting KC and hurting its ability to compete with other cities or compete in a national and global economic environment.
KC has the bones and infrastructure to really become a real destination city for companies and young talent, but it keeps making terrible mistakes or not doing certain things at all.
But yes, KC does have some positive things going for it. Urban residential might be starting to get where places like Denver was 25 years ago. Urban gentrification is still very slow in KC though.
KC is always missing some part of a full package and right now it's missing a strong economy and the economy it does have is ignoring the urban core. (subsidized suburban office parks isn't getting it done).
One thing that i've been noticing on this site is a lot of speculation that Kansas City isn't that attractive to young people. I can't speak completely about the economy of a city and what businesses look for. But I can tell you what young people enjoy (I'm a recent grad) and to say KC isn't appealing to young people is just flat out false. Kansas City is very attractive to young people and offers what many my age look for in a city and more. As ridiculous as it seems the largest two things working against Kansas City as far as attracting young people as ridiculous as it sounds, is its name and location. Just having Kansas in your name is a pretty big deterrent that combined with being located on the Missouri/Kansas border makes many believe its a lot smaller and a lot more backwater then it is. And once many come and see for themselves it isn't what its name would suggest they fall in love with the place, especially in the past couple of years. If I were to guess why the sudden attitude change came from I'd guess that the reason is both the retention and attraction of youth. Even from me beginning college i've noticed many more 20 somethings are choosing to live here and/or stay here.
I also feel many on here are confusing correlation and what "Millennials" actually desire in life. For example, driving and public transit. People my age aren't against driving, they simply can't afford to drive/ its a pain to drive in most of the cities that are desirable. This doesn't mean that driving its self is hated. Driving in DC, Seattle the east coast etc is hated. But many of the reasons why driving is a pain elsewhere isn't present here. Owning and maintaining a car is comparatively cheaper, you don't have to pay for parking anywhere and because of the surplus of lanes and highways you can be places in less than 45 minutes and you can actually enjoy driving. Once a decent transit system is initiated the option of having both is going to be a huge advantage.
The same could be said about apartments vs single family housing. Youth don't necessarily prefer apartments over single families homes. If a house can provide the nearby amenities and price of an apartment, it becomes just as appealing.
Not that appealing to young talent seems to actually matter. Houston and Dallas, two character-less, expensive, pre-fab filled humid cities in the middle of a viciously red state are pretty unappealing, as far as the cities for what they are, to young talent and are growing faster than anywhere else. So maybe growth depends less on what a city has to offer young people and more on the money a city has to lure in companies that think they know what young people want in life.
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