Destinations
You can read the digital version of Ingram’s August 2023 edition, here.
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 That’s not just an empty question: It’s the gateway to a host of answers that reveal attributes most states could only wish for. From a business and employee cost perspective to outdoor activities to world-class health care…
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 Proving once again that Missouri is a nearly bottomless well of high-powered business executives, high-achieving non-profit leaders and high-level thinkers, the 2023 installment of 50 Missourians You Should Know brings to 650 the number of individuals recognized by…
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 Not far across the state line from the vacation playground of Myrtle Beach, S.C., a fellow by the name of Ted Abernathy is part of a group of policy experts who crunch data and offer their insights…
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 From coast to coast, 10 markets account for nearly half of the estimated 2,500 data centers in the U.S., generally clustered in along the Pacific Coast—from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley, Portland and Seattle—to an East Coast…
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 Like a steely-eyed riverboat gambler, Gov. Mike Parson pushed $859 million in chips to the center of the table in early 2023. He was betting that the Missouri General Assembly would go along with his call to…
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 To the untrained eye, little has changed over the past year with the transportation infrastructure that supports Missouri’s economy. We still have major cross-country interstates in each direction. We still have the same number of international airports.…
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PUBLISHED AUGUST 2023 Flash poll: Which of these native Missourians should be the poster child for the Show-Me State’s tourism office? Check one: • Mark Twain • George Washington Carver • Kathleen Turner • Harry Truman • Sheryl Crow Trick…
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Each year, Ingram's publishes a special edition specifically on Missouri - it's people, companies and key brands, and its place in the nation's economy. Welcome to The Missouri Edition. …
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Ingram’s 2020 Edition of Destination Kansas City highlights the best of what the metro area has to offer, from area attractions, to quality of life, to why more and more companies are choosing to do business in the Heartland's most exciting…
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What will it take to drive growth across a region as broad and economically diverse as Kansas City? That was the outline for a thoughtful, several hour conversation involving two dozen of the area’s most influential business executives on Nov.…
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Six stinking inches. Dee Ford’s hand is placed six inches back across the line of scrimmage, and the Kansas City Chiefs are in Super Bowl LIII in February 2019. But because the now-ex-Chief nudged over the line and drew that…
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Question: How did the 26th-largest city in the nation in 1970 emerge, half a century later, as the undisputed global center of design excellence in sports architecture? If you boil it down to two words, Earl Santee says they might…
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That’s when North America will host the men’s FIFA Word Cup, and Kansas City is one of 17 cities in the United States that have been chosen as finalists to host the events. That number will be whittled down to…
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If you’ve ever been to Maine, you’ll never mistake Kansas City for part of the Pine Tree State. But one of the best things about being here and scouting the map for routes to Maine—or Oregon, Florida or California—is that,…
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It is also somewhat confusing, because this diverse area has so many types of economic activities. While one of the area’s strengths is its lack of reliance on a single industry, this diversity complicates any attempt at a simple generalization. …
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It spoke volumes about how Kansas City is perceived by people on the East Coast: In June, the USDA announced that it would be moving two of is divisions out of the Washington D.C. area, bound for Kansas City. And…
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There are many ways to measure a community’s attractiveness as a place to live, work and do business. Not many of those metrics are as telling as real-estate values, whether its for the price of a home or the site…
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State Line? A problem? That might be true in other communities divided by state lines, but in Kansas City, there’s one unanticipated blessing that flows from being a metropolitan area straddling two states is a wealth of public educational offerings.…
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When you think about health-care delivery in the Kansas City market, you’re talking about more than just a metro area. It’s a robust network of hospitals—non-profit and for-profit acute-care facilities, independent health authorities and municipally owned medical centers, community hospitals,…
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Writing for the Show-Me Institute in 2016, Wendell Cox observed that the Kansas City area stood out as a location for business based on multiple factors, but one had a particular relevance to employers: Productivity. “Kansas City compares favorably to…
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The bad news—if you’re a bad news-first sort of person—is that Kansas slipped from No. 4 to No. 7 in the 10-state region that includes Missouri and the bordering states, and from No. 23 a year ago to 28th this…
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All of them are meant to sum up that Kansas City has the amenities of that of a larger metropolis without being overwhelming, both in size and cost. And legend has it, the people are pretty nice. Zia Lohrasbi found…
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Those are still center stage, but now there is a bigger on the area, along with additional world-class options, especially in the sports realm, for visitors to enjoy and several more places for them to stay on their trip. The…
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Many in Kansas City, and beyond, might very well agree with the famous author, but even if they don’t, visitors and residents alike are bound to conclude that being a serious restaurant town is one of the area’s many entertainment…
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Ingram's 2018 Edition of Destination Kansas City is on newsstands, and with this digital edition, you can take the publication with you anywhere. Within this issue you'll find pieces that speak to the economic development of Kansas City, including a…
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AN ENTIRE URBAN COMMUNITY IS BEING RECREATED RIGHT BEFORE OUR VERY EYES. Say what you will about the Keynesian power of public dollars to jump-start business activity, and perhaps even create new business sectors, but what’s happening in Kansas City…
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Cobb, the antagonist/sheriff from the mythical town of Silverado, famously issued this greeting in the Lawrence Kasden classic: “Welcome to Heaven.” With apologies to the screenwriters involved back in 1985, a parched spit of land in the desert Southwest, heaven…
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Menard's, the Wisconsin-based hardware and home improvement chain, announced today that it would build a 185,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Sullivan, Mo., about an hour southwest of St. Louis. Work on the $29.1 million facility is expected to start this month, and the site will generate nearly…
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Ultimately, it came down to this: What kind of state does Missouri want to be? Attendees at the Missouri Economic Development Assembly held at St. Louis Union Station on Sept. 3 addressed that from the perspectives of employers, educators, policy…
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Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development announced today that it had formed a strategic partnership with Chicago-based HSA Commercial Real Estate to bring new industrial tenants to Hunt Midwest Business Center's newly expanded 126-acre surface business park. Ora Reynolds, president and…
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An Italian company that makes vinyl windows, doors, panels and other construction products says it will open a manufacturing facility in Ste. Genevieve, bringing 122 jobs to the county. Gov. Jay Nixon made the announcement at a meeting of the…
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Mercy Hospital Joplin has opened a multimillion-dollar cancer center that will allow residents of southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas to receive local treatment for their conditions. The new center will include a number of features not previously available at one…
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Southeast Missouri State University will begin taking applications this month for the position of provost, one of the key administrative roles at the biggest public institution in the region. Dates for face-to-face interviews at the airport in St. Louis have…
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The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has approved a Springfield plan to upgrade its sanitary sewer system, a massive project that will cost the city $200 million of work through completion of that phase in 2025. Once complete, the work…
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Union nurses at Saint Louis University Hospital have forced an election that would strip the union-security clause from their current contract, which means employees would no longer be required to pay union dues. The nurses group has gathered more than…
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With more rain forecast early in the week, officials are carefully tracking elevation of the Missouri River, which could threaten to breach the McBaine levee. Even before the next round of precipitation could fall, flooding had started early Saturday in…
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Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a right-to-work bill that would have made it illegal to require new workers to join unions, saying in his veto message that the proposal would “take our state backward.” In addition to the ban on union-membership…
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A small craft brewer from Kansas City’s southern fringe has taken the first round in a legal battle with national brewing giant Anheuser Busch, one of the largest employers in St. Louis. According to Bloomberg news, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s has filed…
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KIRKSVILLE — Dan Hamlet, business counselor and executive director of Kirksville’s Small Business & Technology Development Center and Missouri Rural Enterprise & Innovation Center for the past two years, has announced that he’ll resign from those positions at the end…
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HANNIBAL — The Missouri Public Service Commission has set a June 22 deadline for applications from parties who may want to intervene in Ameren Transmission Co. of Illinois’ plans for the so-called Mark Twain Transmission Project. If approved, the company…
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After a month of near-record rainfall, the St. Joseph area enjoyed a comparatively dry spell over the weekend, allowing a number of key highways and roads in Northwest Missouri to reopen, the Missouri Department of Transportation says. As of Monday…
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Not many cities in the U.S. can beat St. Joseph when it comes to economic strength as center for agribusiness might—in fact, only three meet that test, according to Forbes magazine, which ranks St. Joseph No. 4 among American cities…
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Business Culture
Missouri’s workers consistently rank as among the most productive in a number of industries, driving bottom-line successes for employers in the state. In general, many Missouri communities have a national advantage in terms of labor, especially for industries such as…
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Missouri boasts economic conditions that are healthy and beginning to open some significant new pathways to success for the Show-Me State. With an agricultural base so solid it is often taken for granted, Missouri surprisingly thrives in tourism, life sciences…
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Missouri’s economy is highly diversified, which makes for a healthy business climate—but one that can be challenging to classify. As with other locales, Missouri’s service industry provides far more jobs than any other field. This area also includes a growing…
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THERE ARE GOOD REASONS WHY COMPANIES THRIVE—AND STAY—IN KC There are two ways to classify major corporations that call the Kansas City region home: Companies that are major employers here, and companies that have big-time revenues. Granted, employment and revenues…
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KANSAS CITY HAS NEVER RELIED ON A SINGLE INDUSTRY OR SECTOR FOR ITS SUCCESS. IT'S A CITY THAT WAS DIVERSIFYING BEFORE DIVERSIFICATION WAS COOL. Agribusiness always has been and always will be a large part of Kansas City’s commercial identity.…
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WHAT MAKES FOR AN IDEAL BUSINESS LOCATION? IT HELPS TO KNOW THE BASICS. Writing for the Economic Policy Institute back in 2005, Peter Fisher explored the relationship between business-oriented public policy and rankings purporting to gauge the business friendliness of…
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SKILLED, MOTIVATED AND RELIABLE—ATTRIBUTES THAT DEFINE WORKERS HERE. Some day, some plucky member of Congress might convince the bean-counters at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that it would be a good idea to gather and release data on work-force productivity…
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The rhythms of business life dictate that companies will come, and companies will go. But the real players, the ones that are here for the long term, the ones that can skim over the reefs of recession as easily as…
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Agribusiness always has been and always will be a large part of Kansas City’s commercial identity. It’s the home of some of the biggest dairy, meat processing, food distribution and grain production and storage companies in the United States. But…
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As 2017 dawned, the Kansas City region had much to celebrate: Unemployment in both Missouri and Kansas had reached levels not seen since before the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, construction companies were firing on all cylinders to…
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Quick: Outside Detroit, what’s the nation’s leading center of automobile manufacturing? If you guessed one of those Southern states that lured assembly plants away from the Motor City with the prospect of non-union labor, no Kansas City-style barbecue for you.…
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Kansas City. It’s a proud and prosperous Missouri municipality, certainly. But it’s also a bi-state Metropolitan Statistical Area of about 2.5 million people, an economic powerhouse of 16 counties with four at its core along the state line that separates Missouri…
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Features
The phrase “best of both worlds” may be an overused expression, but in Missouri’s case, it’s an accurate one. The state mixes an outstanding quality of life with a vibrant business economy and low cost of living to produce an…
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KANSAS CITY LOOKS TO THE NEXT BIG THING. Let’s see . . . convention hotel? Check. Streetcar-line development? Check. A rebuilt KCI? Check-—well, almost, anyway; it’s in the works. With a Downtown makeover well under way, Kansas City has much…
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KANSAS CITY HAS ENJOYED AN EXPLOSION IN MEDICAL RESEARCH IN RECENT YEARS, REFLECTED BY A SRUGE IN CLINICAL TRIALS. The numbers tell the story. While many cities dream of securing a more prominent role in the nation’s life-sciences realm, the…
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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 4525 Oak St. Wed.-Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m Free www.nelson-atkins.org, (816) 751-1278 No, there is not a supersized badminton match transpiring. You’re looking at one of the most famous sights in Kansas City: the…
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Centrality - If not for the Wright brothers, would the term “flyover country” have ever come about? For a hundred years, KC has battled that label, but lookie-lookie: Kansas City is one of the hottest locales in the country for…
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THERE ARE MANY REASONS - ALL OF THEM GOOD - TO OPERATE A BUSINESS IN KANSAS CITY, TO WORK HERE, RAISE A FAMILY AND PUT DOWN ROOTS. BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS, IT'S GOOD FOR MORE THAN THE BOTTOM LINE.…
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• Two metros, one region: Like two stars held in place by gravity, two major urban centers define Kansas City— a larger metropolis in Missouri and a smaller counterpart on the Kansas side. • Civil-War history buffs will immediately recognize…
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• Two metros, one region: Like two stars held in place by gravity, two major urban centers define Kansas City— a larger metropolis in Missouri and a smaller counterpart on the Kansas side. • Civil-War history buffs will immediately recognize…
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There was a day when Kansas City’s Central Business District was a magnet for business people, shoppers and fun seekers. With the rise of suburban life over time, however, people wanted to live their personal and professional lives closer to…
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In the lexicon of industrial real estate, it’s called velocity, and it refers to the rate of increase in square footage of a given class of property across a marketplace. And in the Kansas City region, when it comes to…
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Consider this: Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Kansas City among the top few of the 50 Best American Cities. Travel and Leisure ranked Kansas City at No. 3 on its America’s Favorite Cities list. Policom Corp. ranked Kansas City No. 8 on…
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Lifestyles
Multiple factors—all of which augur in the state’s favor—come together to make the case for living in Missouri. Although Missourians sometimes share a Midwestern penchant for looking enviously at the east and west coasts as leaders, the state offers several…
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KANSAS CITY IS A ROCKING SCENE, BUT TRUE CULTURAL DEPTH ABOUNDS, AS WELL. When people think about arts and culture, they typically think of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Austin. Coastal cities are always kept in mind as epicenters…
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IN A REGION AS BIG AND DIVERSE AS KANSAS CITY, WHETHER IT’S VALUE, CULTURE, EDUCATION, RECREATION OR FAMILY, THERE IS SOMETHING THAT RESONATES WITH EVERY RESIDENT AND SAYS, ‘THIS IS HOME.’ The Midwest is home to more than 65 million…
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WINING, DINING, WEEKEND SPORTS, SHOPPING OR JUST DOING BUSINESS: WHEN YOU’RE IN KC, THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF ATTRACTIONS BIDDING FOR YOUR TIME. Kansas City has no lack of activities for visitors, but even with millions coming here each year, many…
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What exactly is “quality of life,” anyway? It probably means something at least a little different to each of the 2.5 million-plus people who live in the Kansas City metro. Like any major urban area, Kansas City has plenty of…
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A lot of people know about Hamburg, Germany because of the place it holds in the backstory of The Beatles rise to fame. But in Kansas City’s cultural community, Hamburg is known as the home of Emporis, a global gatherer…
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We’ve all heard the stories of people from New York who have never been to see the Statue of Liberty. Or D.C. denizens who’ve never set foot in the Lincoln Memorial. Sad but true, we get so caught up in…
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The Kansas City area is no one-trick pony when it comes to taking care of visitors. Of course, there’s a vibrant and growing city center filled with all the amenities and attractions mentioned elsewhere in this issue. But Jackson County,…
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Missouri’s cultural and arts environment is rich and diverse. [caption id="attachment_8424" align="alignleft" width="283"] The St. Louis Symphony.[/caption] Many of the high-end activities, of course, can be found in the state’s major cities. The oldest and largest, St. Louis, takes the…
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Market Overview
The name Missouri comes from a Sioux tribe whose Illinois name, ouemessourita, means “those who have dugout canoes.” Saint Louis University, chartered in 1832, is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. Missouri has 114 counties and one…
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Reasons to Choose
This is affordability in action: In Kansas City, a household earning the median family income of $54,372 is more than $5,000 above the threshold needed to purchase a median-value home of $252,000. Across the state, housing affordability is even greater;…
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Although Missouri has long been recognized as a transportation hub, recent developments in that sector have allowed the state to leverage its central location into an even more competitive advantage. This comes on top of a strong transportation and infrastructure…
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One easy yardstick for measuring Missouri’s real-estate values is the price of a single-family home, which allows ready—and highly favorable—comparisons with markets nationally. In Kansas City, nearly 90 percent of homes on the market are within financial reach of the…
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Education in Missouri includes outstanding services focused in the major metropolitan areas and a surprisingly rich network distributed throughout the state’s more rural areas. Not surprisingly, the eastern part of the state, includes a high concentration of excellent programs—the area…
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Missouri’s seven major economic development regions have traits unique to each area, but all share some key aspects. The regions include the northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast and central sections of the state, along with the areas surrounding Missouri’s two major…
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For a state that continues to contain vast rural areas, Missouri has developed a sophisticated health-care and community-services infrastructure that benefits all of its 6 million-plus residents. The major metropolitan areas of St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield have multiple…
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KANSAS CITY ENJOYS AN ABUNDANCE, NOT AN EMBARRASSMENT, OF RICHES WITH ITS NETWORK OF MEDICAL FACILITIES, INCLUDING LIFE-SCIENCES RESEARCH HOSPITALS. The most recent hospital-admissions statistics in the Kansas City region showed that the 25 largest institutions admitted more than 300,000…
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THE REGIONAL ECONOMY HUMS TO THE TUNE OF HIGH-PERFORMING INSTITUTIONS. To live and do business in Kansas City is to be part of a bifurcated culture. The intersection of 20th Street and Main, just south of the heart of Downtown,…
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WHETHER IT'S YOUR HOME OR YOUR BUSINESS, YOU CAN REAP THE REWARDS OF OWNERSHIP HERE - WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK. Nine years. That’s how long it took aggregate housing prices in the Kansas City market to climb back up after…
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KANSAS CITY HAS LONG HELD AN EDGE OVER OTHER METRO REGIONS WITH ITS AFFORDABILITY. RECENT CHANGES HAVE STRENGTHENED THAT KEY ATTRIBUTE. It is a symbol of civic and business pride we call The Kansas City Value Proposition. And it works…
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GETTING TO KNOW KANSAS CITY MEANS COVERING A LOT OF GROUND. PRODUCTIVE GROUND. So you want to know about Kansas City, do you? Well, for starters, you need to know that there are two of them: The bigger one is…
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WHEN YOU'RE IN KANSAS CITY, IF YOU'RE NOT HOME, YOU'RE NOT FAR FROM IT. AND LOGISTICS COMPANIES ARE BUILDING ON THAT POTENTIAL. For years, Kansas City’s well-known interstate access came through its connections to I-35, I-70 and I-29, all vital…
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A friend of this publication, who brought his family to Kansas City from the New York City area, tells of a visitor whose mother told her to “make sure they aren’t living with cows,” so worried was she about her…
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You wouldn’t think it to look at KC on a map of the country, but yes, Kansas City is a port city. The two rivers that meet here, the waterways that gave rise to this place by virtue of being…
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More than 850 miles separate Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver from Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, endpoints that are significant because each falls on the prestigious list of Becker’s Hospital Review’s 100 Great Hospitals in America. Running right through…
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Just run the checklist: Two state university systems, including major research universities. Check. A major urban university with schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry. Check. Two other schools of medicine—one public, one private—representing the largest such organizations in their…
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When you’re the 30th-largest metropolitan population in the country, you can look to the other 29 markets ahead of you and wonder what they have that, perhaps, you might wish you had, as well. In some locales, it’s a mountain…
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