Prime Location
Kansas City is bursting with communities that offer easy access to transit routes, benefitting both residents and businesses, and keeping costs low.
Investment and expansion are happening on both sides of the state line. But in Missouri, a significant amount can be found in Kansas City and adjacent cities such as Independence, Lee’s Summit, Belton and Blue Springs.
Planned development in Independence includes the 360-acre Independence Business Park near the intersection of Missouri Highways 7 and 78. As one element in a series of broader developments along the Little Blue Parkway, the business park would include office, industrial and retail space. To the south, the Independence Events Center multi-purpose arena has already spurred growth in the area since it opened in late 2009. A hotel, a 15,000-square-foot medical office building and a 250-unit senior housing project are among developments that have left only five of that area’s 212 acres unsold.
In Kansas City’s northeastern quadrant, successful growth and future planning focuses in the Shoal Creek area. The Shoal Creek Parkway has gone from five businesses in the early ’90s to 130 today, and more than half of the single-family residential permits issued in the Northland in 2011 were near Shoal Creek. The area currently has three prime residential subdivisions—and 40 percent is left to still be developed.
An additional growth area is the First and Second Creek watershed, bordered by four highways: Interstates 29 and 435 and Missouri Highways 152 and 160. An investment of $45 million for pump stations and sewers has been approved, and that phase is expected to be completed by the end of 2013, followed by an anticipated population increase and the commerce that comes with it.
For the future, the Second Creek area near U.S. 169 and Missouri 291 is primed for growth that is expected to attract 30,000 or more residents and extensive commercial development.
Zona Rosa, on the west side of KC’s Northland, is a mixed-use space opened in 2004 and continually expanding. With approximately 86 shopping tenants bordered by apartments and inter-mixed with 23 restaurants, it also is a prime location for the Kansas City area with its quick highway access and proximity to additional retail and residential areas.
To the east and south, Blue Springs and Belton are active, as well. Blue Springs is becoming a draw for consumers from the edges of the metro area and farther east. In the past five years, the area has steadily increased growth, especially with the 553,000 square-foot Adams Dairy Landing, which is about three-fourths complete. Belton, on Kansas City’s southern fringe, has been quiet for the past few years, but now has a planned $25 million retail development of 130,000 square feet in the works.
Kansas Expansions
Once a booming corridor, 135th street in Overland Park struggled with the recession-related clamp on many projects. The proverbial tide is turning, however, with signs of renewed energy.
At 135th and Metcalf Avenue, construction has resumed at the former Corbin Park, which was rescued from bankruptcy. Taking its place at that 1.1 million-square-foot site will be Aspen Square. Along with the nearby mixed-use development Prairiefire at Lionsgate, the 135th Street corridor has attracted the attention of big-box retailers. The Prairiefire project envisions everything from 300,000’ each in office and retail to 600,000’ in residential. On the northwest corner, Deer Creek Woods is taking part in the growth with two smaller sites that remained vacant into the summer of 2012.
Village West in Wyandotte County continues as one of the region’s top growth areas. The addition of the Cerner Corp. campus, now under construction, and the Livestrong Sporting Park, completed in 2011, have been the most recent examples. Schlitterbahn has doubled the attractions its still-in-development water park, with a $5 million expansion, and the new Hollywood Casino can be found adjacent to the Kansas Speedway.
Center Focus
Downtown Kansas City is another top spot. With investments such as the Sprint and Kauffman centers and steady commercial growth, Downtown success is even beginning to spread to several nearby areas such as Midtown. Even the West Bottoms, a more eclectic area, is adding art galleries and living quarters.
Just north of Downtown, Briarcliff is expanding with a $19 million senior-living facility. Also in that area will be a $7 million mixed-use development in the Riverside Horizons Business Park. Tenants are anticipated to come, in part, as spin-offs from Ford Motor Co.’s $1.2 billion investment in Claycomo.
Intermodal Investment Continues
Kansas City’s national centrality makes it a leader for intermodal investment. Some of this is happening at CenterPoint-KCS, a 1,340-acre inland port development at the former Richards-Gebaur Memorial Airport and next to the relatively new Kansas City Southern Intermodal Facility. A $687 million National Nuclear Security Administration project expected to employ 2,500 is being developed through CenterPoint Zimmer. The federal government, along with many others throughout the area, are no doubt partly lured by KC’s ability to provide single-day truck service to almost every major Midwest market and its national ranking of No. 2 for rail and No. 3 for trucking shipments.
A similar intermodal movement is occurring across the state line between Gardner and Edgerton in Kansas. With another rail hub under construction, this one covering approximately 1,000 acres, the area already boasts some of the region’s densest concentrations of distribution and logistics centers. Yet another center, this one for air-rail-truck, is now operating at the Kansas City International Airport, where extensive infrastructure and commercial development are moving into additional phases.
Although national economic factors will likely influence the region’s growth, Kansas City is ready for development with locations that can attract a variety of businesses in an ever-widening circle of inter-related commerce.