The Growers

We know the growth agents well. We have seen who talks the talk and who walks the walk, and we have learned the difference between them. We have had a unique perspective. Every month for the last four years we have met with the leaders of a wide range of industries. Every other month for the past few years, we at Ingram’s have met with the movers and shakers from all over the greater metropolitan area from Shawnee County in the West to Johnson County, MO in the east, from Buchanan and Leavenworth Counties in the north to Cass and Miami and Franklin Counties in the south.

 

The Slowers

If every area has growers, every area also has slowers. Some are pure obstructionists with no particular rede-eming value. Others have cost the area jobs through mismanagement or bad planning or just plain bad luck. Some, however, slow the growth only as a byproduct of a larger cause or concern—like returning the company to profitability or rescuing it from Chapter 11.

As much as we champion growth here at Ingram’s, we recognize the moral imperative that moves at least some of these people. We suspect too that the dialectic, which their opposition generates, can result in a useful synthesis, one that respects Midwest values. Does anyone, after all, really want an “Erotic City” in his neighborhood, or, for that matter, does anyone want a coal burning power plant in his or her county, no matter how useful that plant might be?

 

The Dispersion of Power

Speaking of neighborhoods, this brings us to a secondary theme—the dispersion of the development throughout the metropolitan area. For years, decades even, local leadership has relied on Johnson County, Kansas, to serve as the area’s growth engine. And although Johnson County continues to prosper, it does not do so uniquely or at anyone’s expense.

The area’s center of economic gravity, which had been sliding inexorably towards the south and west for 50 years, has reversed itself. A series of developmental forces, some of them entirely unanticipated, has pulled that center back north.

Platte County, in fact, has become one of the most prosperous and fastest-growing counties in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Now with more than 75,000 residents, its population grew three times as fast as the population of Missouri as a whole during the 1990s. One great indicator of opportunity is that retail sales in the county more than tripled between 1990 and 2000. Sales figures received another major boost in 2004 when the much-anticipated lifestyle center, Zona Rosa, opened its doors.

If Platte County is pushing the area’s growth north and west, Clay is moving it north and east. The 2000 census recorded a population of 185,642, a 20% increase from 1990, a rate of growth nearly twice that of the Kansas City metropolitan area as a whole. The County continues the pace, growing by approximately 5,000 new residents each year. This is not happening by itself. Key individuals are making it happen.

In 1997, Wyandotte County and the City of Kansas City, Kansas, took a big step towards the future by consolidating their county and city governments. The historic move has resulted in economic progress for businesses and taxpayers alike. The most striking symbol of that progress is the Kansas International Speedway on the western side of the county at I-435 and I-70. The $208 million project covers 1,000 acres, features a 1.5-mile oval and a grandstand that holds 75,000 auto racing fans. The track has spurred the development of “Village West,” already the leading tourist attraction in the state of Kansas. Indeed, no development in the last twenty years has done more to reorient the economic power of the area than this complex.

The eastern flank of the metropolis struck a blow for balance when the Springfield-based Bass Pro Shop unveiled plans in 2004 for a $70 million “destination” project. Located in Independence, at the intersection of Interstate 70 and Missouri 291, the complex will cover 180 acres and include a 160,000-square foot store, a wild nature park, an 18-acre lake and a lodge-themed hotel with an opening planned for spring 2006.

During the last decade, no slice of the Metropolitan area outperformed the southeast, particularly the prosperous city of Lee’s Summit. Missouri. Now with a population in excess of 70,000, the city was second in population growth in the State of Missouri in the decade past. That growth continues strong with more than 4,000 new single-family homes added in the past five years alone.

The areas beyond the core five counties likewise have prospered. Some of that growth has been spurred by Kansas Citians who understand the organic nature and the marketing value of a twenty-county metropolitan area.

This rebalanced metropolis seeks a center, and that can only be Kansas City, Missouri. Most encouraging of all new development is the resurgence of the area’s historic heart, especially in the residential sector from the River Market south through and around Downtown to Crown Center through Westport to the prosperous Country Club Plaza. Now, the area finds itself re-centered—ironically, right where it all started, in Downtown Kansas City. The people who have made this happen deserve special recognition.

 

CENTRAL

Tom McDonnell

No company has done more to pull the central city together than Tom McDonnell’s DST. As president and CEO McDonnell has kept most of his more than 5,000 Kansas City-area employees right in the heart of the city, revitalizing and restoring buildings and whole neighborhoods that otherwise would have been long since abandoned. For the record, DST provides infor-mation processing and computer software services and products to a wide range of clients

Back to top