MIDTOWN

 

Henry Bloch
Although retired from the company that bears his name, Bloch has been the without-which-not in one of America’s most ambitious cultural projects, the $200 million expansion and overhaul of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The centerpiece of the expansion is the controversial Bloch Building, named after Henry and wife, Marion.

Carl Schramm
Schramm, the CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, shook up the city when he reoriented the Foundation away from its social work drift and back towards its original entrepreneurial and educational mission. Schramm survived a spirited resistance from the entrenched powers and now has the potential to at least help Kansas City become an entrepreneurial magnet as Ewing Kauffman hoped it would. With nearly $2 billion in assets, the foundation is twice as big as the city’s next biggest. Schramm is a player in the region and was unjustly judged in his early days here.

Barry Brady
As Highwood Properties head guy in Kansas City, Brady has reestablished the Country Club Plaza not only as America’s first “lifestyle center,” but also as its best. The Plaza’s synergistic mix of hotels, office, residential and retail kept the area in high demand during those few years that nothing else was.

Dan Lowe
One of the four founding partners of the very hot RED Development, with offices on the Plaza and in Scottsdale, Dan Lowe could be placed in every zone of the region. His current projects include the Cornerstone in Leawood, the Legends at Village West, and The Shoppes at North Village in St. Joseph. The latter project merits most attention because it is transforming the way St. Joseph looks at itself. RED Development was ranked by Ingram’s in 2004 as being KC’s fastest growing business. Lowe is a gentleman with a growing list of huge accomplishments.

Jeannette Nichols
J.C. Nichols, Jeannette’s father-in-law, created the Country Club Plaza, and Jeannette is keeping the her recent husband Miller and the family’s money and energy in the neighborhood. She serves as honorary co-chair of UMKC’s $200 million capital campaign and is spearheading the expansion of the Miller Nichols library on the UMKC campus. Though not as active in business circles, she and the Nichols portfolio command high levels of respect.

Bill Lyons
As the President and CEO of American Century, Lyons is responsible for a cool $100 billion in assets. The Plaza-based company is among the largest employer in the area. Jim Stowers III relinquished much of his investment management responsibility when he took over as Chairman from his father, American Century and Stowers Institute founder, Jim Stowers, Jr., still very much a redoubtable force, especially through his influence with the Institute.

The Block Family
Senior Vice Presidents Ken, David, Michael, and Stephen Block keep the 60 year-old, Plaza-based family firm active all over the metropolitan area. Stephen was responsible for the $80 million Midtown Marketplace in Kansas City and Ken, who specializes in development of industrial, office and business park properties, has been involved in development of more than 190 buildings with a total value in excess of $700 million at last count.

Philip Bixby
Bixby serves as Vice Chairman, President, CEO of the venerable Kansas City Life Insurance that continues to prosper after 110 years of service and has nearly 600 employees, all in the Kansas City area.

James Nutter, Jr.
Although the James B. Nutter Company makes loans in all 50 states, the company decided to keep its professional staff here in Kansas City, in Westport specifically, which they have transformed into a nicely restored Nutterville. Now the CEO, it remains to be seen whether James Nutter, Jr., will absorb his father, James Nutter, real source of influence, local Democrat politics.

David Fenley
The Chairman of Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin LLP, Dave Fenley, has over 20 years of experience in commercial real estate development and financing incentives and needed just about all of it to get Blackwell’s new building built on the library site just south of the Country Club Plaza. Dave is also a member of the Civic Council and serves as general counsel to the Mayor’s Corps of Progress for Greater Kansas City.

John Sherman
Just six years after founding Inergy, CEO John Sherman was sounding the bell of a NASDAQ session. Founded in 1998, the Plaza-based Inergy has quickly become one of the country’s fastest-growing propane marketing and distribution firms as well as one of the fastest-growing master limited partnerships in the United States. The company services some 270,000 customers in 18 states.

David Lockton
David Lockton, Chairman of Lockton Companies, the largest, independently owned insurance brokerage firm in the country with some 1,700 associates, has had to shoulder more responsibility still after the death last year of his brother, Jack Lockton, company co-founder and Chairman emeritus. CEO Grover Simpson has also broadened his role at the Plaza-based company.

Bob Bernstein
Long the area’s leading ad agency executive, Bob Bernstein turned developer in a major way with the $80 million West Edge project, just west of the Country Club Plaza. The project will include shops, restaurants, an office building, and, appropriately enough, a two-level advertising icon museum. Son, Steve Bernstein, serves as COO and is the likely successor.

 

SOUTH

 

Scott Hartman
Hartman is Chairman and CEO of another fast-growing KC company, Novastar Financial. Founded less than 10 years ago, the company invests largely in mortgage assets. Headquartered on Ward Parkway, the company has nearly 5,000 employees, more than 400 in the Kansas City area.

Greg Graves
Greg Graves took over as CEO of Burns & McDonnell from the retiring Dave Ruf a year and a half ago and has been making his presence felt ever since. Burns & McDonnell employs 1,800 professional and support personnel, the great majority of them in Kansas City, and generates annual fees of $500 million. Burns & Mac has been highly involved in Kansas City, Missouri’s infrastructure improvements. Graves serves on the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, the Board of Trustees of the Midwest Research Institute, the board of directors of the Kansas City Area Development Council, UMB Bank and is co-chair of Ingram’s CEOpen Executive Golf Tournament.

Bill Zollars
The Chairman and the CEO of the Overland Park-based Yellow Roadway, Bill Zollars has reversed the fortunes of this venerable company and made it a global force in competition with UPS and Fed Ex. Under Zollars’ leadership, the company acquired both the Roadway Corporation and U.S. Freightways and now has more than 50,000 employees, 2,000 in the Kansas City area. Zollars is also chair of the 2005 United Way campaign.

Jerry Reece
A retired U.S. Marine colonel and Vietnam vet, Jerry Reece oversaw the merger of his company with J.C. Nichols a few years back and created the area’s dominant residential real estate company in the process, Reece & Nichols. CEO Reece has 2,500 real estate agents working for the Leawood-based company on both sides of the state line.

Brad Scott
To a certain degree, Brad Scott, head of the regional office of the federal General Services Agency (GSA), derives much of his power from his relationship with Kit Bond. But now into his and the President’s second term, Scott is beginning to make his own weight felt as the Kansas City area’s largest landlord and the supervisor of more than a thousand employees.

Lloyd Hill,
Lloyd Hill is President and CEO of Applebee’s International. Headquartered in Overland Park, the company employs more than 25,000 people, 2,000 of them in the Kansas City area, and has emerged as one of Kansas City’s iconic companies.

Mike Brown
Mike Brown serves as Chairman and CEO of Euronet Worldwide. Although based in Leawood, the company does 95% of its sales across the globe, as it helps other companies buy and sell things electronically. It has more than 500 employees but only 40 or so in Kansas City.

Thomas Grant II
Tom Grant serves as the Chairman, President and CEO of LabOne, the Lenexa-based national laboratory testing and information service provider with nearly 3,000 employees, roughly 2/3 of them in Kansas City. Revenues increased by more than 1/3 in 2004, a sign of continuing growth.

Gary Forsee
Responsible as he is for the fortunes of 16,000 well-paid area employees at Sprint, no one person holds the future of the whole area in his hands like Chairman and CEO Gary Forsee does. He made his presence felt in the central city by lending Sprint’s name and weight to the new downtown arena. How he shares his power with Nextel, and where the source of that power even-tually resides, has area leaders holding their breath.

Min Kao
The first time on this list, Kao more than deserves to be here. Kao is the Co-Chairman and CEO of arguably Kansas City’s hottest company, Garmin, which manufactures global positioning system devices for the consumer, aviation and automotive markets at its Olathe location. Garmin has more than 2,000 employees worldwide, nearly half of them in this area. Kao helped the company launch 45 new products in 2004 and undertakes a $60 million expansion of its Olathe headquarters. Gary Burrell, the Chairman emeritus and co-founder, has donated more than $30 mil. in com-pany stock to unspecified charities in the last two years and remains in an advisory role of this emerging giant.

Jeff Wolfe
Jeff Wolfe is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Wolfe Automotive Group and works along-side his sister, Cindy Tucci, the Vice Chairman, to continue to grow the 50-year-old company in the vision of their father, Jay Wolfe. The largest dealership in Kansas City, Wolfe also has dealerships in Chicago, St. Louis, Springfield and Cleveland.

Charles Sunderland
The Chairman of Ash Grove Cement Company, a business his family has controlled for nearly a century, Charles Sunderland has grown the company to its current status as the largest American-owned producer of cement. The company also has been involved in the development of the 4,000-acre Cedar Creek.

Bryan Rogers

As president of the HCA Midwest Division, the dominant healthcare presence in the metropolis now headquartered in south Kansas City, Bryan Rogers quietly has been weaving himself and his institution into the community fabric. With 12 general acute care and behavioral health centers in his charge—including Research, Menorah and Baptist-Lutheran—there is no reason to be noisy.

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