2023 Year in Review

Flying High, and Not Just With a New Airport
All in all, it was a pretty good year to call Kansas City home. Especially if you have to leave it for a while and return to the new single-terminal airport that had the travel industry abuzz when it opened in February. That was just two weeks after the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVII, their second in four years. It was a year of profound change in health care, logistics and development, and it set the stage for continued growth and progress in one of America’s most livable cities. 

January
2     The new year starts with word that the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas and Wyandotte County will consider a rezoning request for the former Cerner Continuous Campus in Village West. A potential redevelopment of the two-tower complex, with 660,000 square feet of office space and 2,600 parking spaces, is the latest chapter in the deconstruction of the former health-care IT’s Kansas City footprint. The site had been vacant for more than a year after Cerner, once the region’s biggest private employer, was acquired by Oracle in 2021. 

20     Poplar Bluff-based Southern Missouri Bancorp is the latest to enter the fray in one of the nation’s most competitive banking markets as it completes its merger with Citizens Bancshares Co. of Kansas City. Citizens’ roughly $1 billion in assets pushes Southern Missouri Bank’s total to $4.4 billion, and gives it 14 locations in the metro area.

February
15     An estimated 800,000 people packed a mile-long stretch of Downtown streets to cheer on the Chiefs as they celebrated their Super Bowl LVII championship. The crowd came close to rivaling turnout from 2020, when the team was in full party mode after a 50-year absence from the title game. Does the drop-off suggest that Kansas City fans are becoming complacent? We’ll know in mid-winter, if the Chiefs can recover from a late-season slump to claw their way back to the top. 

March
6     After 10 years of project proposals, neighboring-residents’ complaints, zoning hearings and plan revisions, the City Council approves key portions of East Leawood Village—formerly dubbed Cameron’s Court—to transform a swath of farmland into a 116-acre mixed-use development at 135th Street and State Line Road. The Oddo Development project will feature high-end homes—starting in the $1 million range for single-family homes, $750,000 twin villas, $550,000 brownstones and 324 apartments. Construction would follow later in the summer.

April
10     The Kansas City Council moves forward with a request for $15 million in state tax credits to support The Lid, a proposed park spanning 4-1/2 acres capping Interstate 670 from Wyandotte Street and Grand Boulevard. Project boosters hope to leverage those credits into $50 million in private donations for the project, which would reconnect the Central Business District with the Crossroads neighborhood.

May
9     The crown jewel in Kansas City’s retail reputation took a hit as the owners of the iconic Country Club Plaza filed SEC paperwork reporting that they were defaulting on a loan of more than $295 million that had been secured to acquire the district in 2016. The default was nearly half the $660 million price paid to Highwoods Properties by Macerich Co. and Taubman Centers. Later in the year, speculation surfaced that the Plaza could again change owners, with reports that a Texas firm with ties to Kansas City’s Hunt family might be next in the ownership line.

31     The second major health-system merger to rock the Kansas City market comes as Saint Luke’s Health System and St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare announce plans to form an integrated Missouri-based health system that will serve the state’s 6.2 million residents. They would later target Jan. 1 of 2024 as merger date, and they pledged to operate a dual headquarters, with the St. Louis base serving eastern Missouri and southern Illinois and the Kansas City wing covering Missouri and portions of Kansas. BJC Health Care brought 14 hospitals and net revenues equaling $6.3 billion to the table, while Saint Luke’s included nine hospitals and more than $7.6 billion in revenues.

June
28     The University of Kansas and The University of Kansas Health System announce that the Sunderland Foundation will provide $100 million for the development of a new destination cancer center, accounting for the majority of the proposed $143 million facility on the 39th and Rainbow campus. The donation from the Sunderland Foundation marks the largest ever made by the foundation, it is the largest lead gift ever to be received by the university.

July
29     Yellow, once one of Kansas City’s largest public companies before relocating to Nashville last year, reaches the end of the road as looming bankruptcy leads to the announcement that will begin shutting down operations immediately. Just three years earlier, the company had received $700 million in pandemic-relief funds from Washington. Company officials blamed part of the demise on protracted, nine-month labor negotiations with the Teamsters union, which represented most of the 22,000 union employees in a work force of 30,000.

August
29     Price Brothers, developers of the $1 billion Bluhawk mixed-use development in Overland Park, announces that it is nearing the halfway point of overall construction as work progresses up on Phase I of the AdventHealth Sports Park. When complete, the 420,000-square-foot sports park will boast a $72.7 million indoor multi-sports facility and civic and community center. Elsewhere on the project site at 159th and Antioch, the development will include 536,000 square feet of new retail, restaurant and entertainment space, 100,000 square feet of apartments, 80,000 square feet of office space and 206,000 square feet of hotel space.

September
15     The long-running reconstruction of a residential base in Downtown Kansas City received another lift as the Cordish Companies raised the curtain on its Three Light luxury apartment tower adjacent to the Power & Light District. The 25-story tower, with 288 apartments, joins Two Light (which opened in 2018) and One Light (2015), furthering the city’s goal to create a Downtown residential population of 40,000. The opening comes as Copaken Brooks unveils plans for a project that would create 700 more units adjacent to the P&L District.

18     Officials from Wyandotte County’s Unified Government sign off on tax incentives to support the $838 million mixed-use Homefield development, a nearly 400-acre development at 94th Street and State Avenue. The sports-themed Homefield parent envisions a $145 million hotel; $60 million multisport training facility and $20 million golf bar. It would be home to a 55,000-square-foot indoor arena, a  youth baseball complex and a 30,000-square-foot interactive museum.

October
17     New York-based WPP announces that its VMLY&R unit in Kansas City will merge with another operation unit, Wunderman Thompson, to form the world’s largest creative company. The parent company says the union will bring together respective client bases, functional expertise and geographic strengths for a combined company with more than 30,000 employees in 64 markets worldwide. Current VMLY&R CEO Jon Cook will continue in that role after the merger.

November
21     Officials from Lee’s Summit and Columbia-based Intrinsic Development break ground on Discovery Park, one of the biggest mixed-used developments on the Missouri side of the metro area since Cerner Corp. started work on its south Kansas City campus a decade ago. The $959 million project will bring 3.9 million square-foot mixed use development to a 268-acre site near Interstate 470 and Northeast Douglas Street.

December
7     As discussions about the fate of the Royals and a new stadium continue, the year fades away almost exactly where it started—with no resolution on where the team will find a new home. Downtown Kansas City in Jackson County and Kansas City, North, in Clay County remain as the two most-prominently discussed potential sites for a new stadium.