Done Deals, 2023

PUBLISHED JANUARY 2024

Deals north of a billion dollars don’t come along very often, but the Kansas City region saw a few of them in 2023—including one merger marking a transformative merger in health care and one done through outright acquisition. While not quite in that same financial ZIP code, a number of other prominent deals went down during the year, and in most cases, they came fraught with promises of further development, investment, and job creation in the Kansas City region and beyond.

Here’s a sampling of the biggest that the year had to offer:

Hostess Brands Sale
Transaction Value: $5.6 billion
As deals go, only one of those involved money changing hands up front: It came when food-products giant J.M. Smucker & Co. announced that it was purchasing Lenexa-based Hostess Brands for a tidy $5.6 billion. For the snack-cake maker and CEO Andrew Callahan, it was the culmination of a long process that began after the company entered bankruptcy in 2009—the second capitulation in what was then a 90-year history. It emerged from that process in 2012 and saw its revenues steadily rise over the next decade, crashing past the $1 billion mark in 2020 and topping out at just shy of $1.4 billion in its final year before the sale. The deal was announced in mid-September and was quickly finalized less than eight weeks later. Of greatest relevance to Hostess brand patrons, however, will be the continued production of their beloved Twinkies, DingDongs, Zingers, iconic CupCakes, and other treats, some of which are produced at the company’s plant in Emporia, Kan.

BJC/Saint Luke’s Merger
Combined Revenues: $10 billion+
One would have to have been born without the irony gene not to notice a connection between America’s fixation with desserts and the consequences of it for health care, but here we are with the other big deal of the year: The corporate union of St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare and Kansas City’s Saint Luke’s Health System, announced in May and consummated as the new year arrived. That created a combined system with well more than $10 billion in annual revenue, 28 hospitals with nearly 200,000 annual patient admissions, and hundreds of clinics and service centers. It’s the first health-care system to cover the entire sweep of Missouri and its 6.2 million residents. For now, the respective brands remain intact, with BJC’s territory in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois, while Saint Luke’s retains its reach across western Missouri and eastern Kansas.

Mariner Does It Again
2023 AUM Gains: $19 billion
You have to hand it to Marty Bicknell: the Good Lord packed 365 days into each year; Bicknell uses every last one of them in pursuit of his acquisition strategy at his Overland Park wealth-planning monolith. The 2023 acquisition series came right down to the wire when Mariner Wealth Advisers purchased a Sacramento firm, Confluence Financial Planning, and tacked on an additional $360 million in assets to a base that now exceeds $114 billion, finalizing the deal on New Year’s Eve. That gave Mariner Wealth an additional 285 high-net-worth clients and pushed its nationwide office total up to 99, including 15 in the Golden State, California. Mariner Wealth advises on more than $114 billion in assets, up more than $19 billion from the close of 2022. And it marked Bicknell’s seventh acquisition of the year, pushing the firm further along on the ambitious timeline Bicknell has laid out for having 5,000 financial advisers in the Mariner fold by 2027; the Confluence deal brought that total to 1,445.

KCI29 Logistics Park
Project Value: $2.5 billion
Hunt Midwest broke ground in June, with Gov. Mike Parson slinging a ceremonial shovel, for what’s being billed as the biggest logistics center in Missouri: The enormous 3,300-acre KCI 29 Logistics Park. Parson was on hand in part because the state had already committed $42.5 million in infrastructure funding and in part because a project of this size recalibrates the bar for logistics facilities in the Show-Me State. It is a development, he said, that “will attract national and international partnerships and bring opportunities to the region.” Officials with Hunt Midwest reported strong early interest by major national and international players hailing from advanced manufacturing, distribution, logistics, and technology sectors. Tying the site in with the new Kansas City International Airport operations, said Hunt Midwest CEO Ora Reynolds, “provides us with a competitive advantage to attract ‘best-in-class’ manufacturing, logistics and technology users who demand the certainty of existing infrastructure, full entitlements for their uses and a skilled workforce. It is rare to find a mega site owned by an experienced developer in a geographically desirable location that can provide all these attributes.” By the time it’s built out, officials say, the project will encompass 20 million square feet of industrial space and generate more than 9,000 jobs. The first phase of infrastructure improvements should be completed this fall. 

Somera Road
Project Value: $526.7 million
New York/Nashville-based SomeraRoad racked up nearly $120 million in city incentive approvals in 2023, paving the way for its massive makeover of Kansas City’s West Bottoms. The 22-acre site near Hy-Vee Arena will be transformed into a $526.7 million live/work/play zone with a huge construction agenda: For starters, there will be 13 new-build and historic-renovation projects that will yield more than 1,00 apartments, a hotel, nearly 138,000 square feet of retail and just shy of 123,000 square feet of office space. The incentive train started rolling in April with $2.6 million from the city to raze the Weld Wheel building, then ramped up in October when the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority signed off on $64.3 million in public financing. As the year wound down, the Tax Increment Financing Commission steered another $54.1 million toward the developer to cover new public infrastructure and provide affordable housing options. The first public infrastructure work is slated to start after the second quarter of 2024, with full completion of the phased project running through 2038.

Flint Commerce Center
Project Value: $390 million
You didn’t really think the Panasonic Energy plant in De Soto would be the extent of industrial development there, did you? Well, it didn’t take long before the 2022 consummation of that deal between the EV battery maker and the state yielded dividends with additional industrial action on a mammoth scale: the 370-acre Flint Commerce Center. The first building, at over 1 million square feet, broke ground in June and is expected to be up and running by mid-summer of this year. It didn’t take long for Flint Development to rope in its first tenant—its new neighbor. Roughly half of the new building will be leased to Panasonic as part of the supply-chain infrastructure for the main plant a mile away. Partnering with Flint on the deal were Contegra Construction, which served as general contractor, and Davidson Architecture and Engineering, which handled the design. Flint’s vision isn’t stopping there; it has also picked up nearly 100 acres in DeSoto for residential development consideration.

Jackson County Detention Center
Project Value: $301 million
True, it’s not the kind of sector any community wants to hang its growth hat on, but a $300 million project is nonetheless a $300 million project, and they don’t come down the pike that often. In this case, it’s a new jail for Jackson County, a 450,000-square-foot facility that will accommodate nearly 1,250 temporary residents, along with space for mental health and medical services. The project is a joint venture of CGL Cos. & Newmark Zimmer. A number of prominent Kansas City companies were able to leverage pieces of the project into their workflows, including contractors JE Dunn Construction and Axiom Construction Group, architectural firms DLR Group and Wellner Architects, and various engineering disciplines provided by Taliaferro & Browne, BranchPattern and KH Engineering Group.

East Village-Leawood
Project Value: $300 million
Given that more than a decade has passed since the original vision—and it was put through the city review/approval wringer for nearly four years—maybe it’s hard to classify the dawn of Leawood’s East Village as a deal “done” in 2023. Full marks to developer Rick Oddo for persistence: due to neighborhood resistance, his team at Oddo Development had to make nearly a dozen revisions to the project scope just to squeak it past the City Council on a 5-4 vote. But the dirt is finally moving for Oddo’s long-cherished dream of a massive, $300 million development on what had been a 115-acre plot of farmland at 135th Street and State Line Road. Construction will unfold over six phases, and when it’s completed, Leawood will boast a high-density project with more than 650 apartments, nearly 175 residences in various formats—brownstones, condos, twin villas, and traditional single-family homes—an optimistic (in this day and age) 250,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 more square feet dedicated to retail, an assisted-living center, and nine parks. 

UMKC Health Sciences District
Project Value: $120 million
As one of a comparative handful of U.S. universities with the full suite of medical education programs—for doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists—UMKC is raising its national profile with some ambitious construction projects. Anchoring the Health Sciences District on Hospital Hill will be the Healthcare Delivery and Innovation Building, a six-story, 200,000-square-foot facility that will accommodate both medical and dental education on the health-care campus near 25th and Charlotte. Construction will start this year and is expected to be completed in 2026. Chancellor Mauli Agrawal said the upgrade would expand UMKC’s footprint in clinical and research functions, as well as instruction. A $30 million gift from the Sunderland Foundation helped bring the project into motion.