Kansas’ Seven Thriving Districts

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2024

DISTRICT 1: NORTHEAST

Contrast may be the name of the game for Northeast Kansas. Anchored by the state capital and regional center of Topeka, this region offers an extremely wide range of business and lifestyle opportunities. 

The area’s eastern border begins on the banks of the Missouri River, an area that physically is more like neighboring Missouri. The region’s western edge encompasses the Kansas Flint Hills, a unique range of rocky ridges that contain some of the nation’s last remaining tallgrass prairie.

Government employment is significant with Topeka as the state capital, but the region also sports a growing health-care service industry, plus retail, services and even tourism. For employers and their employees alike, quality of life is a considerable strength here. With an impressively low cost of living, the region adds urban attractions in Topeka, as well as superb parks and regional lakes. Altogether, this area offers considerable advantages for both residents and businesses considering a location here.

Highways, rail and even air transport are other strong factors. Located where I-70 meets the Kansas Turnpike, Shawnee County is already a major distribution hub for several national companies that take advantage of the area’s location and low costs. In addition, the Interstate 335 spur provides divided, four-lane highway access to Interstate 35.

Shawnee County and Topeka boast a diverse economy, with large manufacturing and distribution operations that include Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Wal-Mart, Target, Mars candy, and The Home Depot, all having a major presence.  

DISTRICT 2: SOUTHEAST

While it may be comparatively short of major metropolitan areas, Southeast Kansas offers a surprisingly active business climate. Location is one key factor. Like most of Kansas, the region possesses advantages for transportation and logistics that are increasingly important even on a nationwide basis. 

The region also benefits from its proximity to larger areas such as Wichita or Joplin, Mo., along with the location of several significant highway corridors. In an era when distribution is a growing industry, this region’s location and transportation infrastructure are important.

Like most other regions in the state, superior affordability is a defining characteristic. Sharply lower costs, including those for real estate, yield advantages that are especially evident in communities such as Iola, Coffeyville, Independence, and Pittsburg, where multiple business parks are located.

A strong public school foundation and solid programs in higher education are also notable here. Pittsburg State University is the largest, but equally significant, is the area’s strong network of community colleges. Although communities such as Pittsburg bring enough big-city amenities to add spice to the region, the area’s most notable features include lots of wide-open spaces and small towns. The area’s smaller communities feature an outstanding quality of life. Low crime, affordability and other advantages are some of the best features of Southeast Kansas. 

Location is a key factor. The area sits near the center of the nation, and nearby are several key highways, including I-35—the NAFTA Superhighway—I-44 and U.S. 71. A hallmark of the region is its often dramatically low costs, including real estate.

Pittsburg is the largest and most economically active of that group. Sitting near the Missouri border in Crawford County, it’s an easy drive to Kansas City, Wichita, metro Fayetteville, Ark., as well as Joplin and Springfield, Mo. With a large state university as the community’s largest employer, the city has a steady economy, comparatively high levels of workforce education and a more diverse set of economic sectors than elsewhere in southeast Kansas.

Pittsburg and Crawford County have a slightly more diverse economy, with strong manufacturing balancing the sizable education, health and social services businesses. However, most of Southeast Kansas tends to defy the stereotypes of a largely rural area. Communities such as Coffeyville, Independence, Iola and Parsons all have sizable manufacturing and commercial bases.  

DISTRICT 3: KANSAS CITY

A combination of location, infrastructure and demographic factors make the Kansas City region an area of considerable opportunity. With nearly one in five Kansans calling Johnson County home, this area is a standout as the economic engine of Kansas.

What makes the region tick is its network of highway and rail routes, some of the most important in the country. Quality and affordability are the icing on this cake. Along with the rest of the Midwest, the Kansas City region is a national leader in terms of low cost of living, including housing. With parks, theater, museums and high-performing schools and colleges, this area offers outstanding opportunities for businesses and residents alike.

The region’s magnet for growth over the past 50 years has been Overland Park, for years a fixture on lists of the nation’s best places to live. It’s the pillar of a series of thriving Kansas City suburbs, including Leawood, Shawnee, Olathe and Lenexa, which help drive median household income of nearly $138,500—by far No. 1 in the state. 

That high-density base of high-income consumers makes Johnson County a strong draw for expansion, especially in the south, where open land provides a strong lure for unfettered development. That’s been especially true in the industrial property sector, where tens of millions of feet of warehouse and distribution space has come online over the past 15 years.

The most notable retail projects are large, including the game-changing Village West center in western Wyandotte County, which includes the Kansas Speedway and major tourism draws for shopping, such as Nebraska Furniture Mart and Cabela’s.

To the west and north, Douglas and Leavenworth counties provide unique business climates with distinct yet sizable cities. Their large cities, Lawrence and Leavenworth, each boast residential areas that impact their economy and culture: the University of Kansas at Lawrence and the Army’s Fort Leavenworth base.  

DISTRICT 4: NORTH CENTRAL

North Central Kansas may be one of the most diverse regions in the state.

With areas such as the Kansas Flint Hills that are famed for their wild isolation, the region combines thriving cities, like the university town and research center of Manhattan. Although large stretches of the district are dedicated to farming and ranching, it is also home to numerous business parks and, now, the nation’s premier ag-related bio-defense lab. Best of all, the farm and science worlds are increasingly blending, as in the area’s growing bioscience development.

Lying just a few miles from the center of the United States, the area is crisscrossed by two of the most strategic interstate highways in the country—Interstate 70, running east and west, and Interstate 135, linked to I-35. Other major federal and state highways support transportation and distribution. Rail and air transportation are also strong here, making for a region that is increasingly recognized for its strength as a potential distribution and transportation hub, as well as an attractive manufacturing area.

In addition, there is remarkable affordability, with low costs of living in almost every category, and especially housing. Those factors make this an attractive region for both businesses and their employees.

In addition to Manhattan, the region includes several key commercial and population centers, including Emporia (another state university town), Junction City (adjacent to the Army’s massive Fort Riley base), and Salina. Large enough to be significant business centers, they benefit from their status as major regional markets for everything from health care to traditional retail. 

Other factors raise the economic profile of these areas. In fields such as education, the presence of major institutions not only adds to the population, they add significantly to the size and diversity of the economy. Emporia State University in that city or, especially, Kansas State University in Manhattan, add a whole new level of economic vitality to those cities and even the surrounding counties.

One of the best examples of what the region offers came with the recent completion of the $1.25 billion National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility adjacent to the K-State campus. K-State and Manhattan beat out half a dozen national competitors for the honor, which carries major implications for future research and development facilities in the area. It’s the western terminus on I-70’s Animal Health Corridor, which runs through Lawrence (home of the University of Kansas) all the way to the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Long-range trends here include continued transportation and distribution development tied to the region’s outstanding transportation network. The continued development of biosciences and energy resources, including some of the nation’s largest wind farms, is also significant.  

DISTRICT 5: SOUTH CENTRAL

With a major aerospace industry and metropolitan hub supplemented by local agriculture and manufacturing, South Central Kansas is well-positioned for economic growth and success. 

Wichita—the Air Capital of the World—has a long-standing history in the aircraft industry and is the home of several major corporations, including Textron Aviation’s Cessna Beechcraft production facilities, the service center for Bombardier Learjet and the biggest employer of them all, Spirit AeroSystems, once a division of The Boeing Co., and now being merged back into it. Combined, they employ more than 20,000 people directly and an estimated 20,000 more in support industries for that sector.

Though several surrounding areas, like Butler County, have a large number of residents who commute to Wichita, this is not to suggest that neighboring economies are wholly dependent on Wichita for success. 

The McPherson area has been known as a major plastics manufacturing center for many years and is home to a major pharmaceuticals plant for Pfizer. Manufacturing is also a major industry in Reno County, providing more than 16 percent of jobs in the area. 

In Sumner County, manufacturing, especially aircraft parts, provides roughly a quarter of the county’s jobs. The region is also known for wheat production. 

Harvey County relies on agriculture and manufacturing for economic success and growth. A mixture of agricultural production and manufacturing also sustains the economies of smaller counties like Cowley, Greenwood, Harper and Kingman. Social services, including education, healthcare and government, also account for a large portion of jobs in these regions. 

Outside the cities, one will find rolling hills and sprawling wheat fields, and as the population thins out, costs of living go down. Certain areas in the region experience costs of living that are 30 percent lower than the national average. Real estate prices are universally low, contributing largely to the affordable lifestyle enjoyed by residents here.

The rural and urban areas of the region are connected to the rest of the country through multiple major thoroughfares, including the Kansas Turnpike, and Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, a commercial facility operating from a major site for the aerospace industry. 

Social services like health care and education are solid and prevalent throughout the region and employ a large portion of all workers from every county in the region. Wichita is home to three four-year institutions anchored by the state’s only urban university, Wichita State. Several two-year institutions can be found in neighboring counties. The region offers health care through two large providers in Wichita and others in communities like Hutchinson and Newton. Several smaller-scale county facilities serve the rural areas of the region.  

Wichita is the cultural center of the region with nightlife, fine art exhibitions and performances abounding. Smaller-scale versions can be found in many of the communities of South Central Kansas, in addition to various outdoor activities and attractions.  

DISTRICT 6: NORTHWEST

To many Middle Americans—perhaps many Kansans—Northwest Kansas is a vast prairie standing sentry between the rest of the state and the Colorado Rockies. This view would be far from complete.

The 18 counties that make up this region encompass the purchasing power of more than 107,000 residents, a state Regents university, a community college, a technical school, two dozen public school districts and dozens of smaller communities. Many of those living in the region are descended from the hardy German-Russian stock that settled the High Plains after the Civil War. Today, they are people who carry on their forebears’ traditions of a tremendous work ethic, productivity, and pride in their way of life. 

Make no mistake: This region is, first and foremost, agricultural in its economic orientation. Cattle and wheat, two staples of the Kansas economy, are raised in abundance here. Even within that framework, the region has a wide variety of communities and settings to offer expanding business. The most rural among them, Wallace County, is home to just 1,400 people; the most populous, Ellis County, boasts a university town in Hays and more than 26,000 residents. Like many communities in the region, these counties boast workforces that tend to be better educated than the U.S. as a whole. And, proving that dollars alone are not true measurements of success, they often enjoy more prosperous lifestyles than their bigger-city brethren, based on sharply lower living costs. Finally, residents live in communities that often offer better and more stable business climates, thanks to unusually low costs for land and labor.

Ask any corporate executive what his biggest cost concerns are; most will have labor at the top of the list. That’s one reason that Northwest Kansas should get a good, hard look from any site-selection professional: Because of its exceptionally low costs of living, this region stands out, even in a state with low costs overall.

According to the Kansas Department of Commerce, average wages in Kansas are 20 percent below what you would find in the highest-indexed states. Paradoxically, workers here enjoy standards of living—with good schools and nearly non-existent levels of violent crime—that are often higher than you will find in urban areas.

Overall, the workforce is better educated than in the border states of Missouri and Oklahoma and much better, on average, than you’ll find in major population centers such as New York, California, or Illinois. College degrees? Kansas ranks 17th nationally in the percentage of residents holding a sheepskin.

Energy costs provide yet another competitive edge for businesses here. The rates for both electricity and natural gas are lower—in some cases, significantly lower—than you’ll find on average in those higher-population states.

A central location and a powerful network of rail and highway systems mean freight delivery to any point in the continental United States is generally no more than three days, save for the Pacific Coast states that require an additional 24 hours. 

Any of those factors, on its own, could be a deal-maker. In combination, they are a powerful argument for doing business in Northwest Kansas.  

DISTRICT 7: SOUTHWEST

Southwest Kansas has deep ties to frontier history and the rolling Kansas prairie, where businesses and communities have plenty of room to grow and thrive. 

Agriculture plays a key role in the economy here, but a significant portion of the region is occupied by the Hugoton natural gas field; oil and gas production account for a sizable piece of the region’s economic make-up. Manufacturing and meat processing also employ thousands in industrial parks throughout the area. 

The region values social services—the health and education sectors employ a large portion of the workforce in several counties. The region is home to four two-year community colleges.

Residents enjoy a high quality of life with low crime rates and a low cost of living. The state of Kansas is one of the most affordable in the nation—this region does nothing to refute the trend, with affordable options for real estate, utilities and travel. 

Southwest Kansas communities pride themselves on being places where people know their neighbors and children can play outside. Even the larger communities of Garden City, Great Bend, Dodge City and Liberal retain a sense of small-town friendliness despite offering the standard big-city amenities for entertainment and culture. 

Agricultural production and related businesses dominate Southwest Kansas in terms of local economic and business activity. Oil and natural gas production and manufacturing also play significant roles. From meat processing plants to natural gas fields, these Kansas communities derive business from the land’s natural resources. 

Social services also play a large role in communities from Elkhart to Great Bend; hospitals and school districts are often major employers in Southwest Kansas counties. 

Each of the region’s major cities is home to one or more meatpacking or processing plants that employ nearly thousands of residents, many of whom have immigrated to the country for the employment opportunities.

Farming and ranching remain mainstays for many counties in Southwest Kansas. Comanche County offers acres of open rangeland; nearly 90 percent of the land in Hamilton County is used for agricultural purposes. Barber County is home to several wheat farms and one of the largest cow/calf operations in the state of Kansas. (Barber also engages in manufacturing and mining with the National Gypsum Co.)

The Hugoton field covers a significant portion of Southwest Kansas, supplying hundreds of jobs in gas and oil production.