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Blog

Time for an Agonizing Reappraisal of Our Appraisal

Nov 1, 2023
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 2023 The date was circled in red on the calendar. The valise was brimming with real-estate comps and downloads of the tax assessments for neighboring properties. I’d rehearsed, at least a dozen times, my best closing arguments, a… more

Building and Retaining the Young Work Force

Nov 1, 2023
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 2023 Each year Ingram’s selects a score of 20 in Their Twenties and features them in our October edition. And each year it feels like the overall quality of candidates may be stronger than the year preceding.  This… more

The Ingram’s 250 and Recommendations from the Corner Office

Oct 5, 2023
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 2023 It’s not a popularity contest when our editorial board convenes to deliberate over which executives should be included in the Ingram’s 250 in a given year. The change has been profound among the top leadership, and the… more

The Future Is Here with AI. Are You Ready for It?

Oct 5, 2023
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 2023 With the Age of AI upon us, one can find no shortage of Terminator-inspired memes on social-media platforms these days. Meh: I’m not convinced that machines will be rounding all of us up for slave camps or… more

Service Is Better Than Ever … For Now

Oct 5, 2023
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 2023 Having driven across the eastern half of the country four times this summer, I am pleased to report that, despite all the caterwauling to the contrary, the American service economy has never worked better. That said, unless… more

Momentum for a Celebration

Aug 2, 2023
I served on the board of directors of the Alliance of Area Business Publications for years, and in 1998 it was my pleasure to recruit our keynote speaker for the 1999 Summer Conference in Washington, D.C. I pursued Steve Forbes… more

The View From a New Front Door

Aug 2, 2023
Full disclosure: I’m not the kind of passenger whom airlines look to for long-term revenue. Heck, I can’t even remember the last time I flew out of the old Kansas City International Airport’s three-ring configuration—it might have been as far… more

Custard’s Not-So-Last Stand

Aug 2, 2023
During the early days of COVID-19, I found myself driving out to the hiking trails in Johnson County to avoid the lethargy-inducing madness of a locked-down Kansas City. Just south of I-435 on State Line Road, I took heart in… more

There Is No Place Like Home

Jul 17, 2023
Some years back, I accepted a Fulbright to teach urban studies at the Université de Lorraine in Nancy, France. The textbook for one course featured four cities considered to be the world’s best planned.  Paris, Nancy, Bath in England—no surprises… more

Want to Save the World? Sustain This

Jul 6, 2023
PUBLISHED JULY 6, 2023 Another one of those stop-the-world moments that make so many rational people want to get off: In researching a feature on commercial real estate that ran in last month’s issue, I stepped into a puddle of… more