Destination Kansas City 2017

Welcome to Kansas City: The Total Package

Cobb, the antagonist/sheriff from the mythical town of Silverado, famously issued this greeting in the Lawrence Kasden classic: “Welcome to Heaven.” With apologies to the screenwriters involved back in 1985, a parched spit of land in the desert Southwest, heaven…more

Headquarters and Cornerstones

The rhythms of business life dictate that companies will come, and companies will go. But the real players, the ones that are here for the long term, the ones that can skim over the reefs of recession as easily as…more

Leading Industries

Agribusiness always has been and always will be a large part of Kansas City’s commercial identity. It’s the home of some of the biggest dairy, meat processing, food distribution and grain production and storage companies in the United States. But…more

Business Climate and Economic Conditions

As 2017 dawned, the Kansas City region had much to celebrate: Unemployment in both Missouri and Kansas had reached levels not seen since before the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, construction companies were firing on all cylinders to…more

Productive Work Force

Quick: Outside Detroit, what’s the nation’s leading center of automobile manufacturing? If you guessed one of those Southern states that lured assembly plants away from the Motor City with the prospect of non-union labor, no Kansas City-style barbecue for you.…more

Prime Location

Kansas City. It’s a proud and prosperous Missouri municipality, certainly. But it’s also a bi-state Metropolitan Statistical Area of about 2.5 million people, an economic powerhouse of 16 counties with four at its core along the state line that separates Missouri…more

Market Tidbits

• Two metros, one region: Like two stars held in place by gravity, two major urban centers define Kansas City— a larger metropolis in Missouri and a smaller counterpart on the Kansas side.  • Civil-War history buffs will immediately recognize…more

Downtown Transformation

There was a day when Kansas City’s Central Business District was a magnet for business people, shoppers and fun seekers. With the rise of suburban life over time, however, people wanted to live their personal and professional lives closer to…more

The Nexus of North American Trade

In the lexicon of industrial real estate, it’s called velocity, and it refers to the rate of increase in square footage of a given class of property across a marketplace. And in the Kansas City region, when it comes to…more

Why Kansas City?

Consider this: Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Kansas City among the top few of the 50 Best American Cities. Travel and Leisure ranked Kansas City at No. 3 on its America’s Favorite Cities list. Policom Corp. ranked Kansas City No. 8 on…more

Quality of Life

What exactly is “quality of life,” anyway? It probably means something at least a little different to each of the 2.5 million-plus people who live in the Kansas City metro. Like any major urban area, Kansas City has plenty of…more

Entertainment and Culture

A lot of people know about Hamburg, Germany because of the place it holds in the backstory of The Beatles rise to fame. But in Kansas City’s cultural community, Hamburg is known as the home of Emporis, a global gatherer…more

Things You Must Do When in KC

We’ve all heard the stories of people from New York who have never been to see the Statue of Liberty. Or D.C. denizens who’ve never set foot in the Lincoln Memorial. Sad but true, we get so caught up in…more

Hospitality and Tourism

The Kansas City area is no one-trick pony when it comes to taking care of visitors. Of course, there’s a vibrant and growing city center filled with all the amenities and attractions mentioned elsewhere in this issue.  But Jackson County,…more

Real Estate Values

A friend of this publication, who brought his family to Kansas City from the New York City area, tells of a visitor whose mother told her to “make sure they aren’t living with cows,” so worried was she about her…more

Transportation and Infrastructure

You wouldn’t think it to look at KC on a map of the country, but yes, Kansas City is a port city. The two rivers that meet here, the waterways that gave rise to this place by virtue of being…more

Healthcare and Community Services

More than 850 miles separate Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver from Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, endpoints that are significant because each falls on the prestigious list of Becker’s Hospital Review’s 100 Great Hospitals in America. Running right through…more

Education

Just run the checklist: Two state university systems, including major research universities.  Check. A major urban university with schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry.  Check. Two other schools of medicine—one public, one private—representing the largest such organizations in their…more

Cost of Living

When you’re the 30th-largest metropolitan population in the country, you can look to the other 29 markets ahead of you and wonder what they have that, perhaps, you might wish you had, as well. In some locales, it’s a mountain…more