Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Discuss items in the urban core outside of Downtown as described above. Everything in the core including the east side (18th & Vine area), Northeast, Plaza, Westport, Brookside, Valentine, Waldo, 39th street, & the entire midtown area.
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shinatoo
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Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by shinatoo »

I was just thinking last night about the surge in Downtown residents and the lack of a surge in downtown businesses. Is KC becoming inverted? Is DT becoming a lifestyle center that is more desirable to live in even though your job might be in the burbs? With the build out of the streetcar to the Plaza will it be more pronounced? Is the future of the RCP a mostly residential neighborhood with major employers in the burbs? And is this even a bad, or good, thing?

Frankly, if I had a job anywhere in the suburbs I would rather live in the RCP corridor. The reverse commute would be much shorter. Any job change would result in a nearly equal commute time. And my evenings and weekends would much more fulfilling.

Is this a thing? Is it unique to KC? Am I way off base for thinking this is where we are trending?
flyingember
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by flyingember »

shinatoo wrote:I was just thinking last night about the surge in Downtown residents and the lack of a surge in downtown businesses. Is KC becoming inverted? Is DT becoming a lifestyle center that is more desirable to live in even though your job might be in the burbs? With the build out of the streetcar to the Plaza will it be more pronounced? Is the future of the RCP a mostly residential neighborhood with major employers in the burbs? And is this even a bad, or good, thing?

Frankly, if I had a job anywhere in the suburbs I would rather live in the RCP corridor. The reverse commute would be much shorter. Any job change would result in a nearly equal commute time. And my evenings and weekends would much more fulfilling.

Is this a thing? Is it unique to KC? Am I way off base for thinking this is where we are trending?
I think you have to ignore the existing urban core neighborhoods for this idea to work. there's obviously four commuting types

urban to downtown
urban to suburb
suburb to downtown
suburb to suburb

Two things changed in recent years
1. the donut hole filled in. We no longer have a mostly residential free downtown with people living in neighborhoods surrounding it and moving further outwards every decade or so.
2. we didn't have downtown job growth but it's not like all jobs left downtown

More people commute from downtown to the suburbs but that's only because more people live downtown. In no way does this mean people living downtown didn't commute to the suburbs before.
loftguy
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by loftguy »

A 2000 survey indicated that 60+% of downtown residents worked outside of the downtown district, so this is not a new phenomenon.
What may be new, is the large number of people who live and work remotely, or independently, out of their homes.
aknowledgeableperson
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

For the most part I would agree with your assessment. It has been awhile but the last time I looked at growth numbers for both jobs and residents the pace of growth was greater in the areas further out (10 miles) for a city's core, not just KCMO but for cities across the nation. So in that respect KC is no different than other metro areas. I know people like to blame the state line but we would have the same competition between the city core and the burbs even without the state line. That's just the nature of it.
There are those who complain about the local large employers not moving downtown but is KC really that much different than most of the other cities in the country? Yes, there are cities with examples of a relocated company moving downtown either from the local burbs or moving into the area but those are the exceptions rather than commonplace.
However I do think KC has had some bad luck with regards to both homegrown companies and relocated companies in the city's core. Hallmark has been the one shining example of a large company investing in the city's core that has been continually successful. Kansas City Southern might have been another one but the railroad did fall on hard times for awhile and it spun off DST early on and now DST is no more. Payless Cashways just couldn't compete in the home improvement market against Lowe's and Home Depot, and suffered the same fate as Builder's Square and HQ. For banking, Commerce and UMB are strong regional banks but for whatever reason or reasons neither had a strong desire to compete against the big guys. H&R Block made a couple of bad business decisions and never fully recovered and was hurt by the growth of individual tax software. 20th Century Mutual Funds was on a strong growth pattern but for whatever reason ran into problems and instead of buying other mutual funds for growth it was bought out instead. The old AT&T was ready to invest heavily in downtown KC but was broken up by the feds. A large developer who was behind Executive Hills had big plans for development downtown but ran into criminal and financial problems. And let's not forget Stanley Durwood.
Maybe some can complain about past city leadership with regards to the locations of Kemper Arena and the sports complex but those decisions had more to do with the city's inability to raise sufficient funds on its own, especially in a short amount of time. Early on the city tried to compete with the suburbs with the Plaza Sailor's Project but local preservationists fought against it and many other commercial projects seeking to redevelop the Plaza, and they still continues the fight against some Plaza redevelopment.
If I had more time I might be able to come up with other examples. Am sure others with have their thoughts and opinions.
KCKev2
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by KCKev2 »

loftguy wrote:A 2000 survey indicated that 60+% of downtown residents worked outside of the downtown district, so this is not a new phenomenon.
What may be new, is the large number of people who live and work remotely, or independently, out of their homes.
My job is located in Overland Park, but I rarely need to go there. I work from home in the central KC corridor.
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grovester
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by grovester »

Wow, congrats! Didn't know you had come back from AZ.
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by brewcrew1000 »

How much of this is due to the growth of Cerner? Cerner mainly hires young people and the offices are located in a good proximity to downtown (all offices are within a 15-20 min drive of downtown). If Cerner is located in Gardner with offices spread in Grain Valley and Platte City I don't think u see the downtown/midtown residential growth because the commutes are stretching to 30-40 min. Cerner's unattractive office locations for young people turned out to be kind of a good thing. If Cerner was in some mixed use monstrosity in OP or Olathe then its possible the residential growth downtown never happens
flyingember
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Re: Is Kansas City becoming an inverted city.

Post by flyingember »

brewcrew1000 wrote:How much of this is due to the growth of Cerner? Cerner mainly hires young people and the offices are located in a good proximity to downtown (all offices are within a 15-20 min drive of downtown). If Cerner is located in Gardner with offices spread in Grain Valley and Platte City I don't think u see the downtown/midtown residential growth because the commutes are stretching to 30-40 min. Cerner's unattractive office locations for young people turned out to be kind of a good thing. If Cerner was in some mixed use monstrosity in OP or Olathe then its possible the residential growth downtown never happens
They didn't need to locate in OP or Olathe to be positioned well for those residents. Cerner positioned their offices for suburban access brilliantly.

Being on 435 at 470 is easy to get to for people from Blue Springs and Lee's Summit, just take 435 or 470 equally. It's a straight shot south on 435 for people from Liberty and Shoal Creek and Leawood and southern KC can take 435 against traffic

At 435 and 70 in Kansas is easy to get to from Lenexa, KCK, Olathe. For parts of KCMO around Parkville it's as easy as to go downtown. Go look at The National golf club in Parkville and how it's basically the same distance toThe Legends as to downtown and you will notice a lot of the western northland can get there as easy as downtown. If you live along 152 it's not a big difference in distance but without the traffic.
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