KCRag Forum

KCPowercat: why do you think Nashville's current growth rate won't continue?

FangKC wrote:Sometimes I think if KC just bought a regular, small ad in the Wall Street Journal in the real estate section advertising what commercial rents are per sq. foot in downtown Kansas City; avg. apt. rents; avg. home prices, etc., that might be enough. It would have to run constantly. A constant reminder echoing in their heads as they try to cut costs.

We might not get 1000 employee companies, but we might get several in the 100-200 range. Smaller companies often have huge growth potential, but also have a hard time providing all the things they need to attract employees like health care, child care, higher education tuition reimbursement, etc. Everything is cheaper in KC, and smaller companies have a hard time paying for all those things in NYC, SF, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, etc.

I interviewed with a relatively mid/higher up at Goldman Sachs who was surprised we even had a "big" airport. I agree that getting our name, stats, and image out there would go a long way to bringing in new residents and businesses.

missingkc wrote:KCPowercat: why do you think Nashville's current growth rate won't continue?

They will have a culture backlash.

FangKC wrote:Sometimes I think if KC just bought a regular, small ad in the Wall Street Journal in the real estate section advertising what commercial rents are per sq. foot in downtown Kansas City; avg. apt. rents; avg. home prices, etc., that might be enough. It would have to run constantly. A constant reminder echoing in their heads as they try to cut costs.

We might not get 1000 employee companies, but we might get several in the 100-200 range. Smaller companies often have huge growth potential, but also have a hard time providing all the things they need to attract employees like health care, child care, higher education tuition reimbursement, etc. Everything is cheaper in KC, and smaller companies have a hard time paying for all those things in NYC, SF, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, etc.

Brilliant.

ldai_phs wrote: I interviewed with a relatively mid/higher up at Goldman Sachs who was surprised we even had a "big" airport. I agree that getting our name, stats, and image out there would go a long way to bringing in new residents and businesses.

One World Cup game, however unlikely that is, would immediately change perceptions and opportunities for this city.

ldai_phs wrote:I interviewed with a relatively mid/higher up at Goldman Sachs who was surprised we even had a "big" airport. I agree that getting our name, stats, and image out there would go a long way to bringing in new residents and businesses.

We can place ads in Wall Street Journal, host World Series, Superbowls, Summer Olympics, World Cup games, but we're not going to have nice things until they get rid of that cowboy sign downtown.

I have never understood how places like Nashville, Indianapolis etc have such a better national image than KC does. After living on the east coast for some time now, it's been confirmed to me that KC has the absolute most inaccurate image of any major city. St Louis may be a close second mostly because of perceived crime problems, but at least most people know St Louis is a large urban metro area.

To people that have never been to KC. The city is basically Topeka with an NFL team. That's how they would describe it if asked and I have asked.

I don't know what KC can do about it, but because of its image of being basically a place nobody would ever want to move to, the city gets almost no attention from developers, companies etc outside the KC region. If more people knew just how much KC offers and how much there really is going on there, it would be growing a lot faster and seeing a lot more progress. I still think people just can't get past the name. As stupid as that may sound. The name "Kansas" City just comes with too many stereotypes built in that are just extremely difficult to overcome.

GRID wrote:I have never understood how places like Nashville, Indianapolis etc have such a better national image than KC does. After living on the east coast for some time now, it's been confirmed to me that KC has the absolute most inaccurate image of any major city. St Louis may be a close second mostly because of perceived crime problems, but at least most people know St Louis is a large urban metro area.

To people that have never been to KC. The city is basically Topeka with an NFL team. That's how they would describe it if asked and I have asked.

I don't know what KC can do about it, but because of its image of being basically a place nobody would ever want to move to, the city gets almost no attention from developers, companies etc outside the KC region. If more people knew just how much KC offers and how much there really is going on there, it would be growing a lot faster and seeing a lot more progress. I still think people just can't get past the name. As stupid as that may sound. The name "Kansas" City just comes with too many stereotypes built in that are just extremely difficult to overcome.

I'd say at least 75% of people immediately shorten KC to Kansas when I meet them. Kansas has an awful reputation, and Missouri only marginally better. Neither state has any interest in promoting it's more urban areas, and in Missouri has a governor openly hostile to them.

Kansas is current working on some bill on gay adoptions. Companies don't want to put up with this shit.

KC image has grown leaps and bounds in things like hospitality industry.

A full page WSJ ad costs $250,000. Roughly the price of a 1 year NYC hot dog cart permit in central park. I think that is also roughly the amount of marketing incentives that KCAD is providing to Iceland Air.

I'd rather see us put out a few big ads than many small ones. What do you all thing?

Nashville is most certainly booming. A city with leadership that envisions the region as growing into something "more" than it has been traditionally. Looking to compete with much larger SE competitors and doing so reasonably successfully thus far. KC could use some of their moxie, and job growth, though maybe not the bachelorette parties as referenced in another post.

We would kill to have a plan like this for the East Village - http://nashvilleyards.com/

505 Tower in Nashville (~$170M; like One and Two Light stacked on top of each other!) - https://505nashville.com/

Sadly, the more beautiful historic downtown core in Memphis across the state continues to rot away, despite some successes (Autozone Park, Beale Street, some nice residential conversions, etc.).

Ya gotta have mid-high income jobs (primarily) and successfully compete in the cutthroat convention/tourism biz. KC needs more of both downtown, though building toward it.

KCPowercat wrote:KC image has grown leaps and bounds in things like hospitality industry.

Yeah, but it's all relative. KC has really built up some decent hotel inventory compared to its old self of pretty much never building new urban hotels, but all cities have added a lot of hotel rooms in the past ten years and some like Nashville have and continue to add major flags in large high profile downtown towers. Downtown KC is still missing a lot of higher end hotel flags and that's once again a reflection of the lack of corporate presence in downtown KC.

Once the Loews opens, I would hope others will follow, but unless Downtown gets more higher paid corporate type jobs, it's not likely to happen. As bad as Hyatt wants to be back in KC with one of their top flags, they can't seem to make the numbers work, but they are building new hotels in many cities.

rxlexi wrote:Nashville is most certainly booming. A city with leadership that envisions the region as growing into something "more" than it has been traditionally. Looking to compete with much larger SE competitors and doing so reasonably successfully thus far. KC could use some of their moxie, and job growth, though maybe not the bachelorette parties as referenced in another post.

We would kill to have a plan like this for the East Village - http://nashvilleyards.com/

505 Tower in Nashville (~$170M; like One and Two Light stacked on top of each other!) - https://505nashville.com/

Sadly, the more beautiful historic downtown core in Memphis across the state continues to rot away, despite some successes (Autozone Park, Beale Street, some nice residential conversions, etc.).

Ya gotta have mid-high income jobs (primarily) and successfully compete in the cutthroat convention/tourism biz. KC needs more of both downtown, though building toward it.

I follow development in Nashville and that is just one project. I don't think people have a grasp on just how much is happening there. I think they have had 30-40 tower cranes up and a six month waiting list for a crane for some time now. Which is why I was surprised by the region voting down light rail.

There will always be somebody prettier in the country in some aspect...losing battle.

There will always be somebody prettier in the country in some aspect...losing battle.

While true, I disagree with your implication that comparing ourselves to other cities is fruitless.

Not talking about LA, Seattle, Chicago here, but Nashville, Denver, Minny, Indy, Austin. These are midsize, central US peer cities with generally comparable resources and amenities. To varying degrees they have all seen great success over the past 25 years and have done so with rather progressive leadership.

Why not try to learn from successful peers? Conversely, I would think/hope other cities take lessons from outside their region as well. Even from KC, in those areas we are achieving relative success. The free streetcar, built with local TDD, for example.

This is why the US Conference of Mayors exists, etc. Would be nice if the overall populace and corporate culture in places like KC was more aware of the type and scale of development happening in other places as well. The debate about affordable urban housing, or conversation around Cerner's campus mega-subsidy might look different, for example.

We've seen great success too....that's what gets lost when you are constantly looking at other cities trying to find where we fall short.

Definitely beneficial to look at peers for best practices but to sit here and wonder why they have x and we doesn't provide a lot of value...if it did we would be NYC by now given how much we as a city have looked at other metros....what we need is a leader with a vision and set goals.....not "Denver has this, how do we get it too"

rxlexi wrote:Nashville, Denver, Minny, Indy, Austin.

Those are all also state capitals (well, St. Paul, but it's right there) and, excluding Austin, the largest cities in each state. KC might be a bloaty sprawly mess of municipal boundaries and thus technically be able to claim a higher population than St. Louis, but I don't think anyone being honest with themselves really thinks of KC as "bigger" unless they're just having internet penis-waving matches. And none of those cities are on a border with another state keen to poach every business possible so they can say "WE BROUGHT JERBS!" pursuant to getting perpetually reelected. I don't like it and I don't wish it was true, but for those reasons and others I don't think we are ever likely to have the ability to effectively compete with any of those places to lure business or residents. Not that people and businesses won't come here at all, obviously, but I don't think Kansas City can ever really be a hot market in the way we've seen Denver, Austin, Atlanta, et al be without something major to distinguish itself. The amusing thing is that not having anything to distinguish itself, not becoming an "it" city, and not luring in loads of people, money, and development could, eventually, be the distinguishing factor: they all get increasingly congested and expensive, and... we don't.

GRID wrote:

KCPowercat wrote:KC image has grown leaps and bounds in things like hospitality industry.

Yeah, but it's all relative. KC has really built up some decent hotel inventory compared to its old self of pretty much never building new urban hotels, but all cities have added a lot of hotel rooms in the past ten years and some like Nashville have and continue to add major flags in large high profile downtown towers. Downtown KC is still missing a lot of higher end hotel flags and that's once again a reflection of the lack of corporate presence in downtown KC.

Once the Loews opens, I would hope others will follow, but unless Downtown gets more higher paid corporate type jobs, it's not likely to happen. As bad as Hyatt wants to be back in KC with one of their top flags, they can't seem to make the numbers work, but they are building new hotels in many cities.

IIRC, Hyatt mainly prefers just being the operator and not owner. The missing piece could be a developer willing to build big. Cordish or the Deleware Street dude could be the ones to fill that missing gap.

That's basically every chain.

KCPowercat wrote:That's basically every chain.

They don't have the best reputation downtown either, for obvious reasons.

They don't want to invest equity, so whatever. I don't think we're hurtingn for good hotels now. A few years ago, sure.