KCRag Forum

There becomes a very real risk that the continued overloaded sales taxes will start to stifle the city economy. We have to find a new way to fund initiatives without carry on with the "Just add a sales tax!". Downtown KCMO has something like a 13% sales tax now. And that applies to "...

*The Bloch brothers are both dead. Richard died a long time ago, the trustees of his wife Annette (also deceased) are selling the fancy apartment on the Plaza. They mostly lived in the Palm Springs area, and I assume their heirs will continue there. Henry's wife pre-deceased him. He continued to liv...

^I am slightly disappointed, although I do think I'll have access through one of my credit cards. I had hoped AA would open an Admirals Club, as the location appeared to be almost designed for them (and was an additional build-out, not in the first blueprints). I believe this indicates that British ...

^^So she lives in Mission Woods. Not much different. My remaining comments are the same.

Mission Woods is probably the most exclusive "town" in the metro btw. And nobody knows it's there, tucked into the Mission Hills Country Club. LOLOL

Their founder lives in Mission Hills, and graduated from Harvard. She's not exactly opaque about her goals. This is hilarious. Mission Hills is slowly becoming limousine liberal land, although Trump did carry it by 5 votes. But if so much as a single brown face crosses State Line Road in a jalopy, ...

Another variable -- the aggressiveness of the local property tax authority. JoCo used to be fairly lax -- but since about 2000, they have been agressive with the appraisals/ valuations of properties. My family home in the area was for years appraised around 300k when it was easily worth twice that, ...

10th street east of Main used to be the "financial district" of KC -- UMB, Commerce Bank, Kansas City Title & Trust. Sad how it is now almost all empty.

Re: states with zero income tax I grew up in KC and paid both MO and KS (and other states) income taxes for years. Part of the complaint is the actual $$$ going out, and I really do believe that I pay less in Florida in total tax outlay than I did anywhere else I ever lived. But another part of the ...

The renewal shifting east is not because of the highway, other than a lot of people like the freeway access that the nicer areas to the west do not have. The highway was built 30 years ago. Troost has been the division since WWII, and it is not a freeway. It is an organic thing caused because of lo...

^ interesting considerations KC has for 80+ years featured those "beautiful single-family neighborhoods" -- I believe we are discussing Brookside and "Country Club"/ Sunset Hill. For the first 40 years of existence, those same 'hoods had an excellent high school (KC Southwest). N...

^TL;DR Winning WW2 and not being Soviet or an Empire (UK) has paid dividends for 80 years and running.

[The] Great Depression cleaned out a lot of the government building bureaucracy and also provided super cheap labor. Politicians were just doing anything to shorten the soup kitchen line and keep crime down. Had to be a crazy time. Not sure what we’d do now in the same circumstances. I guess just s...

Westwood is a wealthy and purple-going-blue area of JoCo -- lots of DINKs. Is it any surprise that they want their infrastructure to reflect their preferences? I think NE JoCo will become the Brookside of the next generation. No slight on Brookside, but the city isn't playing ball on keeping up the ...

^ If by "stops being able to function" you mean massive multi-unit housing production, then the answer is yes, but generally not in socially homogenous countries. The UK famously has this problem. Australia has this problem. Some is rightwing NIMBY-ism, some is leftwing anti-gentrification...

Actually it is in Kansas and suburban interests to have a healthy KCMO. And the employment areas of KCMO are in good shape compared to peer cities -- the serious crime problems are infrequent downtown or in the immediate Plaza area. Unfortunately KC appears to have largely missed the last 20 years o...

More award seats for AA elites on MCI-PHL! Get it while it's hot kids...

I overheard someone in the new terminal complain about the distances and pointed out that Phoenix has golfcart-like vehicles to move disabled or elderly people around, which would probably be welcomed here. At the same time, I don’t think the amount of walking at the new kc terminal is that unusual...

Southwest -> Montego Bay is being discontinued after 8/3 Wonder if Jamaica travel is hurting right now. There is a safety advisory for travel to Jamaica. I don't really hear people talk about traveling to Jamaica as much, the DR has kind of taking over for Caribbean all inclusive and Cancun is basi...

This was a Katz drugstore, opened in the 1950s. Converted to Skaggs circa 1970. There is another midcentury Katz at 75th & Metcalf, still operational as CVS. The Roeland Park location was on two levels, and if you needed a quick visit, you could park in nose-in spots along Roe. The lower level h...

Fences up at the old Salvation Army building on Linwood set to be torn down. Oh no! I hadn't heard about a plan to demolish. That is a nice structure. Seems like a logical conversion to apartments or maybe a boutique hotel. Nice large windows. A first level that comes to the sidewalk and looks like...