There definitely was this great sense of optimism for Kansas City around the time the library was u/c, all the lofts began to boom, talk of downtown baseball, Xroads got popular, renovations everywhere. After the arena vote I honestly thought that Kansas City could become like an Atlanta in terms of where it was going-- I don't see that happening at all now. It's just kind of like the bubble got slowly deflated as Barnes left and now everything is back to normal. There are a lot of people living here that really hate Kansas City, but know nothing about it. They don't want a vibrant city and just want suburbs with clean streets and sidewalks...short drives to the airport, mall and big box areas. It's really sad because our city is really one of the best and most charming cities in the U.S.GRID wrote: Dude, I work in development and it has come to a grinding halt in the urban core and is barely breathing in the burbs.
Here, I will list the big projects in the metro.
Indep Arena (moving along)
Blue Springs Adams Dairy Landing (couple of big boxes, but tenants are dropping like flies)
Lee's Summit (same deal, RED had to get a loan just to keep these two projects going)
KCK (Speedway Plaza), big boxes, the few that will go up.
JoCo has a lot of projects that are on hold for now or are in extreme slow development mode mostly in Leawood and out near 135th and 69.
There are a couple of big distribution centers about to break ground, one near MCI and one near Olathe.
The Hammons hotel and convention center (if it gets built) will be the biggest project in the metro under construction next year outside the PAC.
Schlitterbaun is still very questionable, it they continue to build it, it will probably be about the same size as OOF.
That's it.
Urban Core?
The PAC.
There has not been even the slightest interest in the urban core of KCMO since funkhouser was elected. I'm not saying it's his fault, but nothing, NOTHING has even been in the pipeline for years (even before the economy crashed) except a couple of plaza developments which probably won't happen either.
And for the record, they shouldn't.
Tearing down buildings to build something new in this city is asinine when we have so much under-utilized land.
Asking for tiffs to tear down occupied, usable structures that give this area what urbanity it has and replacing those with tiff projects in an area of town that should no longer get tax breaks is crazy.
But then again, NOBODY is looking at the empty lots in east downtown, crossroads, midtown etc right now.
Nothing is going on and hasn't been going on for a few years in KC.
We are lucky to still be riding some of the left over wave of the Barnes era (P&L District, etc).
It's too bad we're already at the point where we have to make a comeback after having so much momentum a few years ago. I don't buy the economic downturn excuse as there were no sizable office/residential/housing projects in the pipeline before the crash.