Bannister Mall/Cerner

[earthling]

This is a great concept, but....I wish they would move the parking to the east and move the buildings to the west, to make it look better from the freeway (how sad is it that I care what it looks like from the freeway?)

Would be nice but since the mall infrastructure is in center, makes sense to go there.

[earthling]

Was disappointing at first glance that they are surrounding with surface lots rather than garages but they can do future development with even more retail, housing in the future along with garages in those surface lots.

They're not going to do that.

Obviously not initially but the design doesn't prevent doing it if later making sense of to. Not many places to eat/shop in the area.

[aknowledgeableperson]

It is called "Cerner Corporate Campus". Is this to be a relocation of corporate from NKC to here?

[pash]

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[aknowledgeableperson]

So you're pointing out that it would be physically possible to tear up the planned parking lots once they're built and replace them with new, unplanned buildings that Cerner doesn't need or want? Yes, I guess you're right. ...

I am not quite sold on this design but I see how it works. Big parking lots. Yes, but compared to the cost of building garages it will work for now. Saves money and involves much less material. At some point in the future additional buildings and garages built may or may not happen. That will be for the next generation to decide. Or, who knows, a change in planning and design could happen 5 years from now.

[pash]

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[aknowledgeableperson]

just pointed out your point out which was a point out.

[pash]

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[earthling]

Cerner's leasing the small space at Grand and Pershing where UMB used to be. Renovations ongoing.

Any source on that? Baby steps if the case. Maybe if they fill up KCK site ahead of schedule and not have Bannister site ready, they'll temp lease downtown (the Loop is cheap) and the seemingly hundreds of Cerner employees living downtown/midtown could push for Cerner to keep a decent presence downtown.

I could see depts that work closely with Deloitte/PwC locate downtown, maybe Legal dept too if using any downtown law firms. Downtown Class A rent is going for about same as JoCo and NKC Class B. Maybe the City could attempt a contingency that in order to get the (massive) Bannister TIF, Cerner needs to commit to some downtown space or even build something there too. Given how massive the TIF request is, Cerner may comply. Once Cerner gets used to a downtown presence, they may see that it makes sense to have some depts there long term.

[chaglang]

Cerner's leasing the small space at Grand and Pershing where UMB used to be. Renovations ongoing.

Any source on that?

Construction workers on site.

[FangKC]

I don't think we need to focus so much on the initial design of the Cerner Three Trails campus. That might just be their starting out point, and that might be include surface parking lots.

As they grow, they might plan on adding new buildings to that campus, and building parking garages as they add those new buildings.

[Downtowner]

Cerner now adding another campus that no one wants to live nearby. What young tech guy would want to live near Legends or Bannister site? I remember talking to college grad who moved to KC and lived up north. He hated living in north KC and later moved downtown. This is such a missed opportunity for downtown as well. Too bad they couldn't build towers on the east side of downtown.
I'll give them credit for Sporting Innovations but it's a drop in the bucket next to the Bannister plan. They ditched that site for soccer since it was no-man's land in terms of amenities. But they're willing to exile thousands of workers out there.

I just read where Amazon went to the Seattle city council with an amazing plan for downtown towers and campus. They asked for no incentives. They're just going to transform part of downtown. We don't and won't see that from Cerner, Sprint or Garmin. Instead we'll continue to throw our assets to all four corners of the metro. If you just get on 435 you can hit it all--the TSC, Cerner's cheap ass campus, Sprint's prison campus, The Legends/More odd Cerner office location...It's all a tribute to surface parking lots.

[earthling]

You're not going to see an argument from a mostly pro downtown/urban core site. Has been discussed already last few pages. Better to write the Cerner CEO and ask him why. Would be interesting if the Star/Biz Journal could interview him and touch on that. Might be different if KC had better transit but he doesn't sound like a pro urban guy.

Nearly every major metro has a tech corridor in the burbs, even strong urban cities like Boston, Chicago and SF. Most large businesses want large floor plates and the perception of cheap parking. Only a few with over 10K employees go urban now. From S KC perspective, is good news for them. It's not just Cerner but potentially also Oxford Blue project and Stower's expansion - of course pro urban people want all of it in the city.

From City of KCMO perspective, better there than elsewhere in metro or outside metro. JoCo has a tech corridor and it doesn't hurt for KCMO to have one to compete with it, though near airport may make more sense than Bannister. From Cerner perspective, Bannister site is ready to go. All the infrastructure (power, sewer, water, etc) is already there ready to build on. The old Hypercenter spot has enough power for a massive data center. They need to build before KCK fills up, which at current rate is just a couple years. Downtown site probably couldn't be procured and ready to build on by early next year. There is much more to site selection that has higher priority than what pro-urbanists like us want - and Cerner already has a large presence in Bannister area anyway.

[shinatoo]

To me it looks like KC is redefining what an urban, suburban relationship is. The core is becoming increasingly the live/play part of the city with business and industry in the "suburbs". Doesn't that really make more sense for our city. Fanning out for the commute rather than everyone trying to get to the same location (evening is less of an issue), building small floor plate, high density, walk-able communities that will, hopefully, someday, be family friendly. Putting large floor plate, sprawling, congregations of industry an business out and away with their inherent, heat, noise, and pollution. And then on the weekend they can set unused an quite.

Major hurdle to overcome is still the car. How do we get transit to these locations from the center and then how to you get to/from transit hubs to places of work? I imagine huge parking lots out at transit hubs where your car, or second car, will be parked. Dramatically reducing the need for parking downtown, where we would all live. In the morning you hop on the train out to Grandview, Liberty or South Overland Park, hop in your car (or bike) and drive 5 minutes to work, and reverse it in the evening. Prime real-estate will be walk-able from the transit stop.

Just a thought.

[shinatoo]

DP

[KCMax]

Cerner now adding another campus that no one wants to live nearby. What young tech guy would want to live near Legends or Bannister site? I remember talking to college grad who moved to KC and lived up north. He hated living in north KC and later moved downtown. This is such a missed opportunity for downtown as well. Too bad they couldn't build towers on the east side of downtown.
I'll give them credit for Sporting Innovations but it's a drop in the bucket next to the Bannister plan. They ditched that site for soccer since it was no-man's land in terms of amenities. But they're willing to exile thousands of workers out there.

I just read where Amazon went to the Seattle city council with an amazing plan for downtown towers and campus. They asked for no incentives. They're just going to transform part of downtown. We don't and won't see that from Cerner, Sprint or Garmin. Instead we'll continue to throw our assets to all four corners of the metro. If you just get on 435 you can hit it all--the TSC, Cerner's cheap ass campus, Sprint's prison campus, The Legends/More odd Cerner office location...It's all a tribute to surface parking lots.

I'm not quite as negative on this as you are, but....

Kudos.

[geeman68]

I have several friends that work at the new Cerner location in the West and though it is a great building, they feel like trapped mice out there. Sure, they can run to the Legends to shop or grab some overpriced food or even to the Casino if they want but they all say the same thing. We're stuck in the middle of nowhere... ... ... ...

[FangKC]

There are some practical issues here that we must acknowledge.

As much as I would like 10,000+ new workers downtown (and I would love it), we don't have the mass transit infrastructure in place right now to deal with creating such a large tech campus downtown with that much sq. footage.

If we built a couple of new towers in the East Village to house Cerner, what about parking? Right now, most of the employees would probably drive to work and need to park. Even if you got 30 percent of them to use the bus, we would still have about 7,000 additional cars to park nearby. Where would they go? It would require huge surface lots, and at best, a number of large parking garages in the neighborhood.

I would be concerned that initially such a large number of cars would require--at best--large garages, which would probably create several dead blocks.

We have already discussed worries about the federal new General Services Administration (GSA) building potentially taking up two whole city blocks, and the effect that would have. Now imagine adding a couple of large office towers downtown in the East Village, and needing to provide parking for 1000 more federal employees, plus potentially 10,000+ Cerner employees.

Cerner's timeline here is fairly short to create these new office buildings.

Now, if we had the streetcar already up and running to the Plaza, and down Independence Avenue, and commuter rail in place to Union Station, then it might be more feasible. If we had the luxury of time to plan, we might also transform the Paseo West district (from Paseo west to I-35, and I-70 north to Independence Avenue) into Cerner's tech campus. However, even doing that would require years to set up a City redevelopment authority to assemble parcels, fight court battles with current property owners in eminent domain situations, and rebuild the infrastructure in the neighborhood, as well as plan for enough parking for those who don't take mass transit, excavate parcels for underground parking, etc.

This is also assuming that we could re-educate a sizeable number of Cerner employees to take mass transit to work to avoid needing so many parking garages.

Ok, let's say a large number of Cerner workers would move downtown at the time the Cerner campus opened. Even 10 percent would require 1,000 new housing units fairly quickly. Apartment occupancy rates downtown hover over 95 percent already. We don't have than many new apartment units in the pipeline that will be built fast enough to accommodate 1000 Cerner workers living downtown. Yes, the market would probably provide them at some point, but it takes years to get them built. So for the first few years of a Cerner campus downtown, there would be parking issues.

At best, we might get Cerner to place some employees downtown, and take over a relatively adaptable building like the former Federal Reserve Bank, which already has some parking available in an existing garage.

I would love to add 10,000 new workers downtown, but we have to get the mass transit infrastructure in place first.

[Downtowner]

The only saving grace for downtown in this whole equation is having hwy 71/49 as a direct link to getting to the Bannister site. The planned apt tower and other housing projects should be marketing themselves to Cerner ---"Direct access to the Cerner campus".

Thanks Geeman for backing up what is the suspected perception about working at the Legends.

Fang, those are all good points. But Seattle has one monorail route that goes from the airport to downtown. They do have a ton more downtown housing than we do to support workers. The advantage KC has is access to downtown from highways in every direction. We are highway-accessed to death. Every major city seems to manage a workforce much higher than we have. I'm sure the infrastructure would follow (along with underground parking).

[FangKC]

I agree that KC could handle that many workers at some point, but I see it happening only in the future. My main point is we can't handle it now because it would require time to get mass transit options up, and the parking garages built. Cerner needs the office space right away. It takes years to get this done downtown, whereas, at Three Trails, it won't. It's all about timing and logistics.

Seattle is much further along in development than Kansas City. Kansas City has traditionally been about 10 years behind other cities in most urban development trends and measures.

There is also a different culture in Seattle than has tended to favor urbanism. I recall going to Seattle in 1990 and it's downtown was much further along then than Kansas City's is now. You could tell just by the number of people on the streets, and the number of retail businesses downtown at that time.