KCRag Forum

Here's one cycle I've noticed that needs to be fixed: young people in KC who live in urban core like it, but then as soon as they settle down and start having kids they run faster than Usain Bolt to the Kansas suburbs.

normalthings wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 4:21 pm

FangKC wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:30 pm I never understood the Populous move from the River Market after getting that building constructed for them.

I feel like these 2 reasons given hold true for me.

Plaza was the best place to bring in visitors from across the globe. Many of their clients were staying at the Plaza.

Plaza is more vibrant than RM.

Populous also talked about setting their own identity. The RM building was designed for HOK. The new Plaza building was tailored to the needs and tastes of Polulous.

If I was Populous, I would want my clients staying at the Plaza. (In the time period this decision was made). This is a benefit that having a 5 star hotel could bring to downtown KC. An improved ability to entertain and host clients from across the globe

More than once, people out here have mentioned going to "downtown" KC and when they describe Downtown KC, it's the Plaza to a T.

Odd thing is, you have to go through downtown to get to the plaza coming from the airport and it's pretty far from the tall buildings of the actual downtown, but I always found that interesting.

Maybe it's just that the plaza was the most memorable part of urban KC people remember. That has probably changed though. The last few times I have bene in KC, the Plaza feels nowhere near as vibrant as it used to while areas around downtown are much more active (relative to old downtown KC anyway).

To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas and it's over 100 years old. We need new and modern, and more of them. That's what JoCo has.

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:36 pm To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas. We need more.

Well that's not going to happen overnight and even if it does, most of those types of people are not going to live in the city anyway.

However for those that do want to live in the city, yo do have Coleman Highlands which is a nice older area and the Beacon Hill area is really developing into quite a nice area for luxury single family housing even though it's small right now. I think Beacon Hill will be a showcase urban neighborhood in another 20 years.

GRID wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:39 pm

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:36 pm To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas. We need more.

Well that's not going to happen overnight and even if it does, most of those types of people are not going to live in the city anyway.

However for those that do want to live in the city, yo do have Coleman Highlands which is a nice older area and the Beacon Hill area is really developing into quite a nice area for luxury single family housing even though it's small right now. I think Beacon Hill will be a showcase urban neighborhood in another 20 years.

For the record I have no problem with having vibrant suburbs. JoCo being very successful isn't all a bad thing. I think the sweet spot is to be like Dallas where the urban core & suburbs are both growing. I think some people view it as a zero-sum game where if JoCo is winning then KC must be losing. I think the goal really should be for both to boom.

And for suburban living I would live in Briarcliff West any day over southern JoCo even if they were the same distance. But I'm not everybody I guess.

I don't get it. There are plenty of really nice areas up around Parkville and Briarcliff that are very close to downtown and the airport. You don't have 50 sq miles of it like you do in southern JoCo, but you have plenty and the topography is way better.

The people choosing to live way out in southern JOCO are NEVER going to move to the city no matter what neighborhoods are there.

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:42 pm

GRID wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:39 pm

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:36 pm To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas. We need more.

Well that's not going to happen overnight and even if it does, most of those types of people are not going to live in the city anyway.

However for those that do want to live in the city, yo do have Coleman Highlands which is a nice older area and the Beacon Hill area is really developing into quite a nice area for luxury single family housing even though it's small right now. I think Beacon Hill will be a showcase urban neighborhood in another 20 years.

For the record I have no problem with having vibrant suburbs. JoCo being very successful isn't all a bad thing. I think the sweet spot is to be like Dallas where the urban core & suburbs are both growing. I think some people view it as a zero-sum game where if JoCo is winning then KC must be losing. I think the goal really should be for both to boom.

JoCo needs to figure out how to boom without doing it at the expense of KCMO. That's how JoCo has grown and it's how it continues to grow. Kansas has zero ability to draw people or companies to the state. JoCo has been able to "grow" by taking from KCMO and KCK to a lesser extent. The county has very few success stories of growing any other way.

Actually, KCMO has been pretty good at bringing in new companies to the area and then once they are established in the area and their lease is up, KS goes after them.

The fact is, it's extremely difficult to get companies to relocate to Kansas. It's just not a desirable state. KS will give away more incentives than just about any other state in the country and the only takers are companies a few miles away in KCMO. Now that they have taken nearly everything they can and there is somewhat of a border war truce, they are not growing as fast job wise. But JoCo is now large enough to grow on its own momentum at a decent clip. JoCo is all Kansas has, so they bite the hand that feeds it.

You are right though. Strong suburbs can co-exist with a strong city. That just has not been the case for KC. The KS suburbs have always cannibalized the core city at a much higher rate than just about any other city except maybe Detroit.

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:31 pm Here's one cycle I've noticed that needs to be fixed: young people in KC who live in urban core like it, but then as soon as they settle down and start having kids they run faster than Usain Bolt to the Kansas suburbs.

its the schools. complicated issue that involved more than just funding

The Northland has good schools. It's one of the reasons I pitched creating a couple of new high-end subdivisions on still undeveloped land 15 minutes from downtown. I don't know. People who live in Mission Hills-type neighborhoods probably send their kids to private school anyway.

FangKC wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:21 pm The Northland has good schools. It's one of the reasons I pitched creating a couple of new high-end subdivisions on still undeveloped land 15 minutes from downtown. I don't know. People who live in Mission Hills-type neighborhoods probably send their kids to private school anyway.

You have a good point. It can't be just the private schools carrying all the weight.

One would hope they wouldn't have to send their kids to private schools.

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:36 pm To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas and it's over 100 years old. We need new and modern, and more of them. That's what JoCo has.

There's far more gated communities North of the river than you could even imagine. You need to tour the suburbs more.

im2kull wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:40 am

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:36 pm To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas and it's over 100 years old. We need new and modern, and more of them. That's what JoCo has.

There's far more gated communities North of the river than you could even imagine. You need to tour the suburbs more.

Apparently that ain’t working or enough. I thought about Parkville though.

im2kull wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:40 am

AlkaliAxel wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:36 pm To the point said earlier...KCMO doesn't have anywhere near the type of luxury neighborhoods or amenities that JoCo offers. They're not even comparable. Mission Hills is the closest one and even that's technically in Kansas and it's over 100 years old. We need new and modern, and more of them. That's what JoCo has.

There's far more gated communities North of the river than you could even imagine. You need to tour the suburbs more.

That's what I'm thinking. I don't even live there anymore and I feel like I know more about the Northland than half the people on the forum. It seems like unless you live in the Northland, you have no idea what's up there. There is plenty of high end housing up north, especially in Platte County.

The main reason there is much more down south is they followed the office parks jobs. So if your office is at College or 119th etc, then living south is easy. Most of metro KC's private sector office employment is in southern JoCo. That's why the high end housing is out there, not the other way around.

The Northland didn't really start developing till the last 20 years, but it's catching up pretty quickly.

There is plenty of upscale housing close to downtown just north of the river with good schools etc and I think many of those that actually do work downtown do live up north. Problem is downtown is just not the employment center it once was. Take away the public sector jobs and law firms and there are hardly any jobs left downtown.

Not to defend JoCo but the retail is much higher end with an ecosystem that caters to many $Billions of income already existing in S JoCo. It's a culture of consumerism less likely or less often interested in the real culture offered downtown.

earthling wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:18 pm Not to defend JoCo but the retail is much higher end with an ecosystem that caters to many $Billions of income already existing in S JoCo. It's a culture of consumerism less likely or less often interested in the real culture offered downtown.

True, all the more reason to stop using it as an excuse that corporations are not downtown. Those people will live out there regardless. I'm just saying that the main reason they continue to live out there and the area continues to grow is that the jobs are all out there.

Back when corporate woods first went up, there was hardly any high end housing out there. In the 80's there were tower cranes for office buildings in miles of open farmland. The high end housing was in far NE JoCo closer to the downtown and plaza areas.

The housing came after the jobs. Then the state aggressively went after KCMO jobs for the next few decades and the cycle continued. Now this style of living is imbedded in the culture of metro KC. Even after a renovated downtown, this culture has not budged in KC.

The migration of KCMO's economy to southern JoCo has done far more harm to KC than anybody there will ever admit it seems.

As mentioned earlier, the tied is changing with better job growth on MO side now, especially pro biz employment (see 2 posts)...
viewtopic.php?p=625350#p625350

GRID wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:44 pm And for suburban living I would live in Briarcliff West any day over southern JoCo even if they were the same distance. But I'm not everybody I guess.

I don't get it. There are plenty of really nice areas up around Parkville and Briarcliff that are very close to downtown and the airport. You don't have 50 sq miles of it like you do in southern JoCo, but you have plenty and the topography is way better.

The people choosing to live way out in southern JOCO are NEVER going to move to the city no matter what neighborhoods are there.

Odd thread for a Johnson County discussion..... I like Briarcliff West but it's a small development. It has some pretty high quality housing close in and with some local development around it making it desirable but, again, it's small with very little available. Beyond that I wasn't that impressed by KC north. I just looked at a ton of homes all over the metro excluding KCK and the east side and I thought KC north was a bit of a disjointed mess. A series of stand-alone type neighborhoods separated by highways and a lot of vacant land that will take forever to infill. Johnson County has done a lot better job of infill than they have in KC north. To me at least, the problems they have created for KCMO notwithstanding, it's a better suburban environment than KC north. I don't like the area south of 119th in Johnson County but north of that, it is a pretty dense (for burbs) continuously developed area.

The development pattern in the Northland is going to sink Kansas City in 50-75 years when it starts to age and the density levels are not enough to support the infrastructure. I've been harping about this for a long time.

Correcting development patterns city-wide are the key to solving Kansas City's budget problems. Polls seem to back up that people want walkable, connected neighborhoods, but developers are slow to get the message.

Highlander wrote: ↑Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:08 pm

GRID wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:44 pm And for suburban living I would live in Briarcliff West any day over southern JoCo even if they were the same distance. But I'm not everybody I guess.

I don't get it. There are plenty of really nice areas up around Parkville and Briarcliff that are very close to downtown and the airport. You don't have 50 sq miles of it like you do in southern JoCo, but you have plenty and the topography is way better.

The people choosing to live way out in southern JOCO are NEVER going to move to the city no matter what neighborhoods are there.

Odd thread for a Johnson County discussion..... I like Briarcliff West but it's a small development. It has some pretty high quality housing close in and with some local development around it making it desirable but, again, it's small with very little available. Beyond that I wasn't that impressed by KC north. I just looked at a ton of homes all over the metro excluding KCK and the east side and I thought KC north was a bit of a disjointed mess. A series of stand-alone type neighborhoods separated by highways and a lot of vacant land that will take forever to infill. Johnson County has done a lot better job of infill than they have in KC north. To me at least, the problems they have created for KCMO notwithstanding, it's a better suburban environment than KC north. I don't like the area south of 119th in Johnson County but north of that, it is a pretty dense (for burbs) continuously developed area.

I have always tried to figure out why the Northland develops like that. It's very leapfroggy. I think it has to do with two primary things that make it not develop more like you see in JoCo.

The topography and the infrastructure.

The Northland has some challenging topography. It's resembles western JoCo which is developing in a similar manor. Development takes the path of least resistance and in the Northland, that means jumping over lots of land to find easy flat land. Most of JoCo inside of 435 was very flat farmland.

Infrastructure. It took KCMO too long build an arterial road network (and they still have a ways to go), so northland development is more based on highway access than an actual surface street road system. Again, this was easy for JoCo with existing straight farm roads every mile. All they had to do was improve the rural roads to suburban roads. The Northland's rural road system was nowhere near as organized or simple or easy to upgrade.

I still don't think it's that bad considering the topography. You just are not going to have that continuous dense suburban development when you have more challenging topography and an arterial road system that is not a simple grid. The MO side suburbs of KC and the Northland more resemble the outer suburbs of east coast cities. They have similar leapfrogging development, winding roads etc. While JoCo is more like the suburbs you see around Denver, Phoenix and Dallas. KC is sort of interesting that it has both in one metro.