Kansas, Missouri battle over companies

[KCPowercat]

'solve the issue'?  You are saying it's solely due to location of employees and customers....ill do my best to move them...is that solving the problem?

[aknowledgeableperson]

  Remember - you were the one who has argued its important that these companies be close to their suburban employment base. 

My argument has been that with 435 you do not have to be in the center (downtown) of the city in order to serve your (scattered) clients and employees. 

[aknowledgeableperson]

'solve the issue'?  You are saying it's solely due to location of employees and customers....ill do my best to move them...is that solving the problem?

I know we cannot solve the issue with this forum, to attack this company for moving from downtown to opks may make you feel better but doesn't really get to the root of why did they make this particular move.

In this instance, at least with the info in the article, a company is moving from one city/state to another city/state without any economic incentives.  The company could have as easy moved from one office building downtown to another downtown or to the Plaza or north of the river and stayed within KCMO.  Why wasn't that the choice?  And that is what the city's economic team should find out.  You and others promote the P&L District, the Sprint Center, the coming PAC, the Crossroads, new residences, etc.  but still this company has basically said all that doesn't matter.

Maybe it is because the new office location is a 10 minute drive from the big boss home.  Maybe even though the client base is scattered many or most of them are in opks.  Maybe a big majority of the employees live a short drive away from the new office.  Maybe it is the E-tax.  Maybe they just got one-hell-of-a-rent deal.  The point is the company just got up and left the city and someone should find out why.

[KCPowercat]

My argument has been that with 435 you do not have to be in the center (downtown) of the city in order to serve your (scattered) clients and employees.  

Mind you this is w/o traffic (the 435 southern leg is the worst (?) for congestion in this city).  top 10 population zip codes in the MSA according to the 2000 Census to the areas in question.
Zip - Time to 12th & Main - Time to Corporate Woods
64015  - 17min - 28 min
64055  - 18min - 27 min
64068 -  24min - 41 min
64118 - 13min - 31 min
64133 - 15min - 23min
66044 - 36min - 41min
66048 - 40min - 46min
66061 - 33min - 22min
66062 - 28min - 17min
66212 - 18min - 6 min

Average - 24.2 - 28.2

[KCPowercat]

I know we cannot solve the issue with this forum, to attack this company for moving from downtown to opks may make you feel better but doesn't really get to the root of why did they make this particular move.

In this instance, at least with the info in the article, a company is moving from one city/state to another city/state without any economic incentives.  The company could have as easy moved from one office building downtown to another downtown or to the Plaza or north of the river and stayed within KCMO.  Why wasn't that the choice?  And that is what the city's economic team should find out.  You and others promote the P&L District, the Sprint Center, the coming PAC, the Crossroads, new residences, etc.  but still this company has basically said all that doesn't matter.

Maybe it is because the new office location is a 10 minute drive from the big boss home.  Maybe even though the client base is scattered many or most of them are in opks.  Maybe a big majority of the employees live a short drive away from the new office.  Maybe it is the E-tax.  Maybe they just got one-hell-of-a-rent deal.  The point is the company just got up and left the city and someone should find out why.

Agreed...for them to point to the e-tax is idiotic since the total tax employees will pay for their KS income is higher than it was with the e-tax in KCMO.  Any company that moves to where their current set of employees or even clients live is shortsighted if you ask me. 

[kcmetro]

Any company that moves to where their current set of employees or even clients live is shortsighted if you ask me. 

It isn't shortsighted if they plan on keeping those employees or clients for the foreseeable future.  Perhaps they also believe they can retain or hire on employees if they relocate to an area where potential employees live.

[KCPowercat]

potential employees and clients live all over this metro....focusing in on just what you have is a great recipe for a declining base.

[KCMax]

Harvard Business Review: Back to the City

These companies are getting a jump on a major cultural and demographic shift away from suburban sprawl. The change is imminent, and businesses that don't understand and plan for it may suffer in the long run.

To put it simply, the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don't require cars - that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together.

"In the 1950s, suburbs were the future," says University of Michigan architecture and urban-planning professor Robert Fishman, commenting on the striking cultural shift. "The city was then seen as a dingy environment. But today it's these urban neighborhoods that are exciting and diverse and exploding with growth."

In the last U.S. census, almost two-thirds (64%) of college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds said they looked for a job after they chose the city where they wanted to live. That suggests that businesses like Quicken Loans are on to something: Move in and help build up urban neighborhoods, the argument goes, because that's what will draw the talent.

I do remember spending one summer off from college working in a soulless industrial park in Lenexa, vowing never to take a job in an office/industrial park in the burbs ever again.

OTOH, I rather doubt that obesity rates or the mental effects of car culture have much of an impact on where companies are located.

[aknowledgeableperson]

I do remember reading a few months ago that even though there was job growth in the city jobs 10 miles from the city center were growing at a faster pace.

[chrizow]

I do remember reading a few months ago that even though there was job growth in the city jobs 10 miles from the city center were growing at a faster pace.

i read a few months ago that the article you read a few months ago was incorrect.

[ComandanteCero]

I'm pretty sure i read a  disclaimer to the correction to the error that you read a few months ago.

[mean]

As I recall, the disclaimer was only pointing out that the source of the error was incorrectly cited in the correction article. It wasn't meant to suggest that the originally referenced article was, in fact, correct.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Of course one could disprove the Fed.

http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neppc/m ... 102006.pdf

And then:

http://www.spur.org/publications/librar ... megaregion

Trend #1: There has been significant increase in job growth outside traditional downtowns
Since the 1990s, the share of jobs located within three miles of central business districts has steadily declined. Based on an analysis of the decentralization of work from the four central business districts or primary downtowns of Northern California (San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Stockton) during the eight-year period between 1998 and 2006, these CBDs experienced a net loss of more than 22,000 jobs, while jobs located 10 to 35 miles from these CBDs increased by more than 225,000.

Nationally, job growth out from the center has become a significant trend. Of metropolitan areas with more than 900,000 jobs within 35 miles of the central business district, all have experienced a decline in the share of jobs within three miles of the CBD and an increase in jobs 10 to 35 miles from the CBD.

Also, the rates at which jobs move outward in certain industries in the United States are increasing. Nationally, some of the most rapidly decentralizing industries are the same industries that are most important to the Northern California economy, and particularly to its traditional central business districts. Industries such as management, information services and education are experiencing the greatest share of relocation to areas 10 to 35 miles from CBDs. While it may not be surprising that manufacturing, transportation and warehousing are moving out into the suburbs and beyond, the trend of less cost-sensitive industries (for instance, knowledge services such as management of companies and finance) moving out poses yet another challenge for traditional downtowns, given that these are industries where the CBD is also most competitive. For example, nationally, 46 percent of jobs in "management of companies" and 42 percent of jobs in professional, scientific and technical services are located 10 miles or more from a traditional CBD.3

And something else:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_spra ... l_Mismatch

Job sprawl has been documented and measured in various ways. It has been shown to be a growing trend in America's metropolitan areas. The Brookings Institution has published multiple articles on the topic. In 2005, author Michael Stoll defined job sprawl simply as jobs located more than 5-mile radius from the CBD, and measured the concept based on year 2000 U.S. Census data. [10] Other ways of measuring the concept with more detailed rings around the CBD include a 2001 article by Edward Glaeser [11] and Elizabeth Kneebone's 2009 article, which show that sprawling urban peripheries are gaining employment while areas closer to the CBD are losing jobs. [12] These two authors used three geographic rings limited to a 35-mile radius around the CBD: 3 miles or less, 3 to 10 miles, and 10 to 35 miles. Kneebone's study showed the following nationwide breakdown for the largest metropolitan areas in 2006: 21.3% of jobs located in the inner ring, 33.6% of jobs in the 3-10 mile ring, and 45.1% in the 10-35 mile ring. This compares to the year 1998 - 23.3%, 34.2%, and 42.5% in those respective rings. The study shows CBD employment share shrinking, and job growth focused in the suburban and exurban outer metropolitan rings.

[aknowledgeableperson]

And just for fun:

http://americancity.org/magazine/articl ... ia-kotkin/

Suburbs may have started as places for living, but their ascendancy has come in large part by becoming places of work. By 2000, roughly three out of ?ve jobs in American metropolitan areas were located in suburbs. More than twice as many people in the United States commuted from suburb to suburb, where the job growth was concentrated, than from suburb to city.

Studies have shown this preference for suburbs extends to a wide range of ?rms. Only 11 percent of the nation’s largest companies were headquartered in the suburbs in 1969; a quarter-century later, roughly half had migrated to the periphery. The pattern of 1990s suburban job growth appears to have expanded further since the beginning of the new millennium. By 2000, in the 100 largest metropolitan areas, only 22 percent of people worked within three miles of the city center; another study focusing on areas with high levels of sprawl (such as Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit) showed that more than 60 percent of all regional employment now occurs more than ten miles from the core.

Perhaps most importantly, suburbs have gradually become the preferred location for the burgeoning science and information-based industries, the biggest growth sectors of the modern economy. Since World War II, high-tech ?rms have migrated to the suburbs for many reasons, including space for large, campus-like office parks, less crime, lower taxes, and most critically, the access to educated workers. Areas like the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California, northeastern New Jersey, and the suburban ring around Boston, have provided ideal locations for aerospace, computer, and information industries

Although the downtown residential “boom” in some areas is heartening, it is important to keep it in perspective: the overwhelming demographic evidence suggests it pales in comparison to growth on the fringes. In a Brookings Institution study of 45 metropolitan areas spread across the country, University of Pennsylvania professor Eugenie Birch calculated that total growth in housing units between 1970 and 2000 was about nine percent, or approximately 35,000 units; in contrast, construction of suburban housing units almost doubled to 13 million units during the same period. In the late-1990s, a period in which some core cities enjoyed their ?rst population gains in decades, many more people headed out to the suburbs than went the other way. This pattern held even among the 25-to-34 age group, considered the prime market for urban living.

And for many urban centers - including such relatively attractive places as Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Boston - population actually declined in the ?rst half of this decade. Out-migration has accelerated in other cities, and in some, growth has slowed considerably from pre-2000 levels. Indeed, according to a 2001 report from the Brookings Institution and the Fannie Mae Foundation, the total projected growth for all major downtowns through 2010 is less than was the growth in the sprawling Riverside-San Bernardino metro area east of Los Angeles in 2004 alone.

Nearly every major region of the U.S. in this sense is undergoing suburbanization, even if the downtown is growing. In Houston, for example, there has been much talk about a downtown housing surge. But the entire inner ring of the city - which extends well beyond the central core - accounted for barely six percent of new units; the vast majority of the growth took place in the region’s far-?ung suburban areas.

Suburbanization - and even ever greater sprawl - must be accepted as the future. Attempts to stomp out or control outward movement, as Portland tried, have not only failed but have driven settlement even further out beyond the areas of control. By way of proof, during the 1990s over 80 percent of all population growth in greater Portland took place in the suburbs; since 2000 it has been closer to 90 percent. Mass transit, the other linchpin of the Portland “Smart Growth” legend, may also be less of a triumph than reported. Between 1986 and 2001, according to the most recent Texas Transportation Institute study, greater Portland has seen the biggest jump in congestion of any of the nation’s 75 largest metro areas. More people rode the rails, but many more, it appears, have also decided to drive alone, perhaps in large part because they are living and often working further out.

The real issue is not so much how to prevent suburban growth, but how to make it more humane and capable of accommodating an increasingly diverse population. One key solution might lie in the growth of telecommuting, which could allow more suburbanites to work close to or at home. Already 20 million people work part-time or full-time from their residences. Some new suburban developments, such as Ladera Ranch in southern Orange County, have adapted their ?oor plans to serve the mixed uses of residence and business - by incorporating separate entrances for business clients, for instance. Suburban historian Tom Martinson believes the Ladera plan will “be in the history books in twenty years” because it anticipates “an incredible change in the way we live and work.”

At the same time, the increasing decentralization of economic activity may spur the development of ever more self-sufficient “suburban villages.” We can see this model emerging in new communities such as Valencia, California, or the Woodlands, outside Houston, which have developed their own successful town centers complete with thriving cultural and religious establishments. Scores of older suburbs have also used new commercial and cultural amenities to revitalize old town centers, such as Naperville, Illinois; Fullerton, California; and Bethesda, Maryland. Viewed from a long-term perspective, these places may represent not so much a rejection of city life, but a rede?nition of what urban life is about - and where and how it takes place.

[KCPowercat]

lot of copying and pasting for what everybody knows...

pretty fair to compare a 3 mile radius vs. All the sprawl that surrounds it.

[LenexatoKCMO]

Don't look now, there is a rash of Kansas companies being "stolen" away by KCMO:

http://economy.kansascity.com/?q=node/7718

Missouri Partnership said this is the seventh business it and regional economic development groups have convinced to relocate to Missouri since April. Jet Midwest, an aircraft maintenance firm, moved to Kansas City from Kansas City, Kan., earlier this year.


  How unfair!!!  &&&

[GRID]

Didn't the last company that said they were moving to OP say they were moving like 800 jobs?  It's going to take a lot of these types of moves just to cancel out that single move.  

I'm sure tens of thousands of jobs have moved from KCMO to KS and they continue to do so in alarming numbers.

But I would put a stop to this KCMO luring companies over from Kansas real fast!

&&&

[KCPowercat]

Personally I don't like it either direction.....that jet Midwest thing just made sense for them as a business don't you think?

[NDTeve]

Must not have known about the E-Tax. 

[FangKC]

Even with the E-tax in Kansas City, taxes are lower in most situations in Missouri than Kansas.