Bannister Mall/Cerner

[dukuboy1]

Usually if a company leaves for Texas is primarily for the sweet tax setup they have, no state tax. Obviously there are other elements & the general “boom town” that Dallas, & Austin have going on. Those places have been growing like crazy the last 20-25 yrs. Lots of Fortune 500 & big corporate HQ’s. Lots of talent, especially those who resettled there for work and stayed. Any time a home grown mega employer is bought by an outside group it is not good news for KC. There may be some positive things that come from it, and I hope in this case there will be. Yes we need to invest in start ups & small businesses to grow them to as large as a success as they can. There are stories of companies leaving but also stories of companies relocating to KC. We have some good things going & cost of living here helps, along with sad one of the unique cultural offerings KC has that other places in the immediate area do not. I believe the business leaders in the area have a plan to continue to grow success & sustain that growth & cultivation. M&A is an unfortunate fact of life these days.

[FangKC]

KC needs to read the writing on the wall and start focusing on growing our own small businesses and startups here instead of worrying about giant dying dinosaurs like Cerner, Sprint, Railroads, etc....I mean come on, railroads? That's not our future.
...
TLDR- stop clinging to the past companies and industry and focus on winning the future with real homegrown tech and startups, most of which have civic pride more than these dying behemoths

Just a few points. Kansas City is the second-largest rail center in North America. That is valuable to our economy and will continue to be much past any of our lifetimes. Why?

First of all, shipping by rail is among the most environmentally-friendly ways to move freight. It uses less fuel per mile per ton, and contributes less pollution per mile per ton than shipping by truck. In many cases, it's much cheaper to ship by rail than truck.

https://www.aar.org/facts-figures

With the pandemic and subsequent supply chain problems and truck driver shortages, rail has become even more useful since trains can be operated by a few people instead of literally dozens of individual drivers shipping the same amount of goods. Rail is also the most efficient method to ship large and heavy items. It is certainly the most efficient and cheapest method to ship large quantities of grain and minerals.

The amount of freight shipped by rail is increasing, not decreasing. Freight rail infrastructure is in better shape physically than highway and bridge infrastructure in the USA, and is not at the mercy of state taxpayers or legislators voting to raise gas taxes or not.

Demand for freight-hauling is expected to increase 30 percent by 2040. Kansas City is a huge trucking center, so there is a great intermodal aspect to our economy where things shipped by rail often end up on trucks and vice versa. Because Kansas City is also centrally-located, we are an obvious place for warehousing and logistics. All of these work together to create a big portion of our economy. I don't see that changing for a long time. So rail is not a dying behemoth industry for Kansas City, and likely won't be for decades.

I think it's interesting that Axel constantly promotes usage of the streetcar--a rail-based transportation, yet is so quick to dismiss freight rail as important to our economy.

Kansas City Southern is the only continuous railroad network that goes north-south from Canada to Mexico and Central America. It's a vital transportation corridor.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe is Berkshire Hathaway's (Warren Buffett) single largest source of revenue from all the companies BH owns. It certainly is now the single most valuable company they own. So rail is still vital to the American economy and will continue to be.

How does all this apply to Cerner?

Kansas City's largest company by revenue is Dairy Farmers of America Inc. at $17.80 billion in 2020. So an agriculture company beats Cerner by a lot. Cerner's revenue is around $5.7 billion annually.

Seaboard is also important to the Kansas City economy and they are heavily agricultural in nature -- earning $7.1 billion in 2020. So Cerner may be a big company here, but two local companies doing old-timey things like producing milk, raising and processing livestock and grain, still produce a great deal for the metro economy.

Associated Wholesale Grocers is the metro's 2nd largest private company earning 10.6 billion in 2020. It's the largest food wholesaler to independently owned supermarkets and grocery stores in the USA. Not tech, but doing something traditional supplying food to people.

Cerner is not that old. It was founded in 1979, so I don't know that I'd call it a dinosaur.

That old railroad company, Kansas City Southern, spawned Stilwell Financial Inc.(later Janus Capital Group), and DST.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DST_Systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Ci ... _(company)

[AlkaliAxel]

^What Cerner does is antiquated and dinosaur like since there’s nothing left to digitize
Also, yes rail has some benefits (as I said keep the jobs you can keep), but nobody’s becoming a star city off rail. It’s gotta be tech.

[AlkaliAxel]

Another thing that might just might help KC's chances are the current incentives to build out the campus in SKC. It's a massive incentive package that few other cities would offer, especially fast growing cities like Austin and Nashville where Oracle is expanding.

The problem is the original plan for that campus is so bad that I'm not sure Oracle would be interested, but if they were and they have a vision, they could take what has already been started there and build it into something much better than what Cerner was going to do.

However, I honestly think this will not end well for KC. It won't only delete one of KC's biggest companies and recruiters of new residents to the area, but if they do leave, they will leave behind millions of sq ft of suburban office space that will need to be leased. That will really hurt Downtown just like the Sprint Campus has done.

This is a very interesting point and one that I think goes a lot beyond just Cerner. Basically any suburban office style campus, whether it be Cerner, Aspiria, etc. is hurting us.

Maybe the better we can make downtown, the more likely employers would be to place jobs there?

Tbh, I’m not sure how to stop it…but if anyone has a solution I’m all ears. Because we’ve got to get more jobs downtown and out of suburbia.

[earthling]

If Oracle plans to invest further into campus or KC in general hopefully they announce that sooner than later. The uncertainty for a long period could be damaging from KC's housing development to air service.

If Oracle doesn't invest into KC within a few years, would expect natural attrition and indirect migration of jobs dispersed elsewhere over years, especially given many if not most Cerner jobs are conducive to remote/WFA and was already part of Oracle culture before pandemic. Have wondered if that would occur for Cerner anyway before Oracle in picture.

Oracle could boost local jobs beyond Cerner and build more data centers, would be helpful if they commit to that sooner than later. The 2 other big KC data center complexes in works helps the local ecosystem and will make KC a notable player.

KCMO needs to be aggressive and turn potential lemons into lemonade.

[GRID]

If Oracle plans to invest further into campus or KC in general hopefully they announce that sooner than later. The uncertainty for a long period could be damaging from KC's housing development to air service.

If Oracle doesn't invest into KC within a few years, would expect natural attrition and indirect migration of jobs dispersed elsewhere over years, especially given many if not most Cerner jobs are conducive to remote/WFA and was already part of Oracle culture before pandemic. Have wondered if that would occur for Cerner anyway before Oracle in picture.

Oracle could boost local jobs beyond Cerner and build more data centers, would be helpful if they commit to that sooner than later. The 2 other big KC data center complexes in works helps the local ecosystem and will make KC a notable player.

KCMO needs to be aggressive and turn potential lemons into lemonade.

Yep, when Sprint started seeing serious discussions of being absorbed, it shook up the entire KC development economy for years.

And AlkaliAxel, yes the Sprint Campus has been a huge PITA to KCMO multiple times over. First when it was first built. Sprint had hundreds of thousands of sq feet of office space leased in KCMO before the campus. They leased a huge chunk of One KC Place downtown and were in couple of large Plaza office buildings. They were also in several SKC office buildings along Ward Parkway also 435/Wornall. So while they had a lot of space leased in KS as well, they had nearly as much or more in Missouri.

So when the campus was built, all that space was opened up, slowing office growth in KCMO to nothing for years.

Then just as KCMO was starting to recover from the glut of office space Sprint began to sublease the Sprint Campus, it was backfilled with several KCMO companies. That went on for years and is still happening. That campus is massive, over 4 million sq ft. That's like six downtown skyscrapers.

Now the same thing is happening with Cerner. I called it back when the SKC Cerner project was announced. I have always said that Cerner will eventually be merged, KC will likely come out on the losing end of of the deal (KC always is), and then you will have millions of sq ft of office space to fill at multiple campuses. Even if they don't take companies from downtown (most that would go have left by now), they will still play a huge role in keeping downtown from constructing new office space.

Imagine what Downtown KC would like like today had that 7 plus million of sq ft space (cerner/sprint) been built there instead of these suburban office campuses.

You are talking about six to nine 40-50 story office towers downtown. KC is way too small to have all this shit in the suburbs. KC is not Seattle where somebody like Microsoft can have millions of sq ft in a suburban campus because downtown Seattle is so much larger and has so much going on. The suburban competition barely matters there. In KC this suburban culture has totally changed the direction of the city and really hurt downtown KC.

And that's just Sprint. There are millions of sq ft of office parks in JoCo. Most of them filled with companies that had original roots in KCMO.

[AlkaliAxel]

So it sounds like from what you’re saying GRID, it’s mainly been the F500 companies and behemoths screwing us over on those suburban office spaces? What are the types of companies that actually want to be downtown then? It always has puzzled me why downtown is filled with a lot of good mid-size companies but our biggest avoid it like the plague. You’d think it would be the opposite.

[Highlander]

So it sounds like from what you’re saying GRID, it’s mainly been the F500 companies and behemoths screwing us over on those suburban office spaces? What are the types of companies that actually want to be downtown then? It always has puzzled me why downtown is filled with a lot of good mid-size companies but our biggest avoid it like the plague. You’d think it would be the opposite.

Its not a great mystery. Sprint was born out of United Telecom and was always a Johnson County company. Cerner was founded a little closer to downtown but both companies were led early on and throughout much of their corporate lives by those belonging to a generation that was around when downtown went through its great demise and was a place to avoid rather than embrace. Not all boomers have that mentality but both companies had leadership that had no real appreciation of downtown nor did they recognize the affinity of later generations towards urban environments. That said, there are probably plenty of employees for Tmobile and Cerner that DO live downtown so that's another place where losing Cerner would hurt. I realize they are not great corporate citizens but they are still, despite downsizings, by far the largest private employer in the city.

[GRID]

So it sounds like from what you’re saying GRID, it’s mainly been the F500 companies and behemoths screwing us over on those suburban office spaces? What are the types of companies that actually want to be downtown then? It always has puzzled me why downtown is filled with a lot of good mid-size companies but our biggest avoid it like the plague. You’d think it would be the opposite.

True home grown KCMO based companies run by people that have authentic KCMO civic pride.

American Century, Hallmark Cards, H&R Block, KC Southern are about all that's left.

Companies I never thought would leave like AMC have left. AMC would have never left downtown if Stan Durwood was still alive but as soon as he passed, it didn't take long for them to not only leave for the suburbs, but the company is no longer nearly the corporate civic citizen it once was.

I don't know how to fix it now. Companies like Hallmark and American Century and H&R Block have already peaked. But they still do more for KC than many larger companies based in the suburbs. I just don't know how much longer they will be around. Without them, KC will be missing a corporate pulse though.

Getting a company like Oracle to put major roots in KC will be difficult. I think KC's biggest obstacle is the lack of a major urban university. Having the University of Texas right next to downtown plays a huge role in why Austin is so successful now. Without the local people with civic pride that want to be in KC, the city has to have other amenities that it still lacks to attract big time companies. (better connected airport, better university etc).

[AlkaliAxel]

throughout much of their corporate lives by those belonging to a generation that was around when downtown went through its great demise and was a place to avoid rather than embrace. Not all boomers have that mentality but both companies had leadership that had no real appreciation of downtown nor did they recognize the affinity of later generations towards urban environments.

^^^^^Bingo.

The culture of the boomer KC citizen thinking "downtown is crime filled swamp dump" whereas my generation thinks the KC downtown is awesome and wants to work/live there.

That's why I was telling the 'missingkc' earlier that I do think the culture is changing in the right direction here because of the Millenial/Gen-Z crowd love downtown. You can thank all the development 2006-current for that.

The flip side is- the boomers, who still imagine downtown as "unimportant" in their minds, control most of the businesses still. Not the young people. It's like when my parents saw downtown a few months and were just stunned at how different it looked. The boomers can't fathom people ever wanting to work and be in downtown because they don't know about it. The boomer mindset amongst alot of these old execs is killing us. So unless you were born in the 1990's or later, you probably underestimate the downtown here.

I guess I would've thought some of businesses would've caught on by now though that this is where young employees want to be.

[AlkaliAxel]

Getting a company like Oracle to put major roots in KC will be difficult. I think KC's biggest obstacle is the lack of a major urban university. Having the University of Texas right next to downtown plays a huge role in why Austin is so successful now. Without the local people with civic pride that want to be in KC, the city has to have other amenities that it still lacks to attract big time companies. (better connected airport, better university etc).

With streetcar, and urban core residential booming, I don't understand why more companies aren't wanting to move downtown where there is *plethora* of young workers. I really don't get why they're not coming down there when that's where so many educated young workers are at

[GRID]

This video mentions colleges

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbvxQ3D3G5w

[AlkaliAxel]

When previous companies such as Cerner, Sprint, AMC, made their decisions to go suburban happened, I’m betting the future companies make the decision to invest in downtown and the urban core instead of leaving it. I get why those companies did it back in their time, but don’t see that happening to modern days urban core. Especially younger companies with younger founders, the culture is different now on that. No reason for it now compared to then. The last mistakes suck but the future seems alot more optimistic on this front.

[earthling]

Oracle has established 'hub' cities in Bay Area, LA, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Orlando areas and now Nashville with Austin HQ. Employees live everywhere with heavy Work From Anywhere culture established well before pandemic. Interpret that as you'd like. Would expect if KC isn't established as a hub or some form of ongoing investment into Cerner KC site, Cerner employment may eventually be dispersed about, not necessarily directly moved by Oracle but rather by Oracle's pretty open WFA culture.

KCMO and ecodev groups might want to pursue Oracle with extra data center incentives as those are permanent and can help establish a hub. Office space alone isn't' very permanent, especially in a WFA environment that views office as intangible flex space. Highly progressive WFA companies view the office as a place for occasional collaboration, no longer a place specifically for daily productivity.

[AlkaliAxel]

I’m not sold that Oracle is gonna come in and institute radical change. What’s the upside to it compared to the potential issues?

Unlike other cities Oracle is in like Seattle, LA, etc.- they know the employee base in KC is almost entirely composed of people born, raised and from KC area. It’s not like it was a bunch of transplants who’d be perfectly fine with being relocated on a whim. If they came in to Cerner and ordered people to relocate, I don’t think it would fly because most of those people are rooted in KC and not transplants who will move easily. Some would, but my guess is most would just want to find other job in KC area before being shipped to another state. My guess is, it will be alot easier for Oracle to just work with what they already here, instead of risking losing alot of its employee base. Besides, Cerner has the appropriate facilities here anyway and it’s all brand new- why make it a pain? I think Oracle will just retain what it they have here and roll with it. Be much much less hassle.

[earthling]

^Agree not radical change and not directly moved by Oracle, but the WFA culture may naturally disperse employees over years. As KC based employees leave Cerner (attrition), their job can be posted as WFA and filled from anywhere. It happened to Peoplesoft, which Oracle acquired. Cerner is already going there. I looked at Indeed Cerner postings for KC and about half qualified (that I viewed in list) for virtual WFA.

KC should offer data center incentives as that is permanent and can help establish a base broader than that, broader than Cerner across other Oracle divisions.

[AlkaliAxel]

^Agree not radical change and not directly moved by Oracle, but the WFA culture may naturally disperse employees over years. As KC based employees leave Cerner (attrition), their job can be posted as WFA and filled from anywhere. It happened to Peoplesoft, which Oracle acquired. Cerner is already going there. I looked at Indeed Cerner postings for KC and about half qualified (that I viewed in list) for virtual WFA.

KC should offer data center incentives as that is permanent and can help establish a base broader than that, broader than Cerner across other Oracle divisions.

I just wanna see the boomer KC officials go to Oracle and say "you should stay in KC because..uhh....BARBECUE!" since they know nothing else

[mgsports]

Chicken N Waffle has opened and Overland Park is next.

[dukuboy1]

I’m not sure the whole “boomer” talk is productive. We get it you have an axe to grind & rightfully so as that generation can drag their feet as of late. But saying they are anti downtown as a whole is a stretch. If any a lot of them led the charge as they had found memories of a vibrant downtown growing up and watched it die in the 80’s. Kay Barnes was the catalyst of what we have today. I’m a Gen X’er, and I’m a huge backer of downtown despite growing up in the suburbs & living there now. I go downtown a lot and it is our go to spot for entertainment. I had friends who lived downtown for years that loved it before P&L and the “boom” if you will.

I agree we need to get more companies to see the importance of downtown and locating there. But those 20 something’s who live in the area will eventually move to the suburbs once they are settled down & having kids. However, I think the Northland is a big key. They have a lot of room to grow, with close proximity to downtown. So if you can get some companies to locate there the employees can still work downtown & live in suburbs easier than if you are out in JOCO.

Boomers may be old fashioned in your eyes but they are part of a generation that was the original anti establishment and created companies that are the starting points for many new companies. KCMO could use more visionary younger leaders that are focused on big picture development.

[ericwyner]

fewer people having kids, more might stay in dowtown til retirement, but if WFA is the future does it really matter?