KCRag Forum

An e-commerce company from Montreal selected downtown KC for its US HQ. Is curious they chose KC given there are no non-stop flights to Montreal and also fairly expensive flights.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/b ... -base.html

We do have a French magnet school, Academie Lafayette, in the city. Perhaps that was a draw for getting a bilingual French/English workforce in the future?

Downtown office/residential rent also much cheaper than other large US downtowns. And free streetcar may have helped. They are in Library District near that stop. In the age of web conferencing, non-stop flights might not be as important anymore. Google Fiber might have been a bonus but many more cities have cheap Gigabit now.

beautyfromashes wrote:We do have a French magnet school, Academie Lafayette, in the city. Perhaps that was a draw for getting a bilingual French/English workforce in the future?

Those damn Canadian socialists are always scheming to exploit our schoolchildren. I think we should build a mur.

A major retailer is looking for 100 acre site within 150 miles of KC for another distro center. Biz Journal speculates possibly Target. If the KCK project isn't Walmart then could possibility be them too as Walmart says they are doubling down on online biz.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... -toto.html

If I was a company looking to place a Disto Center, I would actually look at Ottawa. Lots of people from Ottawa/Franklin County are actually working at a lot of the Dist Centers in Edgerton. With placing it in Ottawa you also can pull people from working class towns such as Garnett, Paola and even pull in people from Lawrence.

Virgin Mobile USA hq coming downtown with 50 jobs. Where will it be?

https://governor.mo.gov/news/archive/ma ... ters-gov-0

According to the Wiki, the Virgin division is based out of Jersey. So is this technically a move to KC or did they move to Sprint campus a while back and now moving division downtown? Good news either way even if a small HQ (in terms of employee count).

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

this is kinda of a big deal...

Would be great (and plausible) to see Sprint move HQ downtown even if using the campus for operations. Is common for F500 companies to have a 50+ HQ (high level management and supporting staffs) in downtowns with operations spread about. They have the downtown commuter airport right there for exec planes and also closer to KCI. With completely new upper management, they may have more of a downtown mindset.

earthling wrote:According to the Wiki, the Virgin division is based out of Jersey. So is this technically a move to KC or did they move to Sprint campus a while back and now moving division downtown? Good news either way even if a small HQ (in terms of employee count).

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

Their jobs listing are only in KC right now so my guess is they've already moved.

In the KC Star article it says struggling Virgin Mobile brand. Wonder if this division is likely to fold in a few years.

brewcrew1000 wrote:In the KC Star article it says struggling Virgin Mobile brand. Wonder if this division is likely to fold in a few years.

maybe they are trying to get younger single employees who don't care about the schools, guess Cerner isn't

According to this, Virgin division was based in Jersey...
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/spr ... 2016-07-15

earthling wrote:Would be great (and plausible) to see Sprint move HQ downtown even if using the campus for operations. Is common for F500 companies to have a 50+ HQ (high level management and supporting staffs) in downtowns with operations spread about. They have the downtown commuter airport right there for exec planes and also closer to KCI. With completely new upper management, they may have more of a downtown mindset.

someone on the local subreddit -- take that for what it's worth -- mentioned that was the plan. they're trying to figure out how to release the albatross.

Wow that would be huge and I think it's the right move for Sprint. It would be similar to Motorola moving to downtown Chicago.

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They are looking from Xroads to RM according to Biz Journal, only about 8K sqft implying about 50 employees, so maybe just senior mgmt and supporting staff...
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... rters.html

Virgin Mobile has moved HQ from New Jersey into One KC Place downtown. Virgin has been owned by Sprint for a while but the HQ division was based in Jersey until Sprint moved it to KC. Pickwick, Town Pavilion and 9th/Broadway (where local Google Fiber office is) were also considered. About 50 jobs by end of year...

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... place.html

Biz Journal on KC's increasing ties to Seattle, increasing airline traffic, Honeywell/Zillow ties as well as a few companies that have moved here.
https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/ ... -city.html

The result is a shrinking middle class in the Seattle area, where the economy is becoming tiered to extremes with tech and other high-salaried positions on one end and service workers on the other.

Would imagine many cheaper cities are benefiting from Seattle spillover.