The Kansas City area’s development and growth continue to attract the world’s attention.
“Kansas City is having a moment here, and I think we need to make the most of it,” said Michael Zeller, founder and CEO, Flying Truss, LLC.
Zeller and panelists John Lovell, councilmember on the Lee’s Summit, Missouri City Council, and Jill McCarthy, SVP, corporate attraction, for the Kansas City Area Development Council (KCADC), joined moderator Eric Mann, business development manager at Emery Sapp & Sons, Inc., to discuss area development activity. The breakfast event was hosted by the ABC Heart of America chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors.
Currently, the KCADC has 77 active projects in the pipeline from separate companies looking at the Kansas City region for investment, job creation or development, McCarthy said.
According to McCarthy, animal health, biosciences, food manufacturing, plastics, anything related to the automotive industry, technology, pharmaceuticals and cold storage are among the most active industries.
“And where we used to be kind of a mix on the manufacturing and distribution side, we’ve very heavy into manufacturing, much lower on distribution, which is a little bit of a surprise for us. That’s probably been in the last 24 to 30 months,” she said.
Kansas City also is attractive to companies looking to establish data centers. McCarthy said currently there are 14 data center projects in the pipeline, 10 of which are hyper-scalers seeking campus locations of 500 acres or more.
And, although the region typically has not been a big headquarters market, McCarthy said the KCADC is working on seven headquarters projects for companies looking to exit high-cost markets.
The City of Lee’s Summit, Missouri is seeing much active development. According to Lovell, the critical development moment began with the Streets of West Pryor, which first opened in 2020.
“I think that project really raised the bar on the types of developments and users that can be accommodated in Lee’s Summit. And when that happens, you start to see that open up greater opportunity for people interested—higher-end users, higher end uses of the spaces, etc.,” Lovell said.
Development is underway now on Discovery Park in Lee’s Summit, a 268-acre mixed-use development. Downtown Market Plaza, a farmer’s market and event space, is under construction with more mixed-use public and private development planned.
In what Lovell described as a “once in a generation opportunity,” the City of Lee’s Summit will be working with Property Reserve Inc. (PRI), the non-profit investment arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Suburban Land Reserve, Inc., the church’s for-profit land development company owned by PRI, to master plan the development and future uses of 4,203 acres of undeveloped land that PRI has owned for nearly 40 years.
“This is a massive amount of land. . . . I can’t emphasize enough the opportunity there. It’s a great responsibility to try and make sure that we’re creating something for the future that’s great. Not just the same old stuff that’s been done in the past,” said Lovell.
Lovell said that although some may disagree, incentives are a necessary part of the development process.
“I think we’ve done a good job [in Lee’s Summit] of helping identify the areas that we want to see more of and then putting together packages that make sense for the developer financially,” he said. Approximately 15 years ago, Zeller was traveling with family and friends in a motorboat along the Kansas River when Zeller spotted an old railroad bridge that was long out of use. Zeller jokingly remarked that someone should do something with the bridge, perhaps install a restaurant and call it “Chicken on a Bridge”.
“It was just a throw-away line, but I decided that this joke was an idea or realization that a big robust structure over a river in a metropolitan area, is probably a valuable place. And I spent the next 10 years or so trying to get other people to do it,” Zeller said.
With no takers, Zeller decided to take an entrepreneurial plunge. He teamed up with Mike Laddin and John McGurk, entered a long-term lease for the bridge with the city of Kansas City, Kansas, and later this summer will open the world’s first entertainment district on a bridge over a river. The 35,000 SF Rock Island Bridge will hold 1900 people and is longer than the Gateway Arch in St. Louis is tall.
“Had we been a major developer with financial backing, it would have been a lot easier, although the product probably wouldn’t have turned out as good because of all that marinating time that was forced upon us. It allowed us to really think about this thing, get a lot of ideas from a lot of people, and reshape the designs and the business model,” said Zeller.
McCarthy said that visitors to Kansas City often have an “epiphany of the visit” moment which causes them to take a closer look.
“You may not make the spreadsheet off the bat for certain projects, but when people come to Kansas City, they see what’s going on. They see all the activity in the suburbs, in the urban core, what’s happening in visitor relationships,” she said.
“We’re hungry for authentic, local places, and reinvented places are always unique and authentic. They force creativity when you reinvent something. You come up with solutions you never start with on a white piece of paper,” Zeller said.
Although there is a tremendous amount of activity happening in the region that is putting Kansas City in the global spotlight, it’s important to think about what’s next.
“You’re never done. . . . There’s always something next. If you are not thinking about what’s next, you’re contracting. . . . There’s always something next, and it takes a lot of creative energy and a lot of good thinkers to put forth what’s next,” McCarthy said.
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Feature photo: The Promenade at Discovery Park rendering in Lee’s Summit, Mo., courtesy of Newmark Zimmer. For more information on Discovery Park, contact Michael VanBuskirk at Newmark Zimmer.