Street smart—street clearing and repair among top priorities for city manager

When Brian Platt began his tenure as city manager of the City of Kansas City, Missouri, in December, 2020, the two most frequent complaints he heard were that Kansas City can’t plow the snow and that the city is full of potholes.

Platt discussed how he has addressed those concerns at last week’s luncheon of the KC Downtowners, just a few days after Kansas City experienced its largest snowfall in 32 years.

Soon after Platt arrived in Kansas City, it snowed.

“I remember getting on a snow plow with someone who had been doing it for 20 years. Big truck. We met up at the command center, and we got a truck and went to go get some salt from the salt dome. . . . We’re driving through the parking lot and I see a row of 10 or 20 trucks covered in snow. Snow plows. And I’m asking, what are we doing with those? I’m told we don’t usually have enough drivers, but we’ve got all these trucks. . . . We’re driving around, and I’m hearing these stories about how we don’t really pre-treat the roads before the storms. We just kind of do one pass through neighborhoods. Just check the box for each neighborhood was the approach. Just send a truck down one time at some point and call it a day,” said Platt.

Platt recognized right away that there are several easy ways to change the snow removal procedure. He had many conversations with city staff about ways to get more drivers and more trucks without spending any additional funds.

“We found 100 more drivers week one,” he said.

Those drivers were city employees like health inspectors, building inspectors, and garbage truck drivers who are not otherwise on the roads during snowstorms. In an organization with 4,500 employees, Platt said it was easy to find 100 employees who already drove for the city. In addition, the city’s vehicle fleet had many pickup trucks on which the city could install a plow on the front, remove the bed, and install a salt spreader on the back.

“So we did that. We found 100 drivers and 50 trucks without really having to do anything,” said Platt.

With more manpower and trucks, Platt said the city is much more aggressive when it comes to snow removal. Two days before the recent snowstorm began, the city pretreated the roads using a magnesium chloride salt, which is much more

effective to melt ice when the temperature drops below 20 degrees than the calcium chloride rock salt used by many other jurisdictions.

In addition, snow removal is a 24-hour operation, with drivers working 12-hour shifts from days before the storm starts until everything is clear. The snow is plowed curb to curb rather than a single path the width of the plow blade.

Platt said the city instituted a digital route mapping system. Each plow is equipped with a tablet, which allows the city staff and the drivers to track how much of the city has been plowed and where.

“We’ve got 6400 miles of streets to take care of. We have 103 routes . . . that’s 60 miles a route. . . . You might miss a cul de sac. You might not get curb to curb everywhere, . . . but we’re going after it,” he said.

Platt said every neighborhood has the same priority.

The city also is trying to rebuild its fleet, Platt said. The city has 300 trucks in its fleet and 400 drivers in its system. Many of those trucks are 2023 and 2024 pickup trucks that easily convert to snow plows. No commercial driver’s license is required to operate them. In fact, Platt himself, as well as other department heads, have been out on the streets plowing in city-owned pickup trucks.

“As city leaders, we have to listen to the people of the city. A lot of what we do involves just hearing people out. And people in the city want to be heard. . . . That’s customer service. That’s just what we’re all about now,” Platt said.

With respect to tackling street repair, Platt said the city has made tremendous improvements since he started as city manager. Kansas City is paving “exponentially more” than it ever has.

“Rather than putting band-aids on all these potholes, we’re building new streets. We’re just going to redo them. Inevitably, if you’ve got a lot of potholes, that means the street is failing. It’s just not in good condition anymore,” he said.

Last year, Kansas City rebuilt 519 miles of streets. In the past three and one-half years, Platt said the city has rebuilt 1500 miles, which is 25 percent of the city’s streets.

Platt said the city added $10 million to the budget last year to tackle sidewalk repairs.

Platt addressed measures the city is taking to prepare for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The city is focused on making Kansas City look great.

“We’re going to focus a lot on business districts and places we think people are going to be traversing. . . . We want to not go too crazy and spend too much money building a bunch of things that, after the three months of the World Cup, we just don’t have anything to do with, which happens in a lot of places. . . . We don’t want to waste our money, but thinking about what are those things that we’re going to do to make our city look nicer,” he said.

One idea the city is pursuing is making improvements to the secondary corridor between Downtown and the stadiums, adding safe mobility lanes for bikes and scooters. In addition, there are plans to transform Yvonne Starks Wilson Park into a destination park with some FIFA relevance like mini pitches for soccer.

Platt also addressed Kansas City’s “visionary project” of creating a park over Interstate 670—the South Loop park, which he projects to break ground perhaps in March. He also expects that at least two of the four sections of the project will be completed for use by the World Cup, but likely not the full park.

Platt does not foresee the city tackling the North Loop in the next 10 years because there still is adjacent land housing surface parking lots that can be developed.

“Why would we make land for billions of dollars when we already have land that’s available to develop? Once all those surface lots get developed and we need more land Downtown and there’s a demand for it, then we can spend the money and do it that way because there’s a need,” Platt said.

---

Header Image: Brian Platt addresses a group at the January KC Downtowners luncheon. Image credit: Marcia Charney

Downtown Kansas City's inspiring comeback story

In 2002, only 60,000 employees worked in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

“They were fleeing as quickly as they could, and I think the access on Main Street was one way south to Johnson County. No one wanted to be here. No one wanted to live here. It was really a very difficult kind of situation,” said Bill Dietrich, president and CEO of the Downtown Council of Kansas City.

Dietrich was the featured speaker at the monthly luncheon hosted by the KC Downtowners last week.

Since 2002, Downtown has seen $11 billion in investment. It now boasts 124,000 employees and 32,000 residents.

“We’re the fastest-growing neighborhood. If we were a city, we’d be the 11th largest in the metroplex. That’s kind of cool. We’re also the fastest-growing neighborhood community. We’re adding more residents,” said Dietrich.

The area that Dietrich said he defines as “Greater Downtown” is approximately 2.5-mile square blocks and includes the Missouri River to 31st Street, 18th and Vine to State Line Road.

Dietrich shared publicly for the first time some new independent research data about Downtown’s post-COVID recovery. Like all major communities across the country, Kansas City suffered some economic losses as a result of the pandemic which struck in 2020. But, recovery has been healthy.

In 2019, Downtown had 5.3 million unique visitors. In 2023, Downtown had 6 million unique visitors, which equates to 133 percent of the pre-COVID levels. In addition, Downtown has recovered 95 percent of the number of visits (the visit frequency of unique visitors) from 2019. Kansas City’s recovery rate is surpassed by only Nashville and San Jose, Dietrich said.

“We need to build on that trend. That’s why these events are so important. Not only the FIFA World Cup, which we all know is coming in 2026, but we now have the Big 12 women’s and men’s for the next seven years. Those are huge plusses for our community, and they feed off of each other. The more of these you do, the more you get,” he said.

The employee base has increased by 11 percent since 2020. Thirty-five percent of all Kansas City, Missouri jobs are Downtown. Dietrich said that the employment base is important to support Downtown restaurants and cultural venues which helps spur the economy.

Dietrich said companies are drawn to Downtown because of its exceptional talent pool, vibrant environment and growing residential options. Downtown has 26.5 million SF of office space, making it the largest business district in the region.

According to Dietrich, approximately 76 percent of the Downtown pre-COVID employees are back in their offices at least three days a week, placing Kansas City fourth in the nation for employee recovery.

Bill Dietrich, president and CEO of Downtown Council of Kansas City presented to KC Downtowners earlier this month. Photo Credit: Marcia Charney | MWM KC

Data shows that where employees reside in the metro drives their use of Downtown. Dietrich said that employees who live within two miles of Downtown are 100 percent back in the office. This percentage drops to 80 percent for employees who live two to five miles away and to 70 percent for employees five to 10 miles away. Farther than 10 miles, the percentage drops even lower.

“What does that tell you about what you should be focusing on as a city as policymakers and at City Hall? You should be focusing on an economic development strategy for the city, in my opinion, which prioritizes and really focuses on multi-family residential in Downtown. . . . You can see it borne out in the data. The closer you are to the center, the more likely you are to go to your office, buy that lunch and go to that theater afterward, go to a game or a concert at T-Mobile Center or the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts,” he said.

Although the number of Downtown residents has climbed, Dietrich said there is a need for more residential inventory of all types, not just luxury projects. He said the residential population is projected to be 43,000 by 2035.

“Residents are everything. Residents bring vitality. They demand things. They want streetcars. They want more cultural amenities. They want better jobs. And, it makes a huge difference to have them,” he said.

The demographics of Downtown residents show that 50 percent are men and 50 percent are women, and 51 percent are not majority culture.

So we’re a very diverse downtown. And that’s in pockets and areas that are less diverse and more diverse areas. That’s why we say Downtown is a collection of 22 unique neighborhoods, each with its heritage, history, value and culture,” said Dietrich.

Dietrich said there is $3.5 billion of Downtown investment currently underway, including the redevelopment underway by SomaraRoad Inc. in the West Bottoms, mixed-use development at the riverfront, the UMKC Health Sciences Building, streetcar expansion, Barney Allis Plaza and the Buck O’Neil Bridge. There also is the $225 million South Loop project, a four-block park on 5.5 acres which will be built over I-670 and will reconnect Crossroads to the Central Business District. To date, $125 million of the project’s cost has been raised, and Dietrich said construction should begin next spring.

“Downtown baseball is still a conversation we need to have. It’s the right decision to make. It would add three million more visitors to our marketplace, and absolutely you would see $2 to $3 billion of investment around it,” Dietrich said.

Other needs for Downtown include innovation districts, east-west transit connections and more parks, trees and open spaces.

Dietrich recognized that Downtown crime is escalating, and public safety is a huge issue.

“We’re seeing escalations in crime on property or person, and we are mobilizing our energy and our forces. It is a top priority for us to change that trend,” he said.

Dietrich cautioned that Kansas City must work to retain its progress and avoid what happened in downtown St. Louis, which has beautiful monumental structures and roads, but is empty.

“It’s very affordable Downtown. It’s very diverse Downtown. It is a very welcoming Downtown. None of those are a given. We all had to work really hard to make that happen. And, we can’t take our eye off the prize,” Dietrich said.

The header image shows the completed, under development and proposed mixed-use and multifamily Light Towers within the Kansas City Power & Light District’s nine-city block retail, entertainment, office and residential district, located in the heart of Downtown Kansas City directly adjacent to the T-Mobile Center. Image courtesy of The Cordish Companies.