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Had the sun not been at its zenith, the Kauffman Performing Arts Center might have cast its shadow on the 2012 Greater Kansas City Economic Development Assembly, which drew several dozen city, county and Economic Development officials to the Kansas City Convention Center for a meeting on June 28. Temperatures grew dangerously hot outside, but inside, candor produced a warmth all its own in an assembly jointly sponsored by the Missouri governments of Kansas City and Jackson County.
Mayor Sly James and County Executive Mike Sanders co-chaired a discussion that largely focused on regional collaboration and strategic growth.
A consensus emerged that for this region to prosper, mechanisms must be developed to produce unifying approaches to incentives, code and permitting processes, educational reforms and work-force improvements.
The Next Big Thing
As an opening topic, participants were asked to identify what they saw as the next great opportunity for the Kansas City region. Even for a community that has seen billons of public and private dollars invested in the renaissance of the Downtown area, and hundreds of millions more poured into creating a foundation for a thriving life-sciences sector, the
question elicited responses that called for even more transformation.
“I think that connectivity of our communities benefits us all,” said Grandview Mayor Steve Dennis, starting off by promoting a big-ticket program: a commuter rail system.
randview’s role in the region, he said, at times has been overlooked, but rail could alter that view. “That’s a great way for us to connect to the rest of the community.”
Robbie Makinen, economic development coordinator for Jackson County, saw a similar need, but suggested a comprehensive transit plan was the best approach. “I think everything we talk about here today; we’re going to work towards pipelines, and it’s definitely part of that discussion,” he said.
Noting the impossible-to-miss presence of the Kauffman Center on the other side of the windows, Pete Fullerton cited the increasingly important role of the arts in Kansas City, and what they could mean going forward not just for Downtown, but the region: “I think it has some real possibility to impact a lot of disadvantaged communities—accessing the arts in those areas,” said Fullerton, director of the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City.
Peggy Dunn, mayor of Leawood, saw the need for Kansas City to do a better job of telling the nation about the progress made here. “We have so many wonderful things to offer and we’re continuing to build on that,” she said. “There is a lack of broad awareness across the country for how really special this region is.”
Jim Hampton, executive director the Clay County Economic Development Council, believes that Kansas City is poised to solidify its vital role—though one little-acknowledged at a national level—in vehicle assembly. “We’re seeing a renaissance in the automotive assembly industry here, and I think that will continue to grow.”
Building on the foundation laid in the life sciences and technology arenas, David Frantze of Stinson Morrison Hecker pointed to the strategic assets, such as Children’s Mercy Hospital, the Stowers Institute and looming National Cancer Institute designation for the KU Cancer Center. “You’re going to have a lot of opportunities to generate a lot of ideas that are going to ultimately turn into enterprises, a lot of jobs, a great creator of wealth,” Frantze said.
Jeff Samborski, who leads economic development efforts for North Kansas City, noted that his community was already trying to capitalize on the high-speed telecommunications wave that is about to wash over the two Kansas Cities when the Google Fiber project comes on-line. Capitalizing on that, he said, was an opportunity for the region to become a leader in IT communications.
Kansas City is already working to claim the mantle of America’s most entrepreneurial city, which is warranted, said Tom Lesnak, director of the Independence Economic Development Council. “It’s interesting to see what’s happening across the entire metro,” he said. “A lot of people are starting their own businesses, they’re spinning off concerns. I think we find that if we put the resources on the table to help make them as successful as they are, we probably need to put more emphasis on the start-up of entrepreneurship.”
Steve Dunn, whose family-founded company is a key figure in the Downtown employment picture and regional economy, saw a need closer to the office. “I still think for Downtown Kansas City, we are in desperate need of a 1,000-room hotel,” he said. “We’ve got to have the rooms.”
Mayor Sly James, citing the role that innovation must play in elevating the region’s outlook, called for more follow-through on visions for improving Kansas City. “All of the things we want and talk about, they’re all worthy, but we have to be innovative about how we do it,” he said. “We have to have better relationships with each other, so we’re coming to things like this. But at the end of the day, if we don’t see each other for another six months or year, it doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
Education
Lenexa Mayor Mike Boehm pointed to the emergence of the University of Missouri-Kansas City as a major research university in Kansas City, “something we’ve been lacking for 100 years or more,” he said.
Education, as well, was on the mind of Mike Duffy, economic development director for the city of Riverside, but for reasons that differed from Boehm’s” “One day,” Duffy said, “I think we’re going to have to resolve our primary education wounds that we have around here.” With virtually every major metropolitan area confronting the same challenge, Duffy said that the community able to solves that riddle “is really going to have to leg up nationally to be more competitive in economic development.”
If we’re to build a world-class work force, said Jim Hampton, “Business and education folks should be sitting down with each other, and CEOs should be saying ‘These are the skill sets we need.’ There needs to be more informed collaboration between education and business.”
The topic was nearly sufficient to warrant its own assembly, given the range of viewpoints it triggered. Jim Hampton cited the need to reach into lower grade levels with science and technology classes, starting in middle schools, while Beth Johnson called for additional parental involvement to steer students into proper academic tracks. And Mike Sanders called for a greater regional awareness of the threat that under-performing urban districts could pose to other communities—even the ones with successful public school districts.
“What we need to realize is education doesn’t stop with college,” said Jeff Samborski. “It’s a lifelong opportunity, and we should be encouraging people to find a way to continue their education.” He also called for a system that promotes educational attainment throughout the region. “The problem we have is that people say ‘I didn’t get a college degree, so it’s not that important; I’m doing fine.’ Well they’re creating a situation for their kids that traps them.”
Pete Fullerton pointed to the pressures on public school finance in both states, saying it was indeed a regional, not a community issue. “There is not one school in this region that is not under distress right now,” he declared.
A big concern, he said, was the way students are encouraged to succeed. “We’re all pushing our kids to get high grades so they can get scholarships,” Fullerton said, which leads students into classes they know they’ll coast through. “They’re not taking that trigonometry, the hard classes that they’re going to use or need to use—science and technology.”
Asked whether it was realistic to align the business and academic communities, Sly James succinctly stated, “It can be done, it has been done, it will be done.”
A strong-mayor form of government, he said, tends to get such things done more effectively than in Kansas City’s governance structure.
Messaging, as well, said Mike Boehm, was a real challenge for the region. “Our media coverage really is bad,” he said. “We don’t read about good things in education, we don’t celebrate when things in education go right. There are 20-plus districts in this region doing great things, but we don’t hear about that.” When people Google “Grandview,” he said, all they get is the crime report from the newspaper.
The Work Force
For Troy Schulte, city manager of Kansas City, Mo., the biggest opportunities lie with capitalizing on the strength of the work force. “Whether it’s an entrepreneurial spirit, or it’s just a work ethic, that Midwestern work ethic, we see it in economic development and people relocating to the Midwest,” Schulte said.
If we capitalize on that, “I think the rest will take care of itself.”
Mike Downing, deputy director for the Missouri Department of Economic Development, identified an opportunity that was also a challenge: Keeping talented workers here. “Fast-growing companies are locating in areas where they can obtain and keep talent,” he said. “We need to focus on that because we really want to promote the region and state.”
Indeed, noted Beth Johnson, economic development director for Overland Park, companies inquiring about relocating here invariably ask about the talent pool. In that light, she asked, “How do we attract that? How do we make sure they understand all of the things that are available here and make it a viable place for them to grow their family?”
Greg Kindle, executive director of the Wyandotte Economic Development Council, saw promise for integrative technology in all classes of industries. “Looking at our manufacturing base, there will be more movement towards the technology,” he said, noting that manufacturing jobs in those disciplines would require IT skills, as well. “There will be a focus on asset-mapping technology and opportunities that we have, educational skills we have.
If we have more technology, more companies will be attracted here.” John McGurk, chief of staff for Mayor Sly James, gathered those points and others into a larger framework: “I’m going to use a broader term—place-making,” McGurk said. “Education, housing, transportation, all focus working towards attracting Millennials who are next in line and are going to be our work force in the future.”
His boss, the mayor, suggested that attracting business won’t be done without a different kind of manufactured product: An educated work force. “We need to produce it, not bring it in,” James said. “We have those high-level thinkers; that’s not what we need. We need that lower level that puts together the robotics, builds and operates the robotics, that recognizes that you can learn how to code without spending four years at MIT.”
Attracting Talent
Mike Downing offered some insight into what corporate leaders are looking for when they ponder business location possibilities: Making people, not incentives, the focus of development; providing a platform for success for women, minorities and young workers; investing in higher education; creating opportunities for young professionals; and maintaining vibrant urban neighborhoods.
Successful communities, he said, “prioritize for what the younger people are looking for.” He also noted that many of those are college graduates, or have post-graduate degrees. Yet Missouri and Kansas rank middle-of-the-pack on their ability to retain such workers, he said, and “the fastest-growing jobs are the ones that attract and retain those skilled professionals.”
Jeff Samborski noted a recent study of attitudes among younger workers, the kinds Kansas City should be attracting. “The younger people that we really want to track enjoy the urban environment,” he said. “We’ve got to concentrate on our Downtown and continue to strive to improve that,” as well as give young entrepreneurs the tools to take advantage of high-tech opportunities.
Even before the Great Recession, said David Frantze, a trend was at work within the emerging generation of workers. “Young people are much more into moving where the jobs are, not back home,” he said. “The first place they’re looking for is a job. When there’s a job in the market, they look for the neatest place to live in.” If we don’t create the kind of environment, he said, young people won’t stay here, and we’ll lose our opportunity to create the next Garmin or Cerner.
Taking Action
Sly James, as he often does as such gatherings, restated his belief that such discussions should always produce some form of an action plan. “Is there one thing that this group of people from different regions can agree on to work together on, right now?” he asked. “One thing?”
Peggy Dunn suggested it would be a good forum for pursuing coordination of the region’s transit systems, not from a funding perspective, but out of a recognition that people are getting older and will soon be less inclined to rely on their own driving skills.
Sly James said that if cities in the region agreed to make data accessible to outside sources, there was indeed an opportunity to reposition the region’s reputation as a business-friendly environment. “Those types of things are available if we’re willing be innovative enough to open up our data and let everyone see it and explore it,” he said. “With basic data, it’s possible.”
That would involve coordinating a huge number of players. Jim Hampton noted that Clay County alone had 33 cities, with 33 different sets of coding and permits. “Even if they decide to come to Kansas City, they’ve got extended codes to deal with. Folks, there has got to be a different way. We’re all trying to accomplish the same thing with those codes and permits.”
Troy Schulte, though, said that at some important levels, regionalization was already occurring. “I think this is one thing we’re beating ourselves up over,” he said.
Johnson County, Overland Park and Kansas City have led the way in working together on such efforts, Schulte said, “but we get lost in the weeds over what we have, what type of aluminum siding is the right kind of siding. Keeping our minds on the strategic issues, the alignment’s already taking place.”
The codes, said David Frantze, may be uniform, but the implementation is not. “I will tell you the last touch that a lot of people have after having a really positive experience is a process that is not friendly, not user-friendly,” Frantze said. “I understand that it’s a regulatory process, but it doesn’t have to be a ‘Gotcha!’ process.” What that comes down to, James said, was a simple matter of customer service, and the need to instill more of it in the municipal work force.
Shifting Perspectives
Mike Sanders might not have expected it, but he opened the door for the most pointed commentary of the day when he said that advancing the region’s place in a global economy compelled a paradigm shift among residents and leaders alike.
“We probably don’t go a week or two without pulling out the papers and seeing the battle between Missouri and Kansas” for business attraction. “If we’re going to succeed as a region, we’ve got to succeed as a region,” he said, because the area is competing with cities nationwide—as well as with other countries.
Doing so, said Sly James, meant recognizing that old practices have to be abandoned. “Everybody is looking to be that one great city, that one great region,” James said. “We have to be different, we have to be innovative, which means we have to be willing to fail, which means we have to be willing to try.”
Reliance on traditional approaches, he said, wasn’t good enough. “Times change: We can’t count on the federal government, we can’t count on the state government,” he said. “If we’re going to survive, we’re going to survive on our own.”
One place to start, he suggested, was with the long-lamented state incentives that amount to cross-border raids for business—a dynamic that he acknowledged he was a part of. “There’s not a person in this room who believes in unilateral disarmament, so I’m not putting down my stuff until everybody else puts down theirs. But at the end of the day, is this type of activity sustainable? Is it healthy?”
Jeff Samborski suggested that much of the problem could go away if municipalities would agree to adopt a policy that incentives be directed only to companies creating “net new jobs” for the region. Something needs to be done, Mayor James noted; in recent years, Kansas City has gone from the 26th-largest regional economy to 28th-largest.
Owen Buckley of Lane4 Property Group said it was in the best interest of lawmakers in each state to help craft policies that would make the entire region stronger. “But if they don’t believe that, it’s going to be a tough sell,” Buckley said.
Jack Cashill, moderating the forum, saw what he called “hidden virtues” in that level of competition. “Where it starts to get out of control,” he said, “is when you give tax benefits to companies that are not advantageous to the tax base.”
Mike Sanders followed by asking whether those in attendance would be willing to work together informally to pursue workable solutions. “If you’re willing to chair the committee, I’ll serve on it,” volunteered Jim Hampton. “OK,” Sanders said, adding wryly, “I’ve got nothing else going on.”
But if it is to work, he said, the effort would have to be organic, from the bottom up, because people in Kansas City should-n’t expect solutions to come from the state capitals—they need to take the ini-tiative to resolve local issues.“And that,” Sanders said, “sounds like a good stopping point.”
