11 May 2011
Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed making a presentation to the KCKCC Economics Club, Campus Forum and Intercultural Center last week. We talked about economic development, the potential for more business development and learning with Google Fiber and the new jobs coming on line at Sporting KC, the Hollywood Casino and Cerner Corp.
I also had a chance to make a presentation the the Association of Government Accountants at Johnson County Community College in the afternoon. A great conversation about the region ensued. There is a lot of interest in working on making the Kansas City Region a great place.
Finally, yesterday, Site Selection Magazine, an economic development magazine named the Sporting KC, Cerner project as one of the Top 10 Economic Development Deals in North America. Here is an excerpt from the article: Cerner Corp./OnGoal
Kansas City, Kan.
$414 million, 4,000 jobs
The “other” Kansas City, which found out just last month that it had beat out 1,100 others to become the first recipient of Google’s ultra-fast broadband program, continues to make a bid to become “the” Kansas City when it comes to economic development. This deal with healthcare information management systems company Cerner, Major League Soccer’s Kansas City Wizards ownership group OnGoal and developer Lane4 will create thousands of jobs (at an average salary of $54,000) by 2016, a new stadium for the Wizards and an athletics complex with up to two dozen new fields. In January 2010 the Unified Government Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan., approved the deal, 10 months after the idea was first broached. Revenues attached to successful retail growth in KCK helped make the deal, in the process pulling it from its original destination at a former mall site in Missouri, even as Kansas Secretary of Commerce David Kerr jumped ship to Missouri while negotiations were still unfolding in late 2009.
