Ingrams June 2023

IN THE NEWS

Tidbits of Business News from Around the Region

MISSOURI BUCHANAN COUNTY Infrastructure Funding The Missouri Department of Econo mic Development has awarded $2.5 million in federal funding to promote the development of industrial projects in St. Joseph. The money, from the American Rescue Plan Act, will go toward water and sewer infrastructure at Eastowne Business Park, setting the stage for land development east and northeast of that site. That will supplement $2.7 million from the state for improvements on the Pickett Road corridor to bolster develop ment there. Kansas City planners have approved new additions to the ongoing redevelop ment of Metro North Crossing, including pickleball courts outside the T-Shotz there and a reduction of roughly 10 percent in the earlier projection for 401 parking spaces. Already, construction has begun on Hawaiian Bros Island Grill and Whattaburger sites, as well as a multiten ant retail building that will cover 15,000 square feet, and developers are consider ing a second multifamily project, valued at $40 million, that would bring more than 460 the number of units affiliated with the project. Saint Luke’s Health System and St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare have agreed to form a statewide health system capable of serving Missouri’s population of 6.2 million. Once the agreement is complete, the merged enterprise will retain dual headquarters, with the eastern site serving Missouri and southern Illinois, while the Kansas City operation will continue to serve western Missouri and parts of Kansas. The combined operation will have nearly 40,000 employees and more than $15 billion in annual revenues. CLAY COUNTY Metro North Makeover JACKSON COUNTY Saint Luke’s-BJC Merger

PLATTE COUNTY Distribution Center Opens…

spaces from 50,000 to as much as 1.3 million square feet. The first of those, a nearly 750,000-square-foot spec building, is expected to be completed in 2024. New Jail Considered Platte County commissioners are assessing the updated report from a con sultant who says the findings of a jail assessment conducted in 2019 suggest an even more acute need today for a new jail. After a steep drop in numbers at the Platte County Detention Center in early 2020, during the pandemic, the jail popu lation has regained pre-pandemic levels. The original report projected a need for 237 beds by 2024, rising to as many as 376 by 2039. The current facility can hold 180 and has been as high as 230 over the past year, forcing inmate transfers to adjoining counties.

The region’s latest addition to a grow ing network of distribution centers is an $18 million facility of nearly 125,000 square feet that opened at 115th and Con gress early this month. The new center, operated by DHL eCommerce Solutions, is twice the size of the St. Louis site it closed a week earlier. More than 125 em ployees in the new space will be able to process 28,000 parcels an hour, the com pany says. … As Another Breaks Ground VanTrust Real Estate has begun con struction of a 2.36-million-square-foot distribution facility at Platte International Commerce Center. The Platte City site will consist of three buildings, offering

Correspondent News Updates from the Capital cities

Washington | SBA Ups Numbers on Bad PPP Loans The Small Business Administration has announced that 390,103 loans under the Payroll Protection Program have been charged off, roughly 3.4 percent of the 11.46 million loans made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The charge-offs represented loans for which borrowers failed to submit a forgiveness application by the required deadline. The emergency legislation that created PPP in early 2020 was meant to designed to help businesses that might have been forced to lay off employees because of health restrictions, but the $790 billion issued as loans had no provision requiring a personal guarantee or credit underwriting. Jefferson City | Assembly Signs Off on Widening of I-70 Flush with cash from strong tax revenue growth and the federal response to the pandemic, the General Assembly has signed off on a $2.8 billion trans portation plan to widen Interstate 70 to six lanes between Blue Springs and Wentzville. That was more than three times what Parson had asked for during his annual budget address when he sought $859 million for a partial widening of the highway. It was part of a $50 billion spending plan for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1. Still, he said, a number of other projects will be cut from a

budget he considers loaded with too many legislative pet projects. Topeka | Kelly Issues Veto to Spare School Cuts

Gov. Laura Kelly has signed off on a K-12 spending plan for next year but vetoed a measure that would have cut funding to many school districts. Most of those districts are in rural areas, but the cuts also would have fallen on the Kansas City, Kansas district ($3.2 million), Olathe’s district ($1.6 million), and Bonner Springs schools (more than $750,000). They were the only districts singled out for cuts within Johnson and Wyandotte counties; the remainder would have seen increases.

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Kansas City’s Business Media

June 2023