Ingram's April 2024

HISTORIC SERIES: The ’90s

The 1990s: A Transformation Begins …

A REGIONAL ECONOMY THAT HAD BLOSSOMED THROUGHOUT THE 20TH CENTURY IS WITNESS TO GAME-CHANGING EVENTS AS A NEW MILLENNIUM APPROACHES.

by Dennis Boone

I n the mid 19th century, an obscure French writer penned this gem: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr never made it to Kansas City, but had he been here a generation after authoring that declaration, he would have indeed witnessed change that really was change: the first transactions in a five-acre plot of the West Bottoms that would eventually become the Kansas City Stockyards.

One could argue that 120 years later when the 1990s arrived, things revert ed to the norm: The stockyards them selves conducted their last cattle sales in October 1991. For a city that had staked much of its reputation on steak, it was a powerful bit of symbolism: Kansas City strips were no longer originating in Kansas City. It was also a signal moment for a new decade that would produce sweeping

change across this region. Cities build identities, nurture them and see them remade as buildings rise and fall, personalities move into power and fade away, highways disrupt long-standing rhythms of life, and companies come and go—often creating jobs, then sending them away. If you look back 30 years, the sweep of that change becomes evident, not only for what might have been lost, but for

WHERE’S THE BEEF: Cattle processing made Kansas City a national center of commerce for more than a century, but changing econom ics sounded the death knell for the famed stockyards.

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I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

April 2024