Ingram's April 2024

state and local governments have spent tens of millions of dollars on improve ments to alleviate the threat of cloud borne calamity. The decade gave us massive transfor mations delivered at the hands of voters. In 1996, voters from across the region approved a bistate tax that would finance the restoration of the long-languishing Union Station south of Downtown’s cen tral business district. With a big chunk of the $250 million restoration provided by that 1/8-cent sales tax, work began a year later and was completed just ahead of the new millennium, returning to the region a crown jewel that had been lost to decades of disuse and neglect. An equally transformational vote took place the following year when voters in Wyandotte County agreed to merge its three municipalities and county government into a unified structure. That was the first domino to fall in a series that would lead to an unparalleled level of development in a county that had long been considered the metro area’s economic backwater. Almost immediately, the Unified Government secured rights to build the Kansas Speedway, followed in short order by the Village West entertainment and retail district, what is now Children’s Mercy Park, and thousands of luxury apartments. So great was the critical mass that Cerner Corp., on its rise to supplant Sprint as the largest private employer, chose that neighborhood to construct a pair of towering office buildings—with, as it turns out, mixed results. The health-care front produced changes that can correctly be described as “seismic,” for the reverberations from them are still with us today. Easily the most impactful of them was the 1998 deal that severed state control of the financial train wreck that was The University of Kansas Hospital. In its place came a stand-alone public-health authority that quickly refocused on quality of care, patient satisfaction, improved finances, research functions, top-notch talent across the board and more. From the brink of insolvency as a hospital, it has become The University of Kansas Health System, with campuses across the state, far more patient admissions than

FADED GLORY: Before voters approved a unique bistate tax to fund its restoration, Union Station was nearly abandoned, save for an inflated covering to provide Amtrak access.

any other facility in the region, and a staggering $15 billion in gross revenues. Nominally, that was a win for Wyandotte County, on whose acreage the medical center and adjacent KU School of Medicine sits. As a practical matter, it has been a win for Midtown (the hospital property abuts the state line) and the broader region, with the medical center’s 960 licensed beds at the main campus and hundreds more with last year’s acquisition of Olathe Health System on the Kansas side, and a looming partnership with Liberty Hospital on the Missouri side. Two entities that dominated the hos pital market in the 1990s—the former

Health Midwest and Saint Luke’s Health System—also produced deep and lasting changes during the 1990s. As it hap pened, both came to Johnson County. There, Saint Luke’s Health System expanded its Kansas-side footprint in 1998 by assuming operational control of Shawnee Mission Medical Center, a mar riage that lasted only five years before Advent Health, which had retained own ership of the assets, resumed full control. That came two years after Health Midwest had relocated Menorah Medical Center from its longtime home adjacent to UMKC, in favor of Overland Park. That opened the door to a new life for the facility near the Country Club Plaza,

QUICK CHANGE: After voters approved consolidation of city/county government in Wyan dotte County, change came fast, starting with construction of the Kansas Speedway.

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I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

April 2024