Ingram's May 2024

2000 The Sasaki Report is issued, laying out a framework for reviv al of Downtown Kansas City. Construction begins on the Eastland Center in Independence, extending a retail building boom along I-70 that includes Hartman Heritage Center.

2001 The Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute is created. The Kansas Speedway opens in western Wyandotte County. The final leg of Bruce Watkins Drive opens, providing a mostly divided four-lane con nection to U.S. 71 in south Kansas City.

2002 Overland Park changes the region’s convention center dynamics, opening a $45.5 million center along I-435 between Metcalf and Nall Avenue.

2003 The KC school district’s desegregation lawsuit ends after 26 years in court. The Cordish Co. announces that it will build a new retail and entertainment district Downtown. Nebraska Furniture Mart opens in the Village West retail district of Kansas City, Kan.

I ngram ’ s MARCH 2000 $ 3.00 KANSAS CITY’S BUSINESS MAGAZINE n n GOING DIGITAL DOWNTOWN KANSAS CITY 2000 LAKE OF THE OZARKS

A bruising three year battle ends as Western Resources drops its bid to acquire Kansas City Power & Light Co.

PIONEERS OF THE PRAIRIE TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES SURGE INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

ingramsonline.com KANSAS CITY’S INTERACTIVE BUSINESS DAILY

9-to-5 job, or a “have-it-all” approach to life, moonlighting fills the bill. Moonlighters want money, prestige, success, a little fun, and a chance to help others or advance knowledge in a particu lar field. Sometimes they can’t get all that from one career. So they need two. At least. 1992 SEPTEMBER VR’s (Not-So) Civil War “There are no Thompsons at J. Wal ter Thompson,” Chuck Curtis says. “No McCanns at McCann-Ericson.” And, as of June 18, no Valentines at Valentine Radford. That was the day the five ex ecutives—President John Valentine, Executive Creative Director Scott Mc Cormick, Director of Integrated Mar keting T. Craig Ligibel, Chief Operating Officer Freda Schroeder, and Boasberg Valentine-Radford Vice President Jerry Schleicher—walked. The resignations followed a series of events that began in late May, when Val entine, McCormick and Ligibel, unhappy with Curtis’ ambitious acquisition pro gram and the high rate of staff turnover, asked the CEO to resign. Curtis refused and rallied his forces, including clients and the media. Two days later, the board voted to drop the motion for Curtis’ de parture. In less than three weeks, Curtis was waving goodbye to his detractors and their supporters. (Editor’s note 2024: And as a result, VML formed as an ad agency, and today is one of the largest in the world.)

mour Road. The biggest mistake any local can make is to forget how jealously the town guards its city-owned hospital—a beige brick complex surrounded by 50 acres of rolling lawn that for years has been the most profitable hospital in the metro area. Les Haymons lost his $347,496 job as hospital president because he made that mistake. “I think he thought the hospital was his,” says Terry Myers, the new chairman of the North Kansas City Hospital board that fired Haymons in June. “It isn’t.” Af ter taking the hospital from near collapse to prosperity, Haymons clashed with fi nancially strapped town leaders over con trol of the hospital’s rich reserves. This summer, the skirmish escalated into a suburban version of a Wall Street takeover battle. Haymons, a deposed ex ecutive who knew more about profits than politics, withdrew from the fight, exacting a $1.06 million settlement in lieu of a lawsuit. And townspeople are reeling from a painful lesson: that local governments and city-owned hospitals can make for a dangerous mix. 1993 Rarely has Kansas City’s commitment to wooing convention business been so apparent. Skyscraper cranes, workers hun ched over fountains of sparks, and acres of steel and concrete are bridging Broadway with an expanded Bartle Hall. City leaders talk to billionaire presidential candidates and other developers about building a new convention hotel Downtown. Banker Cros by Kemper Jr. flashes his checkbook to help keep the Future Farmers of America con vention in Kansas City. “It would be unthinkable not to meet FEBRUARY How Much Do We Want Their Money?

daring real estate developments in re cent Kansas City history. First, there’s rehabilitation, which backers of the River Market project quickly will tell you is the most difficult kind of real-estate develop ment to manage. Next there’s the image problem. Re vitalization in the River Market district flourished briefly in the 1970s and then flamed out, the victim of mob corruption and violence that remains a stigma on the area. Add to that the timing. Real estate is in the dumps. Bankers are nervous. And as the nation’s longest peacetime economic expansion draws to a close, the prospect for business start-ups is dim. Yet the initial signs are promising for Kansas City’s $40.6 million River Market redevelopment. Although they billow endorsements, local political clubs’ power has nearly been extinguished. Whrrr. Whrrr. Whrrr. Can you hear it? It’s the sound of Tom Pend ergast spinning in his grave. He’s stirring because in Tom’s town, like the rest of the metro area, political clubs are declining, perhaps dying, as a major electoral force. A roll call of local political experts gives a vote of “no confidence” for the future of clubs, except for a handful that have tran scended traditional club boundaries. The new moonlighting has nothing to do with those people. In a specialist society, the new moonlighters have de veloped another specialty, another career interest. The moonlighting career might be worlds apart from the daytime profes sion, or it might be a natural outgrowth of what the person does by day. Whether an outlet for untapped or underused talent, a retail product or a service that goes beyond the scope of a MARCH Up in Smoke NOVEMBER By the Light of the Moon

OCTOBER Tug of War

North Kansas City’s most treasured asset sits on a wooded bluff overlooking the clutter of fast-food restaurants, liquor stores, convenience shops, and industrial warehouses crowding the east end of Ar

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I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

May 2024