Ingram's May 2024

Kansas City is well on the way to reclaiming its status as one of the nation’s premier centers for logistics operations. America’s Heavy Lifting Is Done Here

by Dennis Boone

Fifty years ago, the Kansas City region was one of the nation’s Top 10 markets for logistics facilities, ranked ninth na tionally with 95.65 million square feet of system capacity. A lot has changed in the decades since to reshuffle the rankings; Char lotte, N.C., bumped this region from the Top 10 in 1988. The trends that allowed other markets to move ahead in distribu tion and warehousing emerged as the na tion’s population surged from 216 million then to 330 million today—up more than 50 percent—but considerably faster on the coasts than here. But that’s the nice thing about change:

It keeps changing. The factors that once made this region one of the nation’s freight centers have tilted back in Kansas City’s favor. Over the past decade-plus, this has been among the nation’s very hottest markets for industrial property growth. We still haven’t recovered Top 10 status—but the signs say we’re well on the way. Since the 2020 pandemic rewrote the rules of the national supply chain—and saw unprecedented consumer demand for items once consigned to the aisles of retailers—the growth here has been historical. No other word describes the increase of more than 40 million square

feet of inventory added in that time frame. That burst of activity has catapult ed Kansas City back up the rankings; it’s now No. 15 by square footage in logistics capacity despite an MSA population that ranks No. 31. Multiple factors have driven that growth, but two in particular stand out: We’re close to the dead center of the na tion and its dispersed population, and our region isn’t constrained by either mountains or oceans. The list of contributing character istics has been robust. Centrality itself means little without access, and the Kansas City region has megatons of it,

Move ‘em Out: The BNSF intermodal facility near Gardner increased regional logistics-processing capacity by thousands of units a year.

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Kansas City’s Business Media

May 2024