Ingram's May 2024

Crestwood Holdings in 2013.

Boatmen’s, one of the nation’s 30 largest bank holding companies, is acquired by NationsBank (later Bank of America). 1997 EPR Properties incorporates in August, IPO in November for $278 million.

Groundbreaking for the new $429 million Sprint headquar ters in Overland Park.

Wyandotte County is chosen as the site of a new motor speed way by the International Speedway Corporation. 1998 Legislature agrees to create a public health authority, sever ing the financially struggling University of Kansas Hospital from the main university. 1999 Mercantile, now Missouri’s largest bank holding company, acquired by Firstar Corp. (which later was acquired by U.S. Bank).

Harley Davidson plant opens (it would close in 2019).

1993 Chicago’s Centel Corp. and Sprint Corp. complete a $4.7 billion merger. 1994 H. Roe Bartle Convention Center opens; Jim and Virginia Stowers begin funding a cancer-focused institute for medical research. 1995 First public stock offering for DST Systems, originally an operating unit of Kansas City Southern Railway. It would be acquired by SS&C Technologies in 2018 for $5.4 billion. 1996 p Bistate tax approval for Union Station’s $250 mil. restoration.

2001 WPP, the world’s largest ad company based on billings, acquires Kansas City’s VML, later merges it with Young & Rubicam to create VMLY&R. (In 2023, WPP combined it with its Wunderman Thompson unit and rebranded as VML.) p Kansas Speedway opens. Bruce Watkins Drive opens. 2002 Farmland Foods, the nation’s largest farm cooperative, files for bankruptcy and is later acquired by Smithfield Foods. Yellow Freight completes the spinoff of SCS Transportation, creating one of the region’s Top 25 public companies. Just four years later, SCS merged into Louisiana-based Saia, Inc.

Founding of Inergy LP by John Sherman, who would sell to

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Ingrams.com

May 2024