Ingram's May 2024

NIC, INC. Year Founded: 1992 Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. Sector: Government Services Provider Number of Employees: 978 (peak)

NPC INTERNATIONAL Year Founded: 1962 Headquarters: Leawood, Kan. Sector: Food Services Number of Employees: 36,000 (peak)

The company was co-founded in 1992 by Harry Herington, a motorcycle-riding former law-enforcement officer who, if you ever get a chance to meet him, will help you redefine what it means to be a raconteur. The company went public and claimed its spot on the NASDAQ in 1999. Had the federal government turned to NIC for its ACA site rollout, disaster might have been avoided; the company had already demonstrated its ability to turn thousands of local and state government digital operations into efficient web platforms that could streamline those varied tasks that the American public had come to dread: property-tax registrations, on-line payments and the like. Herington’s vision is the reason that most people today can avoid the dreaded trip to the vehicle licensing office to renew their tags—now it’s a matter of a few clicks of the mouse. In 2021, NIC was acquired by Texas based Tyler Technologies for a whopping $2.1 billion.

NPC International was a fast-food giant that grew from a single Pizza Hut franchise secured by Gene Bicknell, a Pittsburg, Kan., entrepreneur and one-time candidate for governor of Kansas, in 1962. Riding a franchising model that created a fraternity known as “Pizza Hut Millionaires,” who got involved early and contributed to the company’s explosion as a cultural phenomenon. In 1984, NPC went public with a stock offering, then returned to private-company status in 2001 and started adding Wendy’s sites to the portfolio in 2013. Before the end came, NPC was the world’s largest Pizza Hut franchisee, operating more than 1,200 locations in 27 states. It also was the biggest Wendy’s franchisee, with more than 380 of those stores in eight states, and was one of the Kansas City region’s largest private companies. But with little notice, the company declared bankruptcy in 2020, and California-based Flynn Restaurant Group made an offer of $816 million to acquire what was left.

NORTHPOINT DEVELOPMENT Year Founded: 2012 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Real Estate Devlopment Number of Employees: 400

SAINT LUKE’S HEALTH SYSTEM Year Founded: 1882 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Healthcare Number of Employees: 10,000+

The Great Recession of 2007-09 absolutely cratered the nation’s commercial real-estate sector. One project struggling to recover—without much success—was a massive logistics park in southwest Johnson County. In 2012, an enterprising Nathaniel Hagedorn, closer to his 30th birthday than his 40th, secured development rights to the site near Gardner in southwest Johnson County. The rest is Kansas City logistics history: Within three years, Hagedorn and his NorthPoint Development team had gone vertical on more than 3 million feet of industrial and warehousing space at Logistics Park Kansas City. That helped touch off an explosion of logistics growth in the region (LPKC has more than 18 million sf today), as national retailers saw a long-overdue light bulb go off over their heads. It has an industrial portfolio of more than 150 million square feet, 5,400 multifamily units developed and managed, and nearly $20 billion in assets under management.

One of the region’s oldest surviving enterprises has a spark ling new organizational structure as of this year: founded in 1882 as a single hospital, Saint Luke’s Health System eventually grew to include the mother ship near the Country Club Plaza, plus satellite locations in the Northland, Lee’s Summit and Overland Park. Combined, they made it one of the region’s most active health-care providers, based on annual admissions, which last year alone topped 42,300. Last year, continuing pressures for health-care institutions to consolidate led to an agreement with BJC Healthcare of St. Louis to form a single entity that would serve Missouri’s entire population of 6.2 million. The Kansas City operation is now designated as BJC’s west region. Its four medical centers accounted for more than $8 billion in revenues last year, not including other legacy operations of Saint Luke’s, such as physician offices and clinics. Julie Quirin, who had overseen the main campus, became president of the west region.

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May 2024

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