In the life of a city, 35 years is but a drop in the bucket.
In the life of a business, 35 years is pretty significant.
In the life of a specialized regional magazine, 35 years is,
well, cause for celebrating a great city and its leaders.

 

Which is precisely what we’re doing this month—celebrating an amazing run at providing timely and in-depth analysis of the trends, businesses and people who have been the driving forces behind commerce and economic development in the Kansas City area for the past 35 years.

In this special collector’s edition of Ingram’s, we take a look at our city, its businesses and its people as they were in 1975, and show you how the city, its businesses and its people have evolved in 35 years.

Amazingly, for all that has changed, the city is in a remarkably similar place now to where it was in the mid-1970s—
coming off of a massive building boom that left Kansas City feeling “major league” in every way imaginable with a new airport, sports complex, arena, convention center, a unique “city within a city” known as Crown Center, and one of
the hottest and hippest entertainment districts in the Midwest, the River Quay.

And few people knew it at the time, but a brand new, ambitious real estate project way out in the boondocks—
they called it Corporate Woods—would become the catalyst for the most dynamic economic engine in all the Midwest for
decades to come.

Aside from Johnson County, the region wasn’t able to maintain that momentum. The economy took a nasty turn in the mid and late 1970s, halting much of the economic development that began in the early 1970s. Our state-ofthe-art airport lost its hometown airline to St. Louis, and the commercial development that was expected to build up around the airport never materialized.

Two of the four major league teams that filled our stadiums left for greener pastures. The Chiefs, after years of
success, were being coached by someone other than Hank Stram for the first time in the franchise’s once-proud history— and the team was about to enter a long, long era of futility. Bartle Hall quickly became small and outdated as other cities built bigger convention centers, and added thousands of hotel rooms. Kansas City would eventually add a “convention hotel,” the Vista, but it wasn’t enough to keep conventioneers coming to KC.

And that hot new entertainment district? A few mob-related bombings and murders quickly killed River Quay.

The country was in a similar place, too. President Ford was grappling with an economy in turmoil—he encouraged us
all to Whip Inflation Now. In 1975 he survived not one but two assassination attempts. Still the country was glad to
finally have Watergate behind us and our involvement in Vietnam was coming to a close. That was the good news. The
bad? Disco was invading out airwaves, and we collectively suffered from just about the worst fashion sense in recorded
history.

In 1975, people got their news from one of two sources—on TV Kansas Citians had five broadcast channels from
which to choose, with three channels offering local news at 6 and again at 10, or network news (ABC, NBC and
CBS) at 5:30. There was no Fox, no CNN or MSNBC. And certainly no internet. The other primary information source
was newspapers—plural. We could wake up to The Kansas City Times in the morning, then come home from work
to The Kansas City Star.

In the newspapers, as on TV news, it was one-size-fits-all. If you wanted to find out what’s going on in the world,
you waited until the news came to you.

In 1975, a new media source was added to the mix when Ludwell G. Gaines III launched an exciting new business magazine called Outlook. In the publisher’s inaugural column he wrote, “I believe Kansas City is entering an exciting and promising new era, an era of planned growth and a new dynamic spirit. Outlook is a new publication intended to report on, and to be a forum for, the Kansas City economic community. I believe that our approach to business journalism has never been more relevant and in demand than right now.”

While the city’s “exciting and promising new era” didn’t last, the magazine and its mission did. The magazine has
changed ownership, publishers and even its name several times—Outlook became Corporate Report in 1977 then eventually Ingram’s in the mid-80s. But the core values and mission established in that very first edition 35 years ago remained consistent through the years. That consistency of mission has been made possible by the fact that all of the
magazine’s publishers shared a common vision and purpose, and for that we salute those previous publishers—Allan
J. Duerr, Kate B. Glazer, Stephen M. Hedlund, William F. Toevs, Richard Kappa, Woody Overton, Robert P. Ingram
and the current publisher Joe Sweeney.

In these pages, Ingram’s current staff of editors, writers and columnists—including longtime contributor Jack Cashill—takes an interesting and entertaining stroll down memory lane, reminding you how Kansas City looked and operated around the time this magazine was born. But there’s more to this edition than fond recollection. With so many similarities between then and now, perhaps we can all learn from the victories and ultimately missed opportunities of 35 years ago and find a way to maintain and even expand the current wave of civic pride and development stretching from the Speedway and Legends in the west, to the Independence Center region in the east; from the continued, widespread success of everything in southern Johnson County, to the better-late-than-never development throughout the Northland
and points well-beyond.

And smack dab in the center of it all is the heart of the metro, Kansas City, given a new lease on life the past few years, attracting businesses, tourists and, most important, residents back into the city’s central core for the first time in years. And here to celebrate everything that is good about Kansas City and its business community is Ingram’s, for 35 years past, and ready for an exciting and bright future.