Building the Bistate

by Robert J. Marcusse

We're on the verge of another incredible boom in economic development, with major investments being made in the urban core, with life sciences and distribution/logistics gaining importance in the region, and project activity rebounding after the recession.

By the late 1960s, Kansas City was-- in the words of our late friend, Charlie Kimball--"under-utilized, under-built, under-recognized and under-energized." In the "city game," our town was just warming the bench.

Then things began to happen--thanks in large part to the vision of Mayor Ike Davis and other city, county and business leaders. Ike's leadership was critical at this point in our history. When he was mayor, more than $5 billion in new construction was announced, 75 percent of it from private sources. Those projects included the twin stadiums, Crown Center, KCI airport, Hospital Hill and the Alameda Plaza Hotel.

In late 1971, a group of about 20 local business leaders, led by Don Hall, met to discuss how to change Kansas City's non-image. Bill Johnson, Hallmark's public relations director, suggested a major campaign to tell our city's story to the nation.

The campaign was called Prime Time. It was kicked off at a New York press conference that generated news reports well beyond the group's expectations. Kansas City was featured in the New York Times, National Geographic, the Saturday Evening Post and dozens of others.

Charlie Kimball continued to play a major role in the launch of the Prime Time campaign, flying all over the country giving speeches--from San Francisco, to Chicago, to Boston. We hosted reporters in Kansas City and successfully landed the 1976 Republican National Convention.

Prime Time quickly became a model for city promotion. But the time had come to more fully capitalize on our new image; time to directly compete with other cities for firms that were expanding or moving--time to turn publicity into jobs, and visitors into investments.

The Chamber of Commerce appointed a task force to study how best to do this. The recommendation was to create an autonomous but affiliated economic development organization modeled after existing programs in Memphis, San Antonio, Buffalo and Omaha.

Based on this recommendation, the Kansas City Area Development Council was born, and merged with the Prime Time program into one organization. Jim Monroe, an experienced economic development professional from Nebraska, was the first KCADC President.

KCADC's role would be to represent the bi-state metropolitan area as a whole, eliminating the parochialism that had been pitting cities, counties, railroads, utilities and developers against each other, and hurting our chances of attracting new business.

And despite the success of Prime Time, we had not completely overcome Kansas City's image challenge. It would be important to maintain the momentum of our national public relations campaign, and to supplement it with advertising and publications.

That was an exciting time in our city's history--and a time when we learned a lot about economic development. There were a number of campaigns that were used over the years, the "Kansas City Area: The Excitement is Building," of the 80s and early 90s gave way to the "America's Smart Cities," campaign launched in 1994. These regional campaigns helped our community and our product continue to grow and develop from 6 counties to the current 18, to more than 50 communities and over 2 million residents that we represent every day.

In addition, Greater Kansas City's award-winning Smart City® campaign did an excellent job of positioning the metro area as a telecom and high-tech hub. This image campaign successfully earned national media exposure and brand equity among corporate decision makers and site location consultants.

We're on the verge of another incredible boom in economic development, with major investments being made in the urban core, with life sciences and distribution logistics gaining importance in the region, and project activity rebounding after the recession. It's time to challenge our community and companies considering sites for relocation and expansion to "think big," and to "think KC." We intend to make that our battle cry in coming years and look forward to sharing this message with all of our city, state and county partners in the months ahead.

The competition for jobs and investment is fierce. The choices available today for a region are to compete or to retreat. We intend to compete and to win in the years ahead.

Robert J. Marcusse is President and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council. He may be reached at 816.221.2121 or by email at marcusse@smartkc.com.