With its planned purchase of the ailing Health Midwest, the area's largest healthcare provider, HCA of Nashville, Tennessee will pump more fresh dollars into the local economy than any company in recent memory--a cool $1.125 billion in purchase price plus $450 million for capital improvements for a total transaction value of $1.575 billion. Barring the unforeseen, HCA will close the deal within a few months pending regulatory approval.

However, lawsuits launched by both Kansas and Missouri and an unseemly shakedown by community activists may have left HCA wondering if it really wants
to be in this market.

In March old line Kansas City firm UtiliCorp repackaged itself as the jet-age Aquila. And that, alas, was the highlight of the year for the troubled energy firm.

Soon afterwards, in the wake of the Enron scandal, Aquila exited the energy trading field and layed off more than a thousand employees but not before giving its top executives huge bonuses. Case in point, CEO Robert Green resigned with a $7.6 million severance package.

By the end of the year both Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's had devalued Aquila's debt rating to junk status.

Enron's fall-out also doomed and took down Andersen Kansas City, a presence in Kansas City since 1923.

The accounting side of the business dissolved largely into KPMG while the consulting side emerged in large part as MarketSphere Consulting.

Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN) revised its fourth quarter and full-year 2002 guidance upward due to continued strong consumer and aviation product sales during the fourth quarter. The company also announced expansion activities for its Olathe facilities. This expansion will include additional floor space to support Garmin's growing research and development needs, new call center associates, additional warehouse facilities, and other business needs.

(we guess)
Fully indifferent to America's trees and hundreds of its recently released employees, The Kansas City Star an- nounced plans for a new $199 mil. printing plant downtown.

After protests from preservationists doomed its plans to demolish the Park Lane Apartments to construct a new office building and much-needed parking, Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin made alternative plans to move to the Colonnade now under construction on the Plaza library site.

Sprint made the news all too often for lay-offs, more than 11,000 from Oct. '01 to the end of '02.

On the plus side, Sprint sold its directory business to R.H. Donnelley for a cool $2.3 billion and thanked its lucky stars that its proposed merger with WorldCom had fallen through when the Mississippi-based company was exposed as perpetrator of the most egregious case of crooked accounting in U.S. history.

Following bankruptcy, Birch Telecom successfully reorganized and in the process cut $230 million in debt from its balance sheet, making it once again a viable entity.

General Motors promised the next-generation of Chevrolet Malibu and a $500 million retooling to its plant in KCK's Fairfax District.

Also in Kansas City, Kansas Cabelas opened to great business and much acclaim in the newly christened Village West development next to the Kansas Speedway. Nebraska Furniture Mart and Great Wolf Lodge are soon to follow.

Bayer's Animal Health division completed a $60 million pharmaceutical production plant on its Shawnee campus. The plant is one of the most technologically advanced facilities of its kind in the world.

In related news, Intervet, Inc.--the U.S.subsidiary of Intervet, the world's third largest animal health company--has chosen a site in DeSoto, Kan. For a state-of-the-art campus that will serve as its regional administrative, manufacturing and R&D center. Intervet plans to employ a total of 170 at the new facility.

On the Ag front, Farmland Industries filed for bankruptcy adding to the woes of regional farmers, particularly those west of Missouri already suffering from drought and crop losses. In November, operating under a bankruptcy court, Farmland posted record net losses.

Vanguard Airlines filed for bankruptcy, putting nearly 1,100 employees out of work. It entertained an offer from the Hooters restaurant chain, a prospect that might have enlivened local travel in a way heretofore not imagined, before rejecting it as inadequate. Although reportedly searching for a new owner, the airline is simultaneously liquidating its assets.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company announced plans to invest $100 million in its Topeka plant over the next five years.

The decision came less than two months after Target Corp. announced that it would build an $80 million distribution center employing 650 people in south Topeka. "It's getting to be a good yearfor Topeka," said Doug Kinsinger, president of the Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce.

Also on the Topeka front, David Wittig resigned under fire as chairman and CEO of Topeka-based, Westar Energy.

During the last four years of Wittig's tenure,the company's stock had fallen from more than $40a share to under $10.

In November, Wittig was indicted by a federal grand jury and requested an indefinite unpaid administrative leave to concentrate on his legal defense. Westar obliged by booting him without a parachute, golden or otherwise.