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Platte and Clay counties remind me of Blue Springs. New development, but still very rural. They don't represent most of the KC metro.
First off, I lived in Blue Springs for 8 years and it is not rural at all. It can be blue collar in parts, but it's not rural. It's actually nearly completely built out except for the far southern edges and parts of the far northern parts where it's very hilly and the density within the buildable parts of the city are probably one of highest for suburban KC. Now the city is nearly surrounded by county and state park space which may make it seem disconnected from other built up areas for example the very large Flemming Park separates the city from Lee's Summit so when driving down highway 40 it has an odd rural feel to it, but that is not how 99% of Blue Springs is (where people actually live). If you actually know the city, you would not call it rural at all, just outer suburbia in an area with a lot of parks and lakes. There is a lot of recreation in the area.
Clay and Platte Counties are very rural in their northern areas as they are large counties but the parts of the counties closest in where most people live is rural in only very small areas now because of terrain and flood plains. What can be developed is rapidly developing and infilling. Because of the topography, the northland can't totally build out like Overland Park or Olathe. Look at google earth and look at the difference between the flat gridded out farmland out south vs wooded and valleys etc of the Northland forcing development to jump around. There is not much south of 152 that could be considered rural now. There is land that can't be developed, but it's very suburban.
All the sprawl north of 152 is simply extremely fast growing areas where rural is converting to suburbia. You still have some leapfrog development mostly due to the terrain and parts like Shoal Creek won't be paved over like Overland Park is due to all the creeks, valleys etc, but its filling in. It's absolutely no different than western Lenexa or western Shawnee where topography creates leapfrog development and streets often deviate away from the grid.
Suburban sprawl has two types in KC.
The more western type (suburban Dallas, Denver, phoenix etc) where sprawl just follows flat, relatively treeless easy to develop land along a grid pattern of streets. This is JoCo east of I-35 (west of 35 as well further south). There are a few small areas like this in other parts of KC but not many (like For southeast Lee’s Summit (US-50 heading toward Warrensburg).
Then you have the more eastern type sprawl (St Louis, Cinci, Baltimore, Philly, Atlanta) where sprawl has to work around rugged terrain and flood plains. This includes much of JoCo west of 35, nearly all of WyCo except west of 435 and large portions of the northland.
I'm not sure why you don't find fault with low density suburban and exurban development in Platte and Clay counties as it likely isn't an efficient use of land for the long-term? Also, unless those areas see a huge ramp up of new jobs, the demographics would certainly not support population growth of that magnitude in the next 10-15 years. You want to see suburban population growth on steroids? Go take a trip to Collin County, TX, just north of Dallas. Insane amounts of change every year.
I have never had a problem with sprawl. It’s not my favorite thing, but suburbia is here to stay, it’s in every metro area and it’s where the vast majority of people live in America. I have stated that many many times on this forum. Now I do like it when they attempt to do more mixed use development and transit friendly development in the suburbs, but KC is so far behind in that respect it’s not really even worth discussing. Other than very tiny stand alone developments such as zona rosa, leawood park place etc standard sprawl in a king in metro KC and most American cities (although KC is pretty far behind the trend of offices coming back to the city, and urban neighborhoods gentrifying, plus there is no regional transit.)
My problem with Johnson County is not that it’s sprawl. It’s that the county tends to grow at the expense of KCMO. If I-470 in Lee’s Summit was nothing but office parks filled with poached KCMO companies and Lee’s Summit refused to work with KCMO for anything at all (zoo, stadium funding etc) and was basically nothing more than an economic enemy of KCMO I would have as much resentment toward Lee’s Summit (or Liberty or Blue Springs) as I do with Johnson County.
So back to the original topic. Placing KCI near southern JoCo on the MO side would have probably been the nail in the coffin for KCMO. The airport would have nearly completely benefited growth in JOCo while siphoning the economy from KCMO at an even faster pace than what happened in the 70’s-90’s. Having KCI in the Northland has kept a large part of the regional economy better tied to KCMO. Now had KCMO not annexed the Northland, who knows, maybe the city would be better off today as a smaller urban city. But maybe the northland would have become the fierce competitor that JoCo has become and siphoned all the companies etc to Parkville office parks, although not likely because it's the same state. The main reason the Nortland has not grown like JoCo is because of the lack of jobs and it’s the same city as KCMO south. Because there are no incentives to move (KCMO is not going to give AMC 40 million to move to from one part of the city to another), so the northland has not added the jobs and the rooftops didn’t have anything to follow. Even without the jobs, the Northland is now booming with residential and yes, that’s much better than nothing happening up there and letting the metro sprawl deeper into Kansas which is has been disastrous for KCMO (and ultimately caused the entire metro to loose ground nationally).
If only KCI could've been originally built on the eastern side of the metro to begin with. Central, north and southern parts of the metro would've had easier commute times. And all that northland sprawl would've just been added to Blue Springs and Lees Summit etc. Perhaps, furthering a concentration of our suburbs eastward towards our centralized state capital. Like how St. Louis' suburbs extend westward.
On another question. How much involvement does Jeff City have, or cares to have, with KCI? They were just about to squander hundreds of millions towards another stadium for St. Louis. Would it be too much to ask for their involvement for a new terminal? I'd bet if St. Louis needed a new terminal there'd be no issue.
If only KCI could've been originally built on the eastern side of the metro to begin with. Central, north and southern parts of the metro would've had easier commute times. And all that northland sprawl would've just been added to Blue Springs and Lees Summit etc. Perhaps, furthering a concentration of our suburbs eastward towards our centralized state capital. Like how St. Louis' suburbs extend westward.
On another question. How much involvement does Jeff City have, or cares to have, with KCI? They were just about to squander hundreds of millions towards another stadium for St. Louis. Would it be too much to ask for their involvement for a new terminal? I'd bet if St. Louis needed a new terminal there'd be no issue.
There is almost no place to put an airport out east. It would have been 35-40 miles out to find a large enough piece of flat land, not to mention you would have to use eminent domain and buy out hundreds of properties to assemble such a site. Then you have had noise problems etc. The current location of KCI is fine. I don't understand why people hate the location. It works great. Flight patterns avoid nearly all the population and even if the Northland totally builds out, most flights won't go over development the way the runaways are aligned. Most flights to KCI fly over the speedway and just west of Smithville lake. KCI is not that far from the central city. If you fly a lot and live in Lee's Summit or southern JoCo, then deal with it. You chose to live on the opposite side of town of the airport.
Jeff City (Missouri) doesn't give a rip about KCMO for the most part, however, the airport is a stand alone facility that is funded via airline fees, faa and other federal grants and their own revenue generating sources like parking and retail. KCI knows it needs a terminal and they can fund it. They just have to convince voters to pass a vote so they can sell bonds to do it.
I use BWI. They don't have to go through all that, they just do their own expansions and improvements and tell people what they are doing and whatever projects they do always makes the airport better.
First off, I lived in Blue Springs for 8 years and it is not rural at all. It can be blue collar in parts, but it's not rural.
That's probably why it feels rural to me. I usually drive up 7 from 50HWY. There is nothing on 7 until you reach Moreland School Rd. Just by looking at a map, you can tell that the majority of Blue Springs's population is between I-70 and 40.
Compared to Independence, Blue Springs feels very rural and sparsely populated. Although I guess Blue Springs looked fairly similar 20 years ago to what Odessa and Grain Valley look like today. Most of the shopping venues in Blue Springs (the whole area around Target, and most of the strip centers off 7) look like they were built in the last decade.
That's probably why it feels rural to me. I usually drive up 7 from 50HWY. There is nothing on 7 until you reach Moreland School Rd. Just by looking at a map, you can tell that the majority of Blue Springs's population is between I-70 and 40.
Compared to Independence, Blue Springs feels very rural and sparsely populated. Although I guess Blue Springs looked fairly similar 20 years ago to what Odessa and Grain Valley look like today. Most of the shopping venues in Blue Springs (the whole area around Target, and most of the strip centers off 7) look like they were built in the last decade.
Again, there is nothing rural about blue springs. The northeastern parts of Independence are far more rural than any of Blue Springs. Actually the areas north of Pink Hill (where it becomes rural around the Lake City ammunition plant) is actually Independence city limits. Blue Springs has some open areas way out south and along Adams Dairy Parkway that are still filling in, but other than that, it's nearly built out and landlocked by other cities and parkland. So I just don't understand what you mean. The city has 55,000 people and one of the highest densities of any suburb in metro KC.
Blue Spring is not all that new either. It was one of the fastest growing cities in the nation in the 70's and 80's which is when most of the housing was built. Then it slowed and even started to see some decay and blight in the 90's and early 2000's before seeing a new wave of development and investment after about 2005. Today the city is once again quite healthy and growing with good schools, nice infrastructure and many basic retail options and probably the best recreational infrastructure in all of suburban KC (MO and KS). The area has tons of awesome parks, lakes, little league parks, bike trails, state parks, bmx park, one of the metro's best dog parks etc.
All the retail along Adams Dairy is new and most of the strip malls along Route 7 have been rebuilt. The last major eyesore in the city the old White Oak Mall at 40 and 7 is being replaced with a new retail development.
While living in Blue Springs, I was VERY active in the community (who would have thought right?). I can honestly say that I might even be personally responsible for some of the good things that are happening there now and helping to turn the entire city around. We lived on the west side along Woods Chapel near the border of Lee's Summit, Lake Tapawingo and Independence. While the area was very stable, the city was letting the infrastructure rot away and business close while giving tax breaks to all the new retail along Adams Dairy. The Woods Chapel and Route 7 corridors were starting to look like crap and all the new homes and other development were going up in Grain Valley, southeastern Independence and northern Lee's Summit. Blue Springs had become totally stagnant.
The entire time I lived there, I was going to city hall meetings, writing to city council members, getting to know the mayor and police department, and organizing neighborhood meetings and always had opinion columns in the Examiner newspaper. I was totally against the tax breaks they gave to Walmart, Target etc and I wouldn't shut up about them. We finally got through to the city council and mayor that they needed to start rebuilding "existing" parts of the city or they were going to lose the entire city regardless of what happens at Adams Dairy. We helped get the city to rebuild Woods Chapel Road and bring retail back to the corridor, clean up the hotels along the interstate and get them re-flagged, fund the express buses into downtown KCMO and build really nice park and ride lots, build more bike lanes and add sidewalks to the parks and clean up all the strip mall blight along Route 7. There was nothing wrong with the city wanting to see new growth out south and along Adams Dairy, but it needed to also take care of what already had. They did that and now Blue Springs has come back and become a very nice middle class suburb. And while living in Blue Springs, I remained extremely active with issues in KCMO.
Sorry to be so winded about Blue Springs. Everywhere I live, I take great pride and helping to make my community a better place and I really do feel like I deserve to pat myself on the back a little bit for helping get Blue Springs back on track. It's a great suburb that was very close to becoming suburban blight. Everything was about to skip right over the city to Grain Valley much like what happened to Grandview and with Cass County. Now the entire Blue Springs/Grain Vally area (It's basically one area now) is a growing suburban area of nearly 70,000 people with very little blight. And if they ever get commuter rail (blue springs very much supports the idea) then Downtown Blue Springs would come back to life as well.
Like I said, it would have ended up costing far more to do both terminals (or even one it sounds like) and it would not have fixed most of the problems that a new terminal would. All that for a renovated terminal that would have make people walk just as or further than a new terminal.
A large price tag to reduce walking distance for a population that is often overweight and out of shape. Watched the video and he didn't have much to offer. Renovating would create too large of an airport because it incorporates today's design. So, the goal is to cram more people into a smaller airport to provide better service. It will be built and then they will say we need a larger airport and they can help us out with the design.
A large price tag to reduce walking distance for a population that is often overweight and out of shape. Watched the video and he didn't have much to offer. Renovating would create too large of an airport because it incorporates today's design. So, the goal is to cram more people into a smaller airport to provide better service. It will be built and then they will say we need a larger airport and they can help us out with the design.
Like most modern terminals, a new terminal at KCI would be built to be expandable. Concourses can simply be extended as new gates are needed.
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