P&L District Then and Now

Last week's post sparked a bit of conversation as I noted that in spite of the tax shortfalls in the P&L district in downtown KCMO, that the city is much better off with the district than with the abandoned area of town that preceded it  that was little more than multiple blocks of surface parking. Some kind readers sent me a couple of photos to help prove my point.

The first is an arial view from Google Maps of the area now occupied by the P&L

It's mostly just a bunch of surface lots. Meanwhile, here's a view from 14th and McGee looking Westward -- you can see the Empire Theater (which was abandoned at the time).  By the way, this photo is very copywrited -- so if you want to use it you're going to have to contact some folks at city hall to get usage rights. 

There actualy were 4 or 5 pretty cool buildings in this 5-6 square block area.

Meanwhile, I went down to the P&L and tried to take the exact same picture from the same angle today. I'm not in the exact same spot -- because the exact spot is somewhere inside the Sprint Center.  But this is about the right angle.

Note -- I took this at about 9:30 on Saturday morning -- thus the few people that were out and about. But regardless, it seems really obvious to me which area would be more appealing to a new company looking to relocate to Kansas City.

It certainly isn't perfect...but I think it's a huge improvement over where we were in 2003 in that part of downtown.

Comments

[Tony]

Respectfully,

Change doesn't always mean progress.

I'm sure Kansas City didn't have to pay millions for those parking lots, in fact, they probably brought in healthy amount of tax money and didn't discriminate.

[ScooterJ]

Here's another "before" picture for you...

http://syphon.com/personal/scott/pix/DCP_1682b.jpg

[Brent Toellner]

In all fairness Tony, yes, we provided TIF for the project -- but most of that was on revenue that didn't exist before (although, it could be argued that some of that TIF isn't "new" taxes, but displaced, it doesn't take much wandering around in the P&L to realize that most of the people down there don't live in KCMO).

So it's costing us several million to make up ths shortfall. I would say that we have more than made up for that in the number of jobs (thus e-tax), hotel room bookings, etc. I could be wrong.

Either way, trying to lure businesses to Kansas City requires something for us to sell....and wow, looking at ScooterJ's pic doesn't "sell" me as a reason I should move my company to KC.

I think overall it's a huge improvement over where we were. Yes, the racial tensions of the area need to get fixed. And yes, we need to get all of the storefronts filled so we can increase the tax revenue and thus, the taxpayers being on the hook for it. But block after block of surface parking lots in the middle of the city's downtown was a good recipe for us to get in the state of neglect this city saw for 25 years following the mid-70s.

This is unquestionably a step in the right direction...although definitely still working through some hurdles.

[Brent Toellner]

Wow Scooter. Thanks for posting that. That tells an even more dire story for the area circa 2003.