Quote:
Originally Posted by IMBY
Coming from Minneapolis, I always thought if I did move back to the Midwest, it would be Kansas City, more mild, shorter winters, if nothing else, and the question: I'm bored, where can I drive to within 2-3 hours of this city? Far more choices than isolated Minneapolis!
There's a big plus to the availability of parking lots as the land is already cleared, and a developer, once approvals are in place, can start construction the next day! No delays with the historic preservationists debating if a building should be torn down or saved!
What have they done with the riverfront in Kansas City? I read one time KC suffered a major flood way back, before the dams were in place upstream.
There's one 6-sided building there, about 16-20 stories or so, that is identical to the building design of Pillsbury Center in Minneapolis. I always hated that design when I lived in Minneapolis, and there it is again, sitting in KC!
I'm sure KC gets some of that mercurial weather that can plague so many of the Plains cities, but not as extreme as Denver, where the temp's can skyrocket in a day, and fall off a cliff the next!
Doesn't KC also have a rather dense midtown district that distracts from the downtown area? I was through there way back in the 70's and I saw that shopping center which, I understand, was the first major shopping center in the country.
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Probably you mean the Plaza, which is kind of our "uptown". Built in the 20s, with "Spanish"-inspired architecture? From probably 1980-just a few years ago, it really functioned as KC's downtown, and remains our densest, most walkable neighborhood, though downtown is increasingly flexing it's muscle as our primary entertainment district and our fastest growing and increasingly most urban neighborhood. The Plaza remains KC's primary retail shopping district, however, and directly adjacent to it is the heart of KC's historic (up until just a few years ago) entertainment and nightlife scenes.
And KC is kind of like a smaller, surlier, warmer, funkier (and blacker) Minneapolis that made all the wrong choices that Minneapolis made right. Like Minneapolis is the Becky on Roseanne and KC is the DJ.