Developers lay out their visions for the Kansas City of tomorrow
http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/kans...wFullText=true
"By 2020, Kansas City's downtown may more resemble a neighborhood than a business center.
"I'd say it already is," says Kansas City, Missouri, City Councilman Ed Ford, whose district once included downtown. "We have more residents and probably less jobs than we did 10 years ago. I think we'll see that trend continuing."
Not probably. Definitely.
Downtown Kansas City lost 16,000 jobs between 2001 and 2011, despite City Hall's pouring billions of dollars into sprucing up the once-seedy core. Much of the employment loss is attributed to an aging stock of office buildings in the south loop, from which companies have fled in large numbers. Parking shortages and outmoded building configurations have made cheaper locales, such as Overland Park's Sprint Campus, or newly renovated buildings like Union Station preferable to stodgy skyscrapers from the 1960s, like Commerce Tower."
Great article with an update on UMKC moving the art school campus downtown.