by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Mike Hightower has now been on 22 Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce Leadership Trips, but he’d never been to Kansas City.
Former City Council President Kevin Hyde spent three weeks there last summer working on a case for his employer, Foley & Lardner.
Both came back from last week’s Leadership Trip impressed with the Midwestern city that looks and feels a lot like Jacksonville. Obviously, there isn’t an ocean in Missouri, but both Jacksonville and Kansas City are centered on rivers, have similar populations and an NFL team and are facing many of the same issues — how to revitalize its downtown and lure new businesses.
“It was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary,” said Hightower, who’s chair of the Chamber until the end of the calendar year. “It’s in the top two or three of the places I have been.”
As incoming Chamber Chair and North Florida Wholesale Regional President for Wachovia, it was Kelly Madden’s decision to go to Kansas City, which is the corporate home to Hallmark and H&R Block as well as the Kansas City Chiefs. Both Hightower and Hyde commended Madden on her choice.
“Kudos to Kelly and the Chamber staff for picking a city that people say is the most underrated in America and now I know why,” said Hightower, the current Chamber chair. “Kelly set up the meetings with the business leaders and the philanthropic community and we met with the very best that Kansas City has in the business community, its elected officials and its planners. There was not one wasted minute.”
Hyde said the opportunity to go back over a year later allowed him to see firsthand both the progress made on projects underway in 2008 and the progress made on things being talked about at the time.
“Kansas City is demographically similar to Jacksonville in size and business climate,” said Hyde. “A lot of what I saw was on a scale similar to Jacksonville’s.”
Hyde also complimented Madden for an agenda that included a mix of everything Kansas City has to offer.
“Kelly got an array of just incredible CEOs from Hallmark and H&R Block and others,” said Hyde. “Every person that spoke was a significant figure. They are focusing on downtown redevelopment and these are the folks in on that.”
Like Jacksonville, Hyde said Kansas City has a sports and entertainment complex that’s centered on its arena. Unlike Jacksonville, the developers in Kansas City are focusing the urban growth on that entertainment district.
“They are committed to the development of an entertainment district in the downtown core and they are using the arena as a catalyst for investors and developers,” explained Hyde. “They are taking vacant buildings and turning them into lofts. Here, we rate residential first, then commercial. In Kansas City, they did the opposite and it appears to be working. Their goal is 18,000 residents living downtown and they are halfway there.”
In addition to work done on this end to assure the trip was a success, Hightower said he was equally impressed with the folks in Kansas City, how well prepared they were, their professionalism, their Midwestern hospitality and their honesty in the local situation and what they were doing to create and keep business.
“They held nothing back in what they were doing and they were very forthcoming,” said Hightower. “They talked about their troubles, their progress, the issues they deal with, their best practices and the lessons they have learned. They talked about if they had to do things over, what they would do or if they would do it at all.”
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