TKC BREAKING AND EXCLUSIVE NEWS!!! KANSAS CITY TOY TRAIN STREETCAR DRIVING OUT SMALL BIZ FROM DOWNTOWN!!!
Kansas City Insiders tell us that the toy train streetcar might be helping big companies like Burns & Mac but there's devastation on the way for small biz.
Check it:
ALREADY IN THE CITY MARKET THERE ARE SMALL BIZ COMPLAINTS THAT TOY TRAIN STREETCAR CONSTRUCTION IS KILLING CUSTOMER TRAFFIC!!!
- Parking complaints are well documented.
- The Downtown Maze of contruction is downright hostile to any retail merchant.
- And already beleaguered small local restaurants are reporting lower Summer margins and customer traffic.
And right now for very curious readers, let's take a brief stroll down memory lane to the not-so-distant past.
To wit . . .
REMEMBER THAT NOT SO LONG AGO THE P&L DISTRICT DEVASTATED THE DOWNTOWN RESTAURANT SCENE AND DROVE OUT MANY LOCALLY OWNED ESTABLISHMENTS!!!
We found a quick list and P&L District devastation that directly responsible for the closing of:
The Mango Room
Tanner's
The Studio
Bar Natasha
Zin
All local, all gone. Replaced with a kinda racist and certainly elitist place that loses more than $15 Mil a year.
And now . . .
THERE'S WORD OF UP TO AT LEAST HALF A DOZEN SMALL RETAIL BIZ AND RESTAURANT OWNERS SUFFERING AND PLANNING TO LEAVE THE CITY MARKET AREA THANKS TO THE TOY TRAIN STREETCAR!!!
They myth of the toy train bringing density is being exposed in practice and higher taxes are actually driving biz and people away.
This isn't Council Dude Russ Johnson's economic theory, this is the tragic economic reality of tin cup urbanism FAIL that has already devastated Kansas City once before . . .
Meanwhile . . .
This week, let's remember that BEFORE ANY OTHER NEWS OUTLET OUR BLOG COMMUNITY NOTED THE TOY TRAIN STREETCAR EATING UP ALL OF THE PROPOSED MISSOURI TRANSPORTATION TAX FUNDS . . .
Here's a nice little graph with a conservative estimate of our TKC reporting . . .
And so, we're still on track to throw a lot of local money away on a toy train while Kansas City infrastructure and more pressing road improvements wait.
Developing . . .
All aboard, next stop is Detroit.
ReplyDeleteYou'll be sorry when the next Super Bowl, Summer Olympics, World Cup, and Masters Golf Tournament all come to KCMO simultaneously and all because of the streetcar and the dozen restaurants and bars in the P&L District.
ReplyDeleteSly, Russ, and Caleb told me, so it must be true!
Innovation, arts, creativity, entrepreneurship, and billions of dollars.
World class!
Who, for Christ's sake, came up with the name "Toy Train"?? What a stupid-assed title for this multi-million dollar loss...
ReplyDeleteQUIET!!
ReplyDeleteshame that this is the way we move to detroit!
ReplyDeleteSo by TKC logic should everyone be grateful that the streetcar is preventing possible MODOT construction from putting businesses out at other parts of town? The fact that very little criticism is shared about the MODOT statewide sales tax shows the sophistication of TKC and it's whiners.
ReplyDeleteStep one is voting NO and taking this TDD (taxation Scheme) out and stomping on it.
ReplyDeleteThis hideous scam needs to GO DOWN.
Municipalities can do what they want with the state funding, if approved.
ReplyDeleteRun for office and we'll check back and see how that goes.
Tanner's? Wtf they left when p&l opened, because they sucked. The quaff stayed open. Let's stick with recent events
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't so long ago when downtown was devastated by surface parking lots and almost no businesses left at that time... how times have changed.
ReplyDeleteSoon there will be more businesses, residents and pedestrians in downtown.
We don't need toy train in River Market. We need more public parking lots. I advise friends to avoid City Market on Saturdays, no place to park.
ReplyDelete4:40: We may be unsophisticated, but at least most of us know when to use "its" and when to use "it's."
ReplyDeleteSoon there will be more businesses, residents and pedestrians in downtown.
ReplyDeleteAll dependent on taxpayer subsidies to make "interest payments".
6:14 grammer queer. Everybody knows, no's, new, knew doesn't Fucking care!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see the split on this vote on the streetcar. Odds are on a 65% vote against it. Conservatively. We are all pissed off about the tax burden, and we just won't shoulder anymore tax burden on a harebrained scheme such as this streetcar.
ReplyDeleteAnd vote that pontificating lying sack of shit mayor out of office.
Now we have proof that the light rail will ruin KC.
ReplyDeleteFinally, a loose thread.
I have personal knowledge of a business in the River Market area reporting a 50% decline in sales when comparing May 2013 to May 2014.
ReplyDeleteThis is business lost forever. Estimates are that the construction in the City Market will be going on well into the summer and into the fall. 6 months of this will put many, many of the long time companies located there out of business. It's a shame.
Soon fairies and pixie dust will rule the night!
ReplyDeleteSuburbs in KC, elsewhere, see post-recession bounce. KC Star
ReplyDeleteGreg and Adrienne Doring thought they had it all living downtown.
A 15th-floor condo with an expansive view of the riverfront. Close to the Sprint Center and the Power & Light District. A grocery store. An easy walk to the River Market.
“Downtown was going great guns,” Greg Doring said. “I wanted my little piece of it.”
Then came the children. Friends started moving away. Life started changing. The suburbs looked alluring. So they moved.
Nestled into their new, roomier Prairie Village home with three kids and a yard, the Dorings are emblematic of a new suburban growth threatening to steal residents from the city.
“We were moving into a different phase of our life,” Doring said. “It was just time for something else.”
Goodbye Proposed TDD!
I love rumors....
ReplyDeleteGreg and Adrienne! Come back downtown!
ReplyDeleteThere's really can't be more to life than $14 artesinal cocktails, soy latte's, skinny jeans with red tennis shoes, growing organic in your loft's window box, hanging out with other cool "makers", and cheering on Sly as he takes money from neighborhoods where people actually live to give us all our fun toys.
And we'll be 27 years old forever, so none of this is some kind of fad.
So come back and help us increase our downtown density and live in one of our "vertical neighborhoods, which is really just an old converted half-empty office building, but coming up with buzz words and phrases is a big part of Sly and our thing.
By the way, anybody see where Tinkerbell went?
Look at the makeup of the City Council. Most of those dumb asses have little business experience. Few if any have EVER created a single job.
ReplyDeleteTake Cindy Circo. While she has a nice set of tits and rumor has it she is a decent fuck, beyond that, she was a fucking nail tech. Not that's the kind of brain power I want making decisions that affect millions and millions of taxpayer dollars.
It's very difficult to make good business decisions when you haven't been in the arena, taken your lumps, learned, failed, got back up and went at it till you succeeded.
These fucks at City Hall could not bust a pimple on Cindy Circo's freshly shaved pussy.
"Because we were scheduled to ride to Cascone's at River Market this Saturday, I drove there Tuesday morning to check it out. Cascone's is great. BUT. Getting there is hazardous and dangerous. Street construction is everywhere. Some roads are closed. Most have big metal plates covering holes in the road. Big machines line the roads."
ReplyDeleteAny bar that isn't safe for a guy in a chicken suit isn't a bar i want to drink in.
ReplyDelete7:59 is right on the money. Downtown kc is simply not sustainable. But don't tell that to twenty- somethings who are just trying to figure it all out.
ReplyDeleteLulzers @ suburbanites talking about what is and isn't sustainable...
DeleteSuburbs = welfare state, 100% propped up by taxpayer subsidies at every level of government. Take away the taxpayer infusion and the house of suburban card collapses.
Fucking rubes.
ZOMG!!!!! Construction kills small biz, unless it's highway and road construction in the suburbs, then it creates wealth plus it's totally self-sufficient and sustainable with no publix monies for prairie fire at lionsgate, or the sprint campus, or TDDs at oak Oark mall, or subsidized Poverland Oark voncention penter, or billion dollar highway interchanges to nowhere with little traffic, or Historically large incentives for Amc, etc.
Jesus Christ you fucking rubes, get out a little more. Thig get built all the time in every city in America and business weather the inconvenience. You people are fucking hayseeds.
what was driving away Bar Natasha's business? That is the old dyke/swingers bar downtown
ReplyDelete"Then came the children. Friends started moving away. Life started changing. The suburbs looked alluring. So they moved."
ReplyDeleteWell, duh! And of course they moved to JOCO, leaving KC taxpayers holding the bag for all the eco devo they left behind.
"Thig get built all the time in every city in America and business weather the inconvenience. You people are fucking hayseeds."
ReplyDeleteThanks for your usual condescending, convoluted, and incomprehensible input, Mensa boy. I don't know what the above even means. I guess they graduate semi-illiterates in Nebraska if they'll leave the state and not come back. Looking for a rube or a hayseed? Do you have a mirror?
6/28/14, 10:21 AM A hayseed transplant calling Prairie Village hayseed?
ReplyDelete6/27/14, 7:59 PM Ding Ding Ding! Winning comment.
I you live in the proposed district vote no August 5th. If you know someone who lives in the district ask them to vote no.
ReplyDeleteYes, 20 somethings move out of downtown when the family comes (I was one of them). But here's the big shocker you might not realize...just as the 20s become the 30s, the Teens become the 20s.
ReplyDeleteI know, right? Crazy...as some people get older, so do other people that can move in and replace them. Either way, the demand for housing downtown hasn't decreased. Comparing anything downtown to "how it used to be" or another type of traditional housing development (burbs or rural, apartment or single family) is pointless on its face.
And Tony, that list of closed businesses was weak. None of those places were very good anyways. Tanners just couldn't compete with the Quaff, John's or the Peanut for the downtown dive bar (does fine in the burbs though). Ingredient isn't hurting in the old Mango Room location, and most of those in the list weren't even *in* the P&L district to begin with, but most of them opened up *after* P&L in the hopes of cashing in. Some did, others didn't. It wasn't a matter of anything other than a tough economy and not being good enough to survive. For each place you named that closed, 2 others have opened up or stayed open. They're not competing for customers, because while we might not eat there one night, we won't go back to the same place next week...we'll try something new.
Constant transitions and opening/closing is nothing new in the restaurant business...aside from a few long time family restaurants or national chains, the restaurant industry is always changing with the market. That's not a bad thing...unless you hate change on principle.