KC metro area leans toward Kansas — more than ever

The tug of war between Kansas and Missouri in the Kansas City area has been trending toward Kansas of late. (Illustration by Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)

Each Kansas Citian has their own way of answering the tourist’s question: “Is Kansas City in Missouri or Kansas?”

Some people curtly respond “Missouri,” knowing that Kansas City, Missouri, is larger in almost every way than Kansas City, Kansas.

People with a bit more equanimity will explain that both states have cities with that name, each one leaning on the state line as a dividing spine.

If you ask me, I will tell you that it’s one big metro area straddling the border. The KC heart, made with two hands: one Missouri, the other Kansas.

After all, living in Kansas City often means shuttling from state to state a few times each day. You buy groceries in Missouri, take your kids to baseball practice in Kansas, go to church in Missouri and then renew your driver’s license in Kansas. You don’t even notice the “Welcome to …” signs.

However, that state line still matters. Between Kansas and Missouri, there has always been a rebalancing of power, of culture, of population and more. That balance (or imbalance) across the state line is a metric that Kansas Citians subtly track each day as we ping pong from east to west and back again.

During my 20-something years living in the metro, the balance has never been so tilted toward Kansas. Some of this may be temporary, a series of coincidences, possibly fleeting, ranging from stadium leases to economic recessions. Other causes of the imbalance are longstanding trends, as Kansas creates (or moves) more vital resources to its side of the border.

Most obviously, consider the announcement that the Kansas City Chiefs will leave Arrowhead Stadium on the east side of Kansas City in favor of a domed stadium in Kansas. Kansas City’s most successful team, with the biggest stadium for the biggest American sport, will be in Kansas by 2031.

Sporting Kansas City moved that same path westward on Interstate 70 in 2011. They packed up from a home base of Arrowhead Stadium to a soccer-specific stadium in the Legends complex in Wyandotte County.

Currently caught in limbo, the Kansas City Royals have not chosen their next home, although it appears a Missouri location, near Union Station, is likely. The Major League club’s indecision and rootlessness hardly signals civic confidence for the Missouri side.

There’s a chance, if only slight, that the three most valuable sports teams in Kansas City will leave Missouri.

Meanwhile, the Country Club Plaza shopping district in Missouri has faded as an undoubted destination in the metro area. In the 2000s and 2010s, every out-of-town visitor that we hosted received our tour of the Spanish-themed architecture in the midtown area: the Plaza III steakhouse, Pottery Barn shopping and Brio cocktails.

Each of those locations has now closed, contributing to a vacancy rate more than 30% on the Plaza last year, according to the Kansas City Star.

Across the border and south, the shopping centers and malls of Johnson County are landing showcase tenants, such as a LEGO store at Town Center. A potential relocation of the Nordstrom department store to the Plaza was scrapped in 2022.

Again, there are reasons to think this may be a passing moment for the Missouri side, especially with a new ownership group managing the Plaza and promising redevelopment. But it’s a moment nevertheless.

Shopping and sports are just the conversation starters. 

Four counties huddle around the metro city center of Kansas City: Jackson and Clay on the Missouri side, Wyandotte and Johnson in Kansas. Since 1970, Johnson County has grown consistently and rapidly. The county’s population has almost tripled.

Meanwhile on the Missouri side, Jackson County has grown only 11% since 1970. It’s a bleak but true story of white flight to the suburbs made more punishing by the economic recession of 2008-2009. The most recent population estimates show Johnson County only 100,000 residents behind in 2024, despite being a smaller county by area.

Currently, the Kansas City metro area has a rare balance among American cities. The Brookings Institute analyzed multi-state metro areas in 2020 and found that Kansas City’s economy was closely divided between Missouri (51.2%) and Kansas (48.8%). Only one other city, Clarksville, Tennessee, was more balanced from one state to another.

Since 2001, Johnson County has been growing almost three times faster than Jackson County, according to the average growth rates from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. For that reason, it seems likely that the relative balance is about to flip to Kansas in the coming years — if it hasn’t already.

It’s noteworthy that this moment of transition comes after a seeming truce between Kansas and Missouri. Each government vowed to hold off on the shower of tax breaks and sweetheart deals used to entice one corporate headquarters after another to move office buildings.

Just one year ago, KCUR reported: “Suddenly, that race came to a halt. In 2019, the governors in both states recognized the futility of these battles and agreed to stop the poaching. Since then, most economic development officials in the region say, the truce has worked.”

And yet, Kansas now appears ascendent and Missouri depleted.

Be careful though, Kansans, what we wish for. Granting endless tax breaks can threaten government revenue and public services. Just look to Jackson County politics to see the gridlock, bitter rhetoric and infighting that can result.

Please don’t read this column as cross-border trash talk. After all, my first college (Mizzou), my first home (in the Brookside neighborhood) and my wonderful wife are Missouri-born.

I also haven’t mentioned so many civic strengths from Missouri. A new Missouri airport provides access to the metro. The city’s museums and parks define the visual and skyline of KC: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Union Station, the World War I Museum and Loose Park. 

The Power and Light entertainment district surrounding the T-Mobile Center hosts most major concerts and civic events. Don’t forget Bartle Hall and the Kaufman Center as downtown landmarks and gathering spaces.

In those respects, the Kansas side still can’t compete.

Nevertheless, my Show Me State in-laws yell, “Traitor!” as they read this.

Not so.

In my mind, the Kansas City metro is best when unified. It flourishes when both sides of the state line are succeeding and cooperating (see the joint effort to host World Cup matches).

Creating a seamless, thriving metro area is not a matter of beating the other side with an economic border war of dueling tax incentives and rivalry. Why keep score if we are all on the same team?

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.