road would load beef and poultry shipments brought in by
truck and then ship them southbound to Mexico,
Ottensmeyer said. KCS would carry Mexican produce on
the northbound leg, he said.
Chris J.F. Gutierrez, president of KC SmartPort, a non-
profit economic and logistics development organization,
said Kansas City actually benefits from being seen as a rival
of Chicago when it comes to supply chain projects. “Most
supply chain professionals know the difficulty of conges-
tion, labor, and other factors that challenge them in
Chicago,” Gutierrez said in an e-mail to DC VELOCITY.
“Kansas City does not have these issues and offers a com-
petitive option for [a] company to consider.”
Gutierrez said that when Kansas City is in the running as
a site for a new manufacturing or distribution center, “we
rarely are competing against Chicago.”
LOCATION, LOCATION …
When it comes to attracting industrial development, how-
ever, Kansas City still has some work to do. Local financial
institutions, by and large, adhere to very conservative lend-
ing practices. As a result, there is little, if any, so-called spec-
ulative development of industrial properties. While that
served the city in good stead during the economic down-
turn, it has made it hard to aggressively and creatively mar-
ket a property to a business looking to quickly expand or
relocate into an existing facility.
The most versatile Warehouses in the world
