Gateway, we hardly knew ye.
 The Kansas City Business Journal reports that Gateway Inc. is finally putting their ill-fated West Bottoms facility out of its misery. The final 130 employees that remain from a one time high of about 1500 will be laid off and the building shuttered on July 14th.Remember all the hoopla surrounding the "relocation" of the Gateway customer service center? It was the mid-90's and then Mayor Cleaver and the rest of the council threw every incentive they could at the South Dakota company. That included TIF, tax abatements and even a pass on the 1% earnings tax that the rest of us enjoy paying. The idea behind all those incentives was that the Gateway development would serve as a catalyst for the surrounding area (the West Bottoms). Well? What did we get out of it? A vacant, crappy looking, neo-modernist, 150,000 square foot monument to our failed economic development policies. Hey, at least it's not blighted anymore. Right? |
Comments on "Gateway, we hardly knew ye."
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Eric said ... (2:37 PM) :
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Mark said ... (4:10 PM) :
post a commentSo are they repaying the subsidies??
I'd like to know that too Eric. I'm printing out the 65 page TIF plan for some light bedtime reading. Considering the age of the agreement I doubt there are any clawback constraints in it.
The first thing I noticed from the 1995 document was that Gateway could find no office space in KC back in 1994. Uhh, riiigghht... Next I notice this sentence, "Gateway has increased the projection of its future employment levels so that Gateway, subject to the approval of this Plan, now projects it will employ approximately three thousand people in its new additional facility by 1997." You need to picture John Lovitz saying that and then adding "yeah, that's the ticket!"