BACKGROUND INFORMATION

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On Downtown Revitalization Issues
...from Official & Unofficial Perspectives

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The Case For Downtown Revitalization
- File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
http://www.wichitagov.org/NR/.../0/downtownrevitalizationfinal.pdf
March 2009

Official joint report by:
• City of Wichita,
• Chamber of Commerce,
• Wichita Downtown Development Corp,
• Visioneering Wichita,
• Wichita Convention & Vistor's Bureau, and
• Young Professionals of Wichita

This plan addressed urban design, opportunity sites, marketing, parking and funding, etc.

WARNING: This report almost exclusively compares Wichita to very different cities -- three "case studies" of cities in the South/Near-South, several hundred miles away from Wichita, towards the East:

• Louisville, Kentucky,
• Chattanooga, Tennessee,  and
• Raleigh, North Carolina

...all in very different social, cultural, economic, geographic and climatic environments from Wichita.

The report DOES NOT give a detailed comparison to Midwestern / Southern cities closer to Wichita (geographically and characteristically) -- such as:

• Kansas City & Topeka, KS
• St.Louis, Columbia, Joplin, Springfield & Branson, MO
• Omaha & Lincoln, NE
• Des Moines, IA
• Chicago, Springfield and Peoria, IL
• Indianapolis and Ft.Wayne, IN
• Tulsa, Oklahoma City, OK
• Dallas/Ft.Worth, Austin, Lubbock, TX
• Denver and Colorado Springs, CO

A few of these are mentioned in passing, but the detailed studies were of the comparatively unrelated, basically southeastern cities.
 

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What Do Young Adults Think About Wichita?
http://www.kansas.com/business/story/1191756.html
(SURVEY) (Click graph to enlarge)
Wichita Eagle, Business News, Feb 21, 2010 .
Detailed poll results (data), only published in Sunday newspaper, Business News section; data not available with the online article, but graphed for you here (click to enlarge), and itemized in the table below:

This survey, and the related survey below, are being described in official and business circles as "guidelines" for community development priorites -- focusing on the desires of a narrow class of young, college-educated, upper-middle-class, mostly-white Wichitans -- many of them transients -- to the exclusion of everyone else. Various consultants advise that enticing these "high value" workers to Wichita (and keeping them here) is critical to attracting major corporations -- and their other jobs -- to Wichita (and keeping them here).

NOTE: Only YOUNG PROFESSIONALS surveyed. -- NOT taking into consideration the MAJORITY of the community, nor even the majority of Wichita's young adults. Young "white collar" workers are studied. "Blue-collar" / "gray-collar" / "pink-collar" workers and homemakers (most of Wichita's population) are not considered. Nor are retirees, nor later-middle-aged workers, nor children, teens or even college students.
 

Survey Results - Young Professionals
Feb.21, 2010 Wichita Eagle, Business Section, page 5B
SURVEY RESULTS	Believe this quality important	Believe Wichita has this quality
Cost of Living	96%	93%
Ease of Getting Around	90%	80%
Quality of Recreation & Environment	84%	53%
Quality of Culture, Dining & Nightlife	80%	66%
Diversity, Community Engagement	69%	48%

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Young Professionals Survey
- File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat -
http://webfiles.wichita.edu/cedbr/YoungProfSurveyPP.pdf
by Wichita State University CEDBR
      (Center for Economic Development & Business Research)

A survey of selected young adults (NextGen YUPPIES ?).
Includes their comments on local amenities - including Downtown, the River, Old Town, variety of shopping and restaurants, ... and complaints: a lack of a progressive movement, progressive transportation options, etc.

NOTE: Only YOUNG PROFESSIONALS surveyed. Not taking into consideration the majority of the community, nor even the majority of Wichita professionals or young adults.
 

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WICHITA - "Key Industries - Office Operations"

Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition
http://www.gwedc.org/key_industries-back_office.php

A summary of Wichita office-based activity and resources, by the Wichita umbrella organization for local economic development (organized to promote Wichita business growth). Talks in some detail about Downtown Wichita. Other menu items link to related topics about Wichita.

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WICHITA WEATHER vs. OUTDOOR LIFESTYLES
How Wichita's Weather Challenges Downtown Development Ideas & Plans.

Wichita weather data analysis based on data from Wichita weather summary by the National Climatic Data Center, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, U.S. government -- partially summarized at Wikipedia.org -- and additional data directly from NOAA.

East-coast consultants Goody Clancy, the city's chief consultants on downtown redevelopment, have based much of their design ideas on the assumption that young professionals will want an "outdoor" lifestyle in Wichita -- walking, bicycling or taking public transit to go from place to place, and participating in open-air activity. This presumes tolerable weather, on a fairly frequent basis -- as is common in certain seasons in other cities, back East, for whom Goody Clancy has provided downtown redevelopment consulting.

Wichita, however, is a city of rather harsh weather, year-round. Wichita can arguably be summarized as having just four kinds of weather:

• Hot as Hell
• Cold as Hell
• Windy as Hell
• Rainy as Hell

The graph at right (click to enlarge), based on government data, shows that, on a monthly average, most days in Wichita get either too hot or too cold for comfort.

Not shown are the temperatures as actually experienced by people outdoors -- the "wind chill" index in cold weather, and "heat/humidity index" in hot weather, which could actually make the graph look worse.

Also not shown is that Wichita's relatively temperate seasons of spring and autumn are characterized, almost daily, by high winds (Wichita ranks among the top 10 most-windy major cities in the nation, with an average wind just over 12mph -- worse than Chicago, "the Windy City") and/or precipitation (which, in Wichita, commonly means not just rain, but also often snow, sleet, or hail, or a mix of these). In short, Wichita is definitely not an easy place to plan a picnic.

And its hardly a place conducive to walking, bicycling, or riding the bus (which involves waiting outdoors) -- as Wichita's traditionally very low use of such transportation demonstrates. Add the extreme distances from Downtown Wichita to Wichita's major employers (mostly on the periphery of the city, several miles away), and you can see that for Wichita, the personal automobile is very hard to replace for daily, all-weather commuter transportation, year-round.

NOTE: Unlike the city's prime consultants, this author -- a former Wichita Traffic Commissioner -- has lived and worked extensively in Downtown Wichita and the surrounding area, and has years of experience commuting throughout the city, by foot, bicycle and bus, to major local employers (a practice he does NOT recommend to others).

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Libertarian Critique of Downtown Issues

WichitaLiberty.org -- local libertarian news/opinion website
offers these opinionated, detailed critiques on:
  Wichita Downtown Development Corp.
  and
  the future of downtown Wichita

NOTE: The author of this web page neither endorses nor opposes this outside commentary.   In the interest of presenting diverse perspectives, these articles are noted, and linked to, because of their value in providing an informative and detailed view of the issue, from a point of view sharply different from the official sources.

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