How We Compare
See how Wichita ranks among four other Midwestern cities in everything from political leanings and home prices, to zoos and the number of Starbucks locations
It’s no secret: Wichitans have ... well ... a complicated relationship with their city. Last year, Visioneering Wichita discovered that locals are mostly smitten with Wichita but worried that the country at large doesn’t understand their ardor. So what exactly are the sources of this hometown pride and doubt? We decided to pit Wichita against four Midwestern cities to see how our town stacked up. We measured the cities across a range of social, economical and cultural categories and talked to the experts. When the dust settled, we decided to let the numbers do the talking. After all, we didn’t set out to determine the best Midwestern city—we’ll leave that to Fortune magazine.
Basics: How many neighbors we have, what they look like and how long we take to get to work
In choosing which cities to compare, we decided to mix it up. Rather than focusing solely on cities such as Des Moines and Omaha, which have comparable populations to Wichita, we wanted to take it a step further. Sure, we used Tulsa and Springfield, Missouri, as bases of comparison—but we also looked at larger cities such as Kansas City and Chicago to gauge how Wichita fares in terms of cost of living and crime.
Despite considerable differences in size and location, the cities’ demographics were strikingly similar in a number of ways. In each, median age is in the mid-30s, household size is about the same, and education level is comparable. Not surprisingly, Wichita is less diverse than larger cities and leans further right politically. But the biggest shock is that Wichita’s growth rate is outpacing all of the other cities. These stats reveal a city on the move.
Clarence Manley, Merchandising Manager, Barnes & Noble at Bradley Fair
Culture shock might be an understatement for describing Clarence Manley’s move to Wichita in 1993. “It was like Coming to America,” he says. “I had never even seen Kansas until I arrived, but it wasn’t as flat as I thought it was.” The East Coast native enrolled at Wichita State University and earned a business degree while working at Dillard’s. By graduation day, the city had gripped him, and he decided to stay. In 2005, Manley took over as merchandising manager at Barnes & Noble in Bradley Fair.
Q: What are Wichitans lucky to have?
A: Health care here is great. I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 1996. It came back in 2001 but now it’s in remission. Doctors here are excellent compared to other places—they’re very down-to-earth. I was also shocked about how diverse this city is. I met people from all over the world when I worked at Dillard’s.
Q: Do you see any areas needing improvement?
A: Wichita could benefit from diversifying its economy, improving education and preparing for urban sprawl. I think we’re slowly getting there. It’s almost like we have this mentality where we want a big city, but we still think like a small town. I think people are unaware of the possibilities to increase growth in a positive way.
Q: Can you comment on the status of Wichita readers?
A: They’re great. I really think they go underestimated. We have a very literary community. We have people reading The New York Times and bestsellers. The city supports how many bookstores? At least six.
Q: What’s your favorite aspect of the city?
A: I love Bella Luna, the Old Town Warren Theatre and Caffé Moderne. When you walk into Caffé Moderne, it feels like you’re not in Kansas anymore. Of course, I also love Barnes & Noble and the Cheesecake Factory products in our café. I’m also impressed with the architecture here at places like Exploration Place, the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Allen-Lambe house and the outdoor sculptures at WSU.
Q: What would you tell someone about Wichita who’s considering moving here?
A: There are some tradeoffs. The cost of living is excellent—that’s why I’ve stayed. The travel distance to other cities is kind of far, but you can always fly. Within the city, it’s 20 minutes to get anywhere. The sunsets are also beautiful. When you drive in the evening, it’s so clear. The zoo is fabulous. That’s one of the first places I visited when I moved here. It’s definitely a perfect place for a date.
Economy: Earnings, spending, taxes, tourism and values
The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Wichita. Global companies such as Coleman, Pizza Hut and Koch Industries started here. And Wichita remains the Air Capital of the World, producing 70 percent of the country’s general aviation aircraft. Wichita’s health care industry is also advanced and affordable. Then there’s the housing market. Today, Wichita’s real estate market remains strong as the rest of the nation faces a sharp recession. In Wichita, the median home price is lower than in other cities, yet the median household income is nearly as high as Chicago’s. That means a nicer house for less money. Drawing tourists here, however, has proved difficult; Springfield is half the size of Wichita but draws in nearly the same amount of visitors per year, while Tulsa, a similarly sized city, brings in three times more.
Rob Allison, Interim Director, WSU Center for Economic Development and Business Research
High school was key for Rob Allison. He met his future wife, Sharon, his senior year, and started crunching numbers for his father, an account in Belleville, Illinois. After college, Allison went to work for a bank his father had audited. “You’re kind of destined for these types of things when you come from a family of CPAs,” he says. Allison uprooted to Wichita in 1996 to head Bank of America’s Kansas operations, a position he held until retiring this year.
Q: Why have you stayed in Wichita?
A: I’ve lived here with my wife, Sharon, and our two sons, Matt and Jon, for 12 years, and it’s been a great experience for all of us. Wichita has everything: outstanding education and health care options, career opportunities, a philanthropic community and most importantly—great people. The only thing missing is the St. Louis Cardinals.
Q: Has the housing crisis of the past year affected Wichitans?
A: The impact of the economy on housing in Wichita has been both less than and later than the impact in the rest of the country. Wichita never experienced the “housing bubble” that was so remarkable on the East and West Coasts, so we don’t have a bubble to burst. Until early this year, Wichita’s housing market consistently grew in both sales and construction of new houses. In recent months, there has been some slow-down. Sales on existing homes are down about 14 percent a month since November 2007. But it’s unclear what the impact will be in the long term.
Q: How about gas prices?
A: Because of increasing fuel prices, there are reports of airlines reducing capacity and delaying orders. However, delays in orders are being moderated by increasing demand for higher efficiency aircraft including the new commercial Boeing 787.
Q: What’s the state of Wichita’s economy?
A: In 2001, we had some significant job losses in the airplane industry because of 9/11. But by 2004, jobs started growing again. In the last seven years, Wichita—and I’m including Butler, Harvey, Sedgwick and Sumner counties—has added nearly 100,000 jobs. Per capita income here has been higher than the national per capita income in recent years because of an increase in highly paid aviation manufacturing jobs.
Q: Where does the city’s economy need to grow?
A: One of the challenges facing Wichita is how to maintain a focus on expanding its large and highly paid manufacturing sector while also diversifying into other sectors such as health care and professional services.
Whitney Vliet Ward, President, Redstone Design Dev.
After graduating from the University of Kansas, Whitney Vliet Ward swapped a career in New York for her hometown of Wichita. “My husband and I knew we wanted to move back to the Midwest to start our family,” she says. As president of Redstone Design Development, Ward has been on the front lines of downtown’s resurgence. “It’s been a dream come true to work with my dad and see his vision and creativity.”
Q: What was your first impression upon returning?
A: Just being able to watch the arena project pass. It’s a great opportunity for events, and to be in the heart of the city is so important. It shows Wichita is coming around in making the focus the center of the city. Wichita has always been a great city, but in moving back, I’ve been kind of in awe of the development, the nightlife, the arts events and all the places to take your family. It’s different from what I remember.
Q: What are the best places for food, entertainment or shopping?
A: Caffé Moderne. Caffé Posto. It’s great to have neighborhood places. Playa Azul is my favorite. For shopping, there’s Aspen Boutique, Brick’s and Genevieve G. I think it’s so nice whenever you can support locally owned businesses.
Q: How do the city’s downtown areas compare?
A: Every block in New York City is its own city. If you live on West 76 Street, that becomes your city. If I were to compare my mini city where I lived in New York to Wichita, I wouldn’t say they’re drastically different.
Q: What could be improved?
A: If there’s one thing that I do miss about New York that I wish Wichita had more of, it would be diversity. I want to see Wichita celebrate its diversity more.
Q: Favorite thing about the city?
A: You’re always surrounded by family and the families of people you meet—it’s such a family-oriented city. It really is true. Wichita has great people. They’ve made the city what it is today.
Education: We spend more on public students than Springfield, less than Chicago
When it comes to education, Wichita is on par with similar-sized cities. Taxpayers here spend approximately the same amount per student. Surprisingly, Wichita’s average public high school is actually larger than cities such as Chicago and Kansas City. Wichita East was the only school in town to crack Newsweek’s list of the nation’s top public high schools.
Dr. Noreen Carrocci, President, Newman University
Noreen Carrocci’s life reads like a college map. She’s made stops at KU, St. Louis University, Tulane and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. After an extended stay in Mobile, Alabama, where she was provost at Spring Hill College for more than a decade, Carrocci settled last year at Wichita’s Newman University. “I was just intrigued by Newman’s history,” she says. The liberal arts college was instituted by nuns in the 1930s. “It has a powerful mission and that is what ultimately caused me to move again, hopefully for the last time.”
Q: What was your first impression of Wichita?
A: Flat. Open horizons, not many trees. The openness is striking—it’s pretty in its own way. The biggest difference between here and other places is the wind. It wreaks havoc on your golf game and your hair. It’s amazing how much the wind blows in the summer, even when it’s 100 degrees.
Q: How does the education system compare?
A: Wichita is very much like Mobile: we have a public school, a Catholic school and another private university. Students have good choices for education. Being in a metro area like Wichita is really helpful to students for out-of-class experiences. Our housing market hasn’t exhibited any of the problems in other parts of the country, and that’s good for graduates. Plus, there are plenty of jobs available. Keeping young professions home is of great importance to local businesses right now.
Q: What still strikes you about the area?
A: The streets. Everything is in squares, in one-mile increments. The city is laid out nicely. And all the little ponds—they’re for flood control. It’s a nice, aesthetic way of dealing with an environmental issue.
Q: What’s your favorite aspect of the city?
A: It may sound cliché, but I really have found the people to be very friendly here. It’s a really welcoming community. It’s been easy to get comfortable with people here. There’s not the pretentiousness or standoffishness I’ve experienced in some other cities.
Crime: Despite what some may think, Wichita is a very safe place to live
Wichitans should feel comfortable living here. Compared to Tulsa, the city had less than half the number of murders, robberies and auto thefts in 2006. (Don’t even us get us started comparing the city to Chicago and Kansas City.) With a lower crime rate, Wichita has around 150 fewer police officers than Tulsa. On the other hand, the city had more parolees living here and significantly more seized firearms than Springfield and Tulsa.
Gordon Bassham, Assistant to the Police Chief, City of Wichita
Before he became Wichita’s resident crime expert, Gordon Bassham was a journalist, covering everything from presidential campaigns and moon landings to the Oklahoma City bombing for ABC Radio, NPR and the BBC. What’s the connection? A fixation with facts and the human drama behind the numbers. In 2006, Bassham earned his badge and began a second-life in law enforcement.
Q: What’s your favorite aspect of the city?
A: The lack of traffic jams. Many people who live in Wichita don’t really understand that by all other measures Kellogg at 5 o’clock is really a minor inconvenience. When I commuted to work in Chicago and Washington—now, those were traffic jams on steroids.
Q: How does the crime rate in Wichita compare to other cities?
A: Honestly, there are many cities that would give their eyeteeth to have our low crime rate. Even though we hear about gangs and other problems, the scale is significantly smaller than similar-sized cities.
Q: Is criminal activity up or down compared to last year?
A: Overall, crime is up about four percent. Metal theft is really the scourge of the city right now. It’s fueled by an increased demand for metals on the world market, and an increased demand for drugs by the people who commit these kinds of crimes. They might get $150 for the copper they strip from a construction site, but they do thousands of dollars in damage.
Q: Where has the police department increased its presence and why?
A: Old Town on the weekends. Economic development in the city’s center is very much a priority of the local government. We really want people to feel safe there, and anytime you have a lot of people in an area you have to devote a lot of resources to it.
Q: Which aspect of the city needs the most improvement?
A: What I want to see is a defined mass transit system. We have great streets here, but we don’t have mass transit for the people who are the backbone of the community. For many people who can’t afford the high price of gas, we at least need a bus system that runs around the clock seven days a week.
Culture: On restaurants, religion, recreation and more
Culture is a tough concept to define. We took a look at everything from bars to churches, books to museums. For its size, Wichita has a decent amount of entertainment. The city offers museums, live theater and opera. Like Tulsa, the most popular attraction is the zoo. (No, we don’t have mega attractions like Springfield’s Bass Pro Shop, Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza or Chicago’s Navy Pier.) At press time, there were more than 1,200 restaurants, 90 bars and more than 35 golf courses around the city. We have as many Starbucks and McDonald’s as Kansas City—yet Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport alone has nearly the same amount of Starbucks. Despite the stereotype, it turns out Wichita has a smaller percentage of religious people than Chicago, Kansas City or the nation as a whole (the national statistic is 50 percent).
Pat McDonnell, Director, Ulrich Museum of Art
“You found the right person to talk about living in other places,” says Patricia McDonnell. “I’m from just about everywhere but here.” McDonnell, a California-native, has lived on both coasts, in the Midwest and in Europe. She earned a doctorate from Rhode Island’s Brown University and worked at the University of Minnesota’s Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum for more than a decade. Two years ago, she left Tacoma Art Museum in Washington State to take the reigns at Wichita’s Ulrich Museum of Art.
Q: What was your first impression of the city?
A: Driving through College Hill reminded me of the neighborhood where I lived in Minneapolis. I live there now, and I regularly go jogging around the neighborhood. It’s such a beautiful place.
Q: What attracted you to Wichita?
A: Of course, there was the challenge of the position and the opportunity. But I think it was also the genuine warmth of Wichitans and Midwesterners. I’m a West Coast person, which I discovered by living on the East Coast, and I found that being from the West Coast translates well to the Midwest.
I was just charmed by the whole roster of people I met during my interview. All of that has been proven in spades.
Q: Have you found that Wichita really is the nation’s “largest small town?”
A: That feeling exists in larger cities, too. There are established clusters everywhere. I live in the world of art and culture. That’s not a unique phenomenon. The nice part about being in Wichita is that it’s a very livable city. I always laugh when people in Wichita grumble about the traffic when it’s only a 15-minute drive across town. Heaven forbid—the parking meters still accept dimes.
Q: What’s your favorite aspect of the city?
A: Watermark Books is a community gem. I see it as an important watering hole. It’s a fabulous bookstore and café, but you go there because you know you’re going to bump into friends. It’s a staple. The Fisch Haus is also a happening place. I always take visitors to the Commerce Street Art District to demonstrate that Wichita really is a creative community. That whole area—Fiber Street, Go Away Garage—contributes a lot to Wichita.
Q: Do you see any areas needing improvement?
A: Honestly, this is a city on the move. I lived in San Francisco during the late ’70s and early ’80s and in Tacoma. Those were cities in the process of reinventing themselves. There was so much construction and new life happening there.
I see the same thing happening today in Wichita. There’s the arena, the new Jabara campus and a new airport is on the horizon. This is a city that’s proactively looking to the future.
Ty Issa, Owner, Larkspur Restaurant
For two decades, Ty Issa has been on the front lines of Wichita’s restaurant scene. After dozens of dining ventures in Wichita, Issa bought Old Town’s Larkspur Restaurant & Grill in 2000, transforming it into one of the city’s finest. A Beirut, Lebanon native, Issa studied mechanical engineering at Wichita State University, but it was his side gig as a waiter at Gatsby’s, a now-defunct eatery, that set his future course. In 1988, he co-founded Italian Gardens with a business partner whom he’d waited on at Gatsby’s. “That’s how it started,” Issa says.
Q: What was your initial impression of Wichita?
A: I kind of blended in because there are a lot of Lebanese here. A lot of my friends from Lebanon were in college with me. There were differences, but American culture has invaded the world, so you feel like you know the U.S. before coming here.
Q: Was there more entertainment here than you anticipated?
A: When I first got here, entertainment and restaurants were limited. Now there is a restaurant on every corner. Antoine Toubia was starting the Olive Tree, and he brought the influence of Mediterranean and French cuisine to Wichita.
Q: How does Wichita compare to Beirut?
A: Wichita is a small city in the Midwest of about 350,000. You can’t compare that to a cosmopolitan city of 6 million. I do think Wichita has a great restaurant industry with a variety of ethnic cuisine: Mediterranean, Asian, Latin. And we have a lot of steakhouses.
Q: What are your favorite aspects of the city?
A: Just about anything you want, we have in Wichita: a great symphony, the opera. The city has preserved a lot of the art centers, so we have the cultural aspects. We don’t have to be stuck on the highway for an hour to get to work. It’s a great place to raise a family. It’s also home to a lot of entrepreneurs. A lot of people have come out of Wichita and put us on the map.
Q: What would you tell someone considering moving here?
A: It’s a great living. The people here are so friendly. There’s nothing you can do in other cities you can’t do in Wichita. And I think we have one of the greatest health systems. It’s phenomenal.
Weather: As you might suspect, Wichita would make a great place for a wind farm
Wichita’s weather is a funny thing. We have more sunny days than Miami. Yet when it comes to wind even the Windy City pales. (You can see why L. Frank Baum chose Kansas for the setting of The Wizard of Oz.) Then there’s the rain. Despite the ever-looming threat of twisters and severe thunderstorms, we’ve recently received less precipitation annually than the other cities.
Andrew Kozak, Weekend Meteorologist, KSN
What lured a young native of Staten Island to Wichita? The weather. After graduating with a meteorology degree in New York and spending some time in Casper, Wyoming, Andrew Kozak took a job with KSN in 2005. “I knew of Wichita, but I didn’t know it was like this,” he says. “I was very surprised at how much the city had to offer. Three years later, I’m still impressed.”
Q: What was your initial impression of Wichita?
A: I had never been in this part of the country before. My first impression was, “Wow, I can’t believe this is what Kansas looks like.” Nobody believes me back home when I tell them, “They actually have buildings more than five stories tall downtown.”
Q: How does the climate here compare to other places?
A: I will never forget the night of the Greensburg tornado. When it comes to the weather, we operate like a Top 10 market. We get the best and worst of every season, and that’s what makes my job interesting. We have more sunshine here than Florida, but we also receive the worst weather. Springtime thunderstorms here are the worst in the country—the snow, the heat. New Yorkers freak out when they have severe storms, but Wichitans hardly bat an eye.
Q: What are your favorite aspects of the city?
A: Anything I needed in New York, whether it’s a certain type of food or activity, I can more or less get here—and it’s usually cheaper. I also love the fact that the city is laid out really well. You can get from one point to another very quickly. And Wichita has so much potential: the downtown arena and Waterwalk. For people my age, this market could be considered a stepping stone. I moved here for my job, but the city has given me good reasons to stay.
