Kansas City, Kan. ? It’s been 10 years since Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., merged their two governing bodies, and in that span the area has made a remarkable recovery.

Today, crowds flock to Kansas Speedway and other attractions. Property values have jumped, and western Kansas City, Kan., boasts new residential developments.

The consolidation, which officially becomes a decade-old today, has turned Wyandotte County from a struggling area that people questioned into a thriving one, said Pete Levi, president of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

“The rest of the area never really understood much about what was going on in Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County,” Levi said. “All of a sudden, it did things that few cities have done in the last few years.”

Before the consolidation, Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., were not big draws. They didn’t host thousands of sports fans, like the crowd filling the speedway this weekend.

The county and city weren’t anticipating the opening of a 300-acre water park resort. They weren’t looking forward to millions of dollars in sales-tax revenues.

Instead, the area was experiencing a rise in violent crime and dealing with property taxes that were the highest in Kansas.

Back then, the rest of the metropolitan Kansas City area was growing, but not Wyandotte County – where nearly 30,000 residents had moved out in the prior three decades.

“We were at the point of no return if we didn’t do something very drastic,” said Kathy Moore, who served as an aide to Carol Marinovich when Marinovich was mayor of Kansas City, Kan. “I think our city was dying.”

The residents voted to merge the two governing bodies, creating the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan.

Wyandotte County residents Mike Jacobi and Kevin Kelley sparked the move toward consolidation.

Jacobi, a retired Army lieutenant who was in the real estate business, had formed a political action committee hoping to address the problem of people fleeing the area.

Jacobi, along with industrial-adhesives business owner Kelley, began approaching mayoral candidates in early 1995 asking them to sign a consolidation pledge.

Marinovich, a councilwoman at the time, signed the pledge and also decided to run as a pro-consolidation candidate.

Marinovich was elected mayor, and in 1996 she persuaded the Kansas Legislature to appoint a study commission that ultimately recommended a plan for the ballot. The consolidation won with 60 percent of the vote on April 1, 1997.

Since the consolidation, the assessed valuation for Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., has increased 76 percent, and the population flight has slowed.