photo by: John English

This aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022, shows Lawrence with the University of Kansas campus in the background.

Lawrence recently has gotten some love from Forbes, the national business magazine. Lawrence landed on the publication’s 2022 list for the best places in the U.S. to retire. Not only did it show up on the online list, but it was highlighted in Forbes’ print magazine, which still has a circulation of about 5 million readers.

A recent issue has a picture of downtown Lawrence under a headline of “Kickin’ It In Kansas.” It lists a “prospering economy” and a low risk of natural disasters as a couple of reasons why you might want to retire in Lawrence. (The low risk of natural disaster was particularly nice since many people on the coasts use “The Wizard of Oz” as their weather report for Kansas.) The magazine lists the state’s tax policy of taxing Social Security benefits for those earning above $75,000 as a con.

Forbes doesn’t crown a No. 1 town for retirees. Rather, it picks 25 places from a list of about 800 communities that are evaluated on metrics ranging from health care to air quality to crime and climate change as it determines places good for retirees.

Perhaps one of the more important metrics is home prices. That’s what particularly caught my eye with this ranking. In the online article — which is more extensive than the short blurb in the print magazine — Forbes highlights Lawrence’s median home price of $279,000. It lauded it as being 26% below the national average. It even was below the $296,000 average of the other 24 communities on the best places to retire list.

In other words, Lawrence housing was being touted as a bargain. That’s not the narrative locally, where affordable housing is one of the more hand-wringing issues in the community. It struck me that Lawrence has a bit of a needle to thread on the affordable housing issue. While we are battling to have housing prices better match local incomes, the community also has an opportunity to promote itself as an affordable option for people looking to move from other parts of the country, where housing prices are much higher.

It is worth remembering that both things can be true — housing can be too expensive here for local incomes, while also being a bargain for someone who is moving here from the coasts. Personally, this seems like a reminder that perhaps we ought to focus more on raising incomes rather than building lower priced — often subsidized — houses in Lawrence. But that’s an old soap box of mine, best left for another day.

As for other aspects of Lawrence that Forbes touted, it listed a good number of physicians per capita, the city’s bikeability, good air quality, the absence of state estate tax, and a “comfortable climate.” (You could even say luxurious, as you have your own sauna with you every time you step outside.)

On the negative side, Forbes noted that Lawrence’s rate of serious crime is above the national average. Plus, it noted that Social Security tax issue mentioned above.

It is probably not a good idea to build your economic strategy on a magazine ranking, but this Forbes ranking carries more cachet than many of the rankings you read about. Being on this top 25 list is worth touting. But more than that, I found the general theme of the list encouraging for Lawrence.

Of the 25 cities ranked, 11 of them are basically college towns in one form or another. Combine that with how much of an emphasis Forbes places on affordability in this ranking, and you have a narrative developing of how college towns can be an affordable way to have a good quality of life.

Plus, being in middle America seems to be an advantage as well. I think that is because several mid-America locations are faring better in the analysis of places that will be less impacted by climate change. It was notable that not one of the 25 places Forbes chose as a retirement haven was in California. Only one — Spokane, Washington — was in a state along the West Coast.

There are leaders in the Lawrence community — Russ Johnson, CEO of LMH Health, comes to mind — who are really leaning into the idea of how well Midwestern communities like Lawrence are positioned to capitalize off of Americans deciding to leave the coasts as climate change and other economic factors take hold.

Indeed, the Forbes list included several college towns in the region, such as Columbia, Missouri; Iowa City; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Madison, Wisconsin, among others. Lawrence was the only Kansas community on the list.

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While attracting retirees is desirable, it is probably a poor substitute for attracting high-quality jobs to the community.

I was at an economic development event Thursday afternoon where community leaders were getting updated on the latest efforts on that front. The Economic Development Corporation of Lawrence and Douglas County announced that it has hit the $2.8 million mark on its economic development fundraising campaign.

The campaign, which involves pledges from area businesses and other organizations made over a four-year period, intends to fund initiatives around job creation, innovation and entrepreneurship, workforce and talent development and housing and land development.

The $2.8 million mark is $300,000 above the $2.5 million goal the EDC set for the campaign when it was launched in September 2021.

While that was a notable announcement, Thursday’s event also was interesting for the talk in the room about what may be set to happen just down the road on Kansas Highway 10 in De Soto. As we have reported, there is wide speculation that the major — secret — economic development project that state legislators approved a huge incentives package for is a plant that will produce batteries for electric vehicles. The further speculation is that the plant would be constructed on a portion of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant in De Soto.

State officials have never confirmed that, and no one did at Thursday’s meeting either, but the state has said the project would produce $4 billion in investment and 4,000 jobs. There were some people at the meeting who presumably know more about the status of that project than most. An announcement on whether Kansas has won the project — the speculation is we are competing with Oklahoma — was thought to be in the works a few weeks ago. Given that, there has been some concern that the changing global economy and rising interest rates had put the project at some risk. I was curious to hear whether people would start tamping down expectations about the project possibly coming to Kansas. That wasn’t the case. While nobody said anything definitive, the talk still very much was about how something enormous could be coming our way.

I’m not sure the Lawrence community has quite grasped what $4 billion of investment and 4,000 jobs in De Soto would mean for Lawrence. If the project happens, it probably will be touted nationally and internationally as a Kansas City project. But as a reminder, De Soto — just 17 miles east of 23rd and Iowa streets — is closer to downtown Lawrence than it is to downtown Kansas City.

If the project happens, it is a safe bet that Lawrence will be one of the more impacted communities.

photo by: Mike Yoder

Water towers, which are familiar sites south of Kansas Highway 10 at De Soto, rise above a former administration building at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant in this 2005 file photo.