Project Moonshot, Tin Man, View and more — Topeka leaders spill the tea on potential deals

Greater Topeka Partnership leaders touted economic development last week when informing state legislators about various efforts to support the capital city's economy.

Staff of the partnership and its member organizations spoke with the Shawnee County delegation in the Legislature on Wednesday.

From tourism to river development, from "bad owners" to "good owners" of local establishments, and from big projects to license plates, here's what GTP has in the works:

Greater Topeka Partnership has eight big projects

Matt Pivarnik, CEO of GTP, said the partnership is working on "eight pretty big projects."

"Some of these are in codename because we're in nondisclosure agreements, and others of them we can just mention because you'll know exactly what they are," he said.

There are the Topeka Hotel, West Ridge Mall, Heartland Park and the downtown innovation center.

There is a "Project Tin Man" and a "Project Moonshot" that goes along with it. "Project Home" is "very much under a nondisclosure agreement." Pivarnik didn't elaborate on any of those projects, but he did share that a "Project View" is "really cool downtown development housing project."

"Take Wheatfield Village and how nice it is and what they have and just place it in downtown," he said.

He said the housing project "is likely to happen," the West Ridge project "we know is going to happen," but: "I don't feel all that great about the Heartland Park right now and where we are with that project. That one's gone a little bit silent."

"I feel like that we're swinging for the fences on a lot of things," Pivarnik said. "I'm not really satisfied with hitting one homerun in a game. I think sometimes you can hit two and three homeruns in a game.

"I do think that West Ridge is a blessing for us. We had bad owners for a little while, I'm just going to be very blunt with you. Same with White Lake. White Lakes had bad owners. We have good owners now. So that one is just a blessing for us that Dave Callanan and Cody Foster and Advisors Excel has stood up to do that."

On the Topeka Hotel, Pivarnik said GTP didn't have "the financial wherewithal to invest in the hotel," but still provided input to the city

"What we were trying to do was lobby for to not have another repeat of West Ridge Mall or White Lakes where the wrong people owned it," Pivarnik said. "We know there were some people that wanted to buy the Topeka Hotel, and it would have been an absolute disaster."

Sean Dixon, president of Visit Topeka, said there has been "a paradigm shift" in Topeka development that will allow the city "to own who we are as a destination and grow from there."

"If you look at the last year of what's occurred in Topeka," Dixon said, "there's been literally a flip of the coin on who owns things and who gets to decide who we are as a destination. We look at the mall in particular.

"What Cody and Dave have done by getting it out of the hands of the New York investment group that originally purchased gives us the opportunity to redevelop that and make that an engine for us again."

GTP has more economic development projects

Trina Goss, director of business and talent initiatives at GO Topeka, the partnership's economic development organization, gave an update on new business attraction.

"This year has been busier than the past several years with companies looking to potentially move to Topeka to expand their businesses," Goss said. "Over the last couple of months, things did slow down, but just recently we had several more RFPs come through. So we are much busier this time of year than we normally are in responding to RFPs.

"We currently have 32 projects in the works. So what that means is those are RFPs that we have responded to, we've submitted proposals and we are fielding questions, kind of in the waiting stage at various levels. But there are 32 projects, the bulk of those are still in manufacturing. However, the second largest group of proposals that are out there are for aviation, which is very exciting because we are really trying to utilize the asset that we have out at Forbes Field in a better way."

She also touted child care efforts, a housing task force and the Choose Topeka program.

"Growing the population is extremely important," Pivarnik said, "because those commercial properties can't create jobs unless we have the people to fill the jobs. Right now, I think we have 3,000 open jobs in the community."

Topeka riverfront development could involve National Park Service

Riverfront development is a top priority for GTP.

"We are the only capital city that does not have a river that is developed," said Ashley Gilfillan, president of Downtown Topeka Inc. "So right now we are working with a company called Bolton & Menk. We are getting ready to do public engagement throughout the community."

She said they want to know what people in the community need and want, as well as what will bring people in from elsewhere.

"What are those bigger developments that are going to make people want to travel to this region and work to come here for our river, whether that's recreational activities, nature, fostering economic development?" Gilfillan said. "We are really poised to do some major turnarounds with the river. We've already been in discussion with the secretary of transportation as well as secretary of commerce."

Gilfillan said the riverfront development and the Polk Quincy Viaduct project will help connect NOTO and downtown into "one fluid core" and "allow us to start capitalizing on some of those things you guys did last year, like common consumption."

The Legislature and governor last session enacted a change to alcohol laws backed by Topeka officials.

The change to common consumption areas is intended to make it easier to allow public drinking of beer, wine and other alcohol in designated areas. This spring, officials said the idea was that people could get a drink from a bar before walking across the street for an event, such as a concert at NOTO's Redbud Park or downtown's Evergy Plaza, without police having to shut down street traffic, thus eliminating street parking for the event.

"It was exciting to hear about riverfront," said Sen. Kristen O'Shea, R-Topeka. "I think I've been anxious for that to just get moving quicker, quicker."

Gilfillan said the river has required a lot of work, though not necessarily in a way the public would notice, such as completing brownfield sites.

"What people don't realize is that people have been working on this river for 20 years," she said. "A lot of the things that aren't the glamorous fun things like redoing the weir and making it safe, getting that recreational signage out there, has been done — and it's built this foundation for us to take those more visual and vocal steps in the community.

"So we don't look back at that and think that we haven't done any progress. It's just the community might not be quite aware as to how dangerous our river was at some points."

O'Shea noted past work with the National Park Service, and Gilfillan said that is ongoing.

"Right now looking at the stuff for the National Park Service," Gilfillan said. "We're working on connecting a state park to a federal trail, which could open us up for some grant dollars. We're looking at that to be possibly Kaw (River) State Park over by the governor's mansion to the federal land and trail by Brown v. Board, and see if we can open up money there."

Topeka didn't waste tourism opportunity after NYC mayor's comments

Dixon, of Visit Topeka, praised the partnership's marketing and public relations team.

"Topeka has found no shortage of national headlines that are positive about us because of the work that's been done by this incredible team," Dixon said. "One of those that we are particularly proud of, if you recall back early this spring, the mayor of New York in a prayer thanked the lord that he was the mayor of New York and not a city like Topeka, Kansas.

"So we of course took that personally and responded accordingly and created a sweepstakes for New York residents. Two thousand people entered that sweepstakes and we had four New Yorkers come out here last month and enjoy Topeka. They had a blast. They're already talking about coming back.

"Of course, they took a lot of photos and gave us a lot of narrative to use in our visitors guide for next year. So never let a good crisis go to waste."

After Taylor Swift, World Cup presents tourism opportunities

Visit Topeka is working on other tourism opportunities, including those presented by the upcoming World Cup.

"It will be massive," Dixon said. "I think it's about eight days worth of Super Bowls' impact that we're going to see in that. We have had representatives in Kansas City for all those meetings at the private side factoring that in. We got kind of a taste of what the impact is going to be thanks to Taylor Swift and the concert she had in Kansas City, we actually picked up people staying here because of that."

Dixon said many of GTP's codeword projects will "fit very nicely into creating those options."

"What we're looking for is, depending if that's South Americans or Germans or whatever, how we can be a strong regional attraction for them to get out and maximize the economic impact of that visitation," he said. "Because those will be very affluent visitors."

Topeka flag license plate will soon be available

Amid controversy over the redesign of the standard Kansas license plate, Forge Young Talent has continued to work with the Kansas Department of Revenue to get a Topeka flag license plate available to motorists.

"Forge led the steps needed to get that live and on the Department of Revenue's website," Rhett Flood, Forge executive director, told the local legislators. "We collected right around 300 signatures in a little under two months. And I would like to say that it should be live within the next two to three weeks on the website and be available to purchase for all Topeka and Shawnee County residents, as well as residents across the state."

Topeka has 'a little bit' of a homelessness problem

Like other cities, "We have had a little bit of an uptick in homelessness throughout the downtown area," said Gilfillan, of Downtown Topeka Inc.

She said after "that uptick in the spring, quite a few community leaders came together" to get a Downtown Topeka Clean and Safe Task Force started quicker than planned.

"They took the reins, they determined that it was time was now and we didn't want to be as reactive as possible, we wanted to be proactive," Gilfillan said. "So with the help of our chair, Seth Wagoner from AIM Strategies, we created a seven-person task force in which we have lined out initiatives to help not only prevent but react to the homelessness and the clean and safe perceptions of downtown. Because while we know that our downtown area is safe, you guys are here every day, the perception of some might not always be that, and that is king, perception is king.

"We can't control how people feel when they see somebody that might not be sheltered. So we want to make sure that everybody knows that our local area is the cleanest and safest around. And we've seen tons and tons of strides. Nobody's going to come and do that for us. That's our area, this is our backyard."

But she said there is a the need for state and federal help.

"Because this is obviously something that we're never going to solve on our own," she said.

Rep. John Alcala, D-Topeka, took issue with Gilfillan use of the phrase "a little bit."

"I don't want to downplay that issue," Alcala said. "I've met with staff. I've met with Cody (Foster). I've met with some businesses in downtown Topeka, it is in my district. There's more than just 'a little bit' of a problem down there. It's gotten better since they went through the alley cleanup."

Gilfillan said the task force did that cleanup.

During a legislative hearing on homelessness last month, some legislators questioned the effectiveness of the program at addressing the big picture. Sen. Rick Kloos, R-Berryton, suggested it merely pushed unhoused people into other parts of town, such as residential areas, which could also put them farther away from services.

"We're treating a symptom," Gilfillan said. "Homelessness is a symptom, essentially, and we're trying to find what those root problems are, so we can treat the cause and not just the symptoms."

Jason Alatidd is a statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Project Moonshot, Tin Man, View, more — Topeka leaders spill the tea