Of course, they had good partners to work with. Once it was known that KCK would be the first place to get ultra high-speed internet, the newly-elected James administration (the new Mayor was sworn in on May first) and City Councilwoman and now Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo joined with KCP&L and started wooing Google into expanding here as well.
And speaking of KCP&L, they are pretty forward-thinking for a utility company. They have embraced the notion of carbon offsets and partnered with the Sierra Club to pioneer an offset program. They have also developed smart grid technologies around a first-of-it’s-kind Green Impact Zone in inner-city KC, and they have introduced all-electric vehicles into their fleet.
As part of the agreement, KCP&L offered Google access to their polls and infrastructure, including existing fiber-optic networks. By allowing Google access to existing infrastructure, service can be delivered faster and cheaper than building a network from scratch.
Mayor Sly James, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II and Mike Chesser, CEO of KCP&L
Milo Medin of Google and Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo
Kansas City is already a great place for entrepreneurship, thanks to the Kauffman Foundation, and we are already a center of innovation in science and research, thanks to Midwest Research Institute, the Stowers Institute and two major research universities in the heart of the city.
We have a lot to offer, not just a company like Google but all of the businesses that will be drawn here because of the access to ultra high-speed broadband — including one of the best community college systems in the country that can train the workers for those high-tech businesses that will follow the fastest internet in the world to Kansas City, where we already perfected Jazz, the Blues and Barbecue.