Startland News

09/16/2026

“What does your business do? Tell me directly, clearly, and avoid unnecessary fluff,” writes Brandon Calloway in an open letter to entrepreneurs. “As someone making a snap judgment about your business, I need to quickly understand what it offers.”

09/15/2026

Most battle royale games follow a familiar formula: Drop onto a map, find weapons and equipment, take out other players, and try to survive. Mark Menke has added another incentive: getting paid for those in-game kills.

The 25-year-old Overland Park game developer launched Prize Brawl Aug. 22, bringing his 50-player battle royale to gaming enthusiasts after years of development. The brawl rewards players based on their performance and kills.

Menke built much of it himself, learning game development along the way — albeit through an unconventional path.

“I went to school for economics. This kind of stuff just interests me. It came to me,” he said of the process.

The game concept began in college as a side project and originally wasn’t even intended to be a traditional PC game with a focus on virtual reality, Menke noted. Once he realized VR wasn’t catching on as intended, he pivoted.

He ultimately graduated college in 2023 and that early experiment grew into a much larger undertaking, requiring Menke to not only build a game but also teach himself how to make its multiplayer infrastructure function.

Players purchase coins through the game’s online shop, then earn coins through gameplay, Mark Menke explained. Competitors can ultimately cash those coins out through PayPal. “You’re not playing against the house,” he noted.

09/15/2026

It was a dream-come-true moment for CEO Jim Gray — nearly 25 years in the making — when “Today” cohost Craig Melvin picked up a bottle of Rock Doctor on a summer episode of the NBC morning show and told the audience, “We use this in our house!”

“Rock Doctor is not a brand that flows off the tip of your tongue. It’s not a brand like Coca-Cola or Kleenex,” said Gray, owner of Rock Doctor and its line of more than a dozen consumer products. “But there was Craig, a guy back in the New York area, and he’s got our product. That’s pretty cool. It’s really what drives me day in and day out.”

The morning TV segment specifically featured Rock Doctor Granite Polish Spray because of its big win as the 2026 Good Housekeeping Cleaning Award for Best Stone Countertop Polisher.

But it wasn’t a matter of overnight success that put the brand on national television, the Prairie Village area entrepreneur said, noting Rock Doctor continues to fly under the radar at home in Kansas City — even after decades building the brand locally.

It was a dream-come-true moment for CEO Jim Gray — nearly 25 years in the making — when “Today” cohost Craig Melvin picked up a bottle of Rock Doctor on a summer episode of the NBC morning show and told the audience, “We use this in our house!”

09/15/2026

The American Royal finally has its own home after 127 years, Walt George told a crowd gathered Thursday to celebrate the completion of a new American Royal Barns and Exhibition Hall near the Legends in Kansas City, Kansas.

“We have always held our events in buildings that were owned by someone else,” George, board chair for the nonprofit American Royal, continued. “But tonight, welcome to our house.”

“These barns are built with purpose,” he added. “And it’s designed for things like this to bring people together around agriculture to compete, to learn, to do business, and to build relationships and carry our traditions from one generation to the next. And tonight is more than just a celebration of the opening, it’s a celebration about persistence, partnership, and the work it took to get here.”

The new $375 million, 390,000-square foot American Royal campus — designed by Multistudio and JE Dunn — features five distinctive barn gables, 3,744 cattle ties, 1,528 horse stalls, and up to eight simultaneous arenas. The new barns played host this weekend to their first of five fall events, welcoming the Royal Showcase Horse Show to the complex.

“This is a building for food and agriculture,” said Jackie McClaskey, noting the American Royal campus is nearly the size of seven football fields. “This is a building to be able to showcase our state’s and our country’s most important industry — an industry that is led by people with gr...

09/15/2026

A plan to fund infrastructure and other improvements tied to the proposed Kansas City Royals stadium at Crown Center is moving forward with financing that allows for up to $381.9 million in reimbursable project costs, plus financing costs.

City council members will now review the Downtown Stadium Tax Increment Financing Plan for final approval. Leaders have already greenlit Kansas City’s commitment to contribute $600 million, with $510 million for the stadium and related facilities and $90 million for infrastructure.

Utilizing the TIF plan will allow existing investments for the stadium to better establish a foundation for continued development throughout the broader 85-acre, year-round ballpark district, said Dan Moye, vice president of land development of the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City, which administers the city’s TIF Commission.

“By improving access, connectivity, public infrastructure, and the surrounding environment, we can help create the conditions for additional development, private investment, and long-term economic activity around Crown Center,” he said.

A plan to fund infrastructure and other improvements tied to the proposed Kansas City Royals stadium at Crown Center is moving forward with financing that allows for up to $381.9 million in reimbursable project costs, plus financing costs.

09/14/2026

Kansas City doesn’t have a broken tech pipeline, said Kara Lowe: the region is instead facing a talent connectivity problem. A just-announced $4 million project grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is expected to help the KC Tech Council plug that disconnect.

“The idea came directly out of our TechBridge planning work,” said Lowe, president and CEO of KC Tech Council (KCTC), referencing the KC TechBridge initiative launched by her organization in 2025 to work directly with Kansas City employers to build more effective, skills-based hiring practices for regional tech talent seeking their first job in the industry.

“We heard the familiar refrain that Kansas City needs more tech talent, but when we looked more closely, we found a different problem: There is significant talent and training infrastructure here, but the connection between qualified people and actual jobs is much more fragmented than it should be.”

For example, KCTC found more than 10,500 unique job titles across roughly 17,000 tech job postings, she said, and 75% of those titles appeared only once.

“That kind of noise makes it harder for candidates to understand opportunities, harder for educators to know what employers actually need and, frankly, harder for employers to find the people they need,” Lowe told Startland News.

Grant funding from the Kauffman Foundation allows KCTC to establish a Technology Hiring Center of Excellence, which the tech council leader framed as a shared employer capability for tech companies across the region that are facing new workforce realities.

Kansas City doesn’t have a broken tech pipeline, said Kara Lowe: the region is instead facing a talent connectivity problem. A just-announced $4 million project grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is expected to help the KC Tech Council plug that disconnect.

09/13/2026

A supercharged vision for CPKC Stadium and the surrounding riverfront area gained the city’s financial backing Thursday — enhancing game day settings and beyond for a rapidly emerging district that many leaders see as a gold standard for transformational public-private investment.

The just-passed Ordinance No. 260748 approves up to $185 million in public financing for a massive expansion project at the stadium. It also drops the anchor for new infrastructure, a mixed-use district, new transit, pedestrian and parking accessibility, and other improvements at the nearby riverfront — continuing a half-decade of dramatic change along the Missouri River.

“For too many years, our riverfront was a landfill in the heart of our city. Today, our riverfront is a leading destination in our region and the Midwest that’s poised to grow even more,” said Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sponsored the successful legislation. “With the city’s approvals, the riverfront will continue to transform into a place where people can watch a match, walk an extended trail, and be part of a vibrant neighborhood.”

The overall $1.4 billion project is expected to expand CPKC Stadium to more than 18,000 seats, increase nearby trail spaces eastward, add 1,500 parking spaces, and upgrade stormwater and drainage systems in the area.

A supercharged vision for CPKC Stadium and the surrounding riverfront area gained the city’s financial backing Thursday — enhancing game day settings and beyond for a rapidly emerging district that many leaders see as a gold standard for transformational public-private investment.

09/12/2026

Añejo Modern Mexican already had two area restaurants when it expanded with a downtown location this summer. Now it’s reopening in Johnson County in early 2027 thanks to an opportunity at one of the metro’s most iconic retail centers.

The locally-owned company said it is taking the former Five Guys space at 11331 W. 95th St. at the “signature” north entrance to Oak Park Mall, as well as part of the former American Girl space next door.

The new restaurant and bar will have a stage for soft live music, an outdoor lounge, an outdoor patio, and an indoor patio to accommodate up to 300 people.

“We are excited to create something that gives people another reason to visit the mall, not only for great Mexican food and cocktails, but for an experience that will feel energetic, elevated and completely unique to this area,” said Alex Sanchez, COO for Añejo.

Añejo Modern Mexican already had two area restaurants when it expanded with a downtown location this summer. Now it’s reopening in Johnson County in early 2027 thanks to an opportunity at one of the metro’s most iconic retail centers.

09/11/2026

Already a downtown landmark in its own right, a building near the Jackson County Courthouse that might’ve housed one of Walt Disney’s first art studios is now an 84-room boutique hotel that its redevelopers are calling a “labor of love.”

“We’re a family business just working hard, but our roots are here and we are happy we got to improve something in Kansas City,” said Mary Meiners, a member of the Meiners family behind the new Aiden Kansas City Downtown hotel. (Doors opened this week at 405 E. 13th St. for a special preview of the space, following an earlier soft opening this summer during the FIFA World Cup.)

This century-old building sits at the thriving vortex of the T-Mobile Center, the Power & Light District, and government complexes from city to federal.

When the Meiners family purchased it in April 2024, they knew it would continue to languish as a courthouse-adjacent office building popular with nearby attorneys. Such tenants only filled up a fourth of the spaces. A series of coworking spaces had come and gone. Long-delayed maintenance issues related to electrical, plumbing, and the elevators piled up.

The family ownership group already had a Best Western Plus Hotel & Suites in Lee’s Summit, and figured the company’s boutique hotel brand, Aiden, would be the best use for downtown Kansas City.

Already a downtown landmark in its own right, a building near the Jackson County Courthouse that might’ve housed one of Walt Disney’s first art studios is now an 84-room boutique hotel that its redevelopers are calling a “labor of love.”

09/11/2026

A silly TikTok about an old Craigslist car ad probably wasn’t supposed to be the thing that introduced music artist Kaleb Murray to a new audience. Then it pulled 2 million views.

Murray had tucked one of his songs into the background of the video, figuring people would react to the bizarre ad while his music quietly played underneath. As the views started piling up, he realized the experiment had worked.

That viral moment gave Murray a taste of what could happen when people actually heard his music, but the revelation also arrived at a pivotal point in his life.

The Kansas City native had already spent about a decade modeling, signing with Elite Model Management after high school and working between Kansas City, New York and Los Angeles, with appearances in Teen Vogue along the way.

A silly TikTok about an old Craigslist car ad probably wasn’t supposed to be the thing that introduced music artist Kaleb Murray to a new audience. Then it pulled 2 million views.