De Soto already has a pretty good selling point — Panasonic’s $4 billion, 4,000-job electric-vehicle battery plant — but before the city can lure the likes of Target or Walmart to town, it will need to ramp up its population. Almost 1,300 apartments already are planned or under construction, thanks to Prairie Village-based Flint Development, Lawrence-based Alcove Development and other smaller builders, which at least gets the ball rolling on meeting current and future housing demand from the plant, which targets being operational in 2025. But it could take three to five years before residents occupy those spaces and have sufficient income to buy those future retailers’ products.
Source: Kansas City Business Journal
