Builder celebrates hometown pride

Let’s talk city pride for a minute. Kansas City’s rose to a fever pitch in November when the Royals clinched the long-awaited World Series Championship and now the Chiefs are celebrating a successful season, too.

Do a quick poll at your neighborhood grocery store on a Saturday morning and see how many shoppers are wearing Royals and Chiefs hats and t-shirts and all sorts of logoed Kansas City merchandise that declare affection for Crown Town. That is a measure of hometown pride.

Outsiders — the national media, to be exact — have focused attention on the Kansas City area with well-deserved accolades about quality of life over the past several years, too. Huffington Post named KC as one of the “coolest cities in America” in 2014, HomeSnacks.net awarded Overland Park an A+ in a recent ranking of the “10 Best Cities to Live In;” and Overland Park was tapped as No. 15 in a “24/7 Wall St.” survey for desirable community elements such as education.

Residents have rallied around the metro’s winning livability for years, long before KC turned into a media darling; the national statistics have simply reinforced common knowledge: Kansas City is a great place to live, work and play.

“As someone who grew up in Kansas City — and watched it grow into this strong, pride-filled city it is today — I am proud that Rodrock Homes builds premier communities in some of best areas, such as Johnson County,” said Brian Rodrock, CEO of Rodrock Homes. “Our award-winning school districts, short commutes, housing values, leisure activities — everything combines to make this city a place to establish roots.”

Criteria in these “best of” studies reflect the same factors homeowners use to determine where they want to buy or build their homes: sense of community; schools; accessibility to major transportation routes, retail, dining and other services; beautification; public services; recreational options; and much more.

Rodrock carefully studies the livability quotient before deciding where to develop communities such as Colton, Summerwood/Summerwood Estates and Wyngate in Overland Park’s acclaimed Blue Valley School District and Gleason Glenn and Hills of Forest Creek nestled in the western suburbs of Lenexa and Shawnee, located in the award-winning De Soto School District.

“We take into account things important to families who are looking to buy a new home,” Rodrock said. “It’s no longer just about buying a house; it’s about what surrounds the neighborhood, the amenities, the whole lifestyle experience.”

Vibrant communities. Rodrock is synonymous with a legacy of building signature family homes with integrity in communities of distinction, where top-notch schools are nearby, private play areas are, green spaces are accessible and amenities are geared to family living.

Kerwin Holloway, a ReeceNichols marketing agent for Wyngate, said each Rodrock community has a distinguishing personality.

“There are many things that make living in a Rodrock community special,” Holloway said. “For example, Wyngate is the only Blue Valley community adjacent to a grade, middle and high school. Many homeowners purchase here because they want to send their children through school without moving.”

Holloway noted the sense of community found in a Rodrock neighborhood is an invisible but very real amenity.

“Not only does Rodrock’s vast inventory of models have something for everyone, each community has a genuine neighborly feel,” he said. “You can’t put a price tag on that.”

Close to award-winning schools. Proximity to a top-ranked school district is at the top of homebuyers’ checklists. Several Rodrock communities are close to the De Soto Unified School District, recently ranked as number two of the top 10 high-performing school districts in the Kansas City metro by the Kansas City Business Journal.

And the Heartland MLS reveals that 1,300 new homes were sold from Jan. 1, 2012 to Jan. 1, 2015 in Johnson County, with 677 (52 percent) of those sales occurring in the Blue Valley School District.

“Twenty percent of the homes sold in Blue Valley during that three-year period — a total of 128 — were in Wyngate,” said Holloway. “Buyers have taken advantage of the community’s unique location attribute.”

Home is where the heart is. As the books close on a robust year in Kansas City, Rodrock predicts 2016 to be another year marked by pride.

“Whether you’re talking about the Royals, business growth or a family-friendly atmosphere, we’re fortunate to help families find homes where they will make lifetime memories in a city that offers so much,” Rodrock said. “At Rodrock, we’re hometown boosters in every sense of the word.”

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Builder celebrates hometown pride."