KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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The timing is perfect, with FIFA World Cup 26 set to come to Kansas City next month and America ready to celebrate its 250th birthday this summer, Independence unveiled the culmination of a yearlong campaign to rebrand for National Tourism Week.
After the City Council spun off Visit Independence as a nonprofit and provided funding around 11 months ago, Allison Calvin was hired as the new tourism effort’s executive director.
“First, we started with a rebrand,” she said. “We have a brand new logo and brand voice that we're excited to share with the region and Kansas City. We had a new visitor's guide printed.”
Calvin led the effort, producing a new website and printed literature with the goal of rolling it out by May 1 to coincide with National Tourism Week.
The rest of the timing was just a stroke of good luck.
“We wanted to be ready to do that for National Tourism Week,” Calvin said of unveiling the new Visit Independence resources. “It just happened to be right before the World Cup, but we've been strategically getting it ready to start marketing and getting regional travelers all summer for 250 as well.”
Independence is leaning into its history — related to President Harry S. Truman and its role as an origin point for westward expansion, among other things — as well as growing arts and food scenes.
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“So many people, even Kansas City residents, don't know what Independence has to offer,” Calvin said.
But people who visit Historic Independence Square, which has received plenty of attention and investment in recent years, generally leave impressed.
Cheryl and Bob Danner, who were visiting Independence on Wednesday from Idaho, are no strangers to Kansas City.
They are recreational RV enthusiasts with family in Lee’s Summit, so they’ve visited the region before, but they only discovered Independence on this spring’s trip.
“We wanted to come see Harry Truman's museum,” Cheryl said.
Bob added: “We started this year. We did the Reagan Library and we've done the Eisenhower and the Bush (libraries), then this one.”
Cheryl said she was impressed by how clean Independence Square was and enjoyed visiting multiple Truman-related sites.
“It's an interesting place to stop,” she said. “Look on your Google Maps; there's a lot of cool history.”
Bob said he was thrilled to find so many tourist stops in eastern Jackson County.
“There's a lot to do here,” Bob said.
The couple plans to explore more on future visits.
“Next time we come, which we will come back, we'll spend more time here just to check things out,” Cheryl said.
The redesigned Visit Independence website includes a series of trails modeled after KCK’s Taco Trail.
“You can go and explore Truman history, Civil War history, African-American history and Mormon history, and earn points,” Calvin said. “You can turn those points in for prizes from our office.”
Muralist Jim Bilgere, who spent Wednesday painting a mural on the south side of Independence Square, also wasn’t familiar with the town before taking the job.
But he’s come away impressed, especially with the friendliness of the people as passers-by shout appreciation for his work.
“All day — more so than anywhere I’ve ever painted, people will come by and say that kind of stuff,” he said.
The Instagrammable “Welcome to Independence” mural he’s creating should be finished in the coming weeks.
“It's supposed to be like you're visiting Independence and it's like a postcard,” he said. "You can take a picture or selfie in front of it.”
Bilgere hopes it helps paint a new picture of Independence.
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