For years, when people thought about major employment centers in Johnson County, the conversation often centered on office towers in Overland Park or corporate campuses farther north.
But take a drive through south Olathe today — particularly along I-35, 159th, 167th and Lone Elm — and a very different employment center is taking shape.
Behind the enormous buildings appearing along those corridors are companies making everything from Coca-Cola and packaged beef to electrical systems and some of the most sophisticated air-traffic-control equipment in the country. Taken together, the projects are changing not only Olathe’s skyline, but the kind of jobs being created here.
Olathe certainly isn’t new to big employers. Garmin has grown into one of the city’s anchors, employing more than 4,400 people in Olathe as of the city’s most recently published principal-employer figures. Honeywell, the FAA, Sysco, FedEx and TransAm Trucking have also helped establish a sizable industrial and technology workforce. But the latest wave of investment is occurring on an entirely different scale.
One of the most visible examples is Heartland Coca-Cola’s enormous production campus along Hedge Lane. The 150-acre complex includes about 700,000 square feet and four production lines. At full speed, one of those lines can turn out as many as 2,000 cans every minute. Heartland describes the Olathe campus as a generational investment designed to serve its Midwestern territory for decades.
Just down the road, Walmart has opened something found nowhere else in its company: its first fully owned and operated case-ready beef facility. The roughly 300,000-square-foot plant near 167th Street represents a $257 million investment and was expected to create more than 600 jobs, packaging beef in Olathe for distribution to Walmart stores throughout the Midwest.
Then there is a type of manufacturing most people probably wouldn’t associate with Olathe at all.
Radar systems are now being built here.
International technology company Indra Group USA has opened a 118,000-square-foot manufacturing center in Olathe after investing approximately $50 million. Among the products being produced there are systems for the Federal Aviation Administration, including next-generation radar equipment intended to modernize America’s aging air-traffic-control network. Indra expects its Olathe workforce eventually to reach roughly 300 employees.
And Olathe’s industrial building boom isn’t finished.
At 167th Street and Lone Elm Road, Faith Technologies’ Excellerate operation already occupies more than 800,000 square feet. The company has now received approval for an expansion involving three additional buildings totaling approximately 1.4 million square feet. The project could represent nearly $240 million in investment and as many as 1,000 additional jobs over the next decade.
Farther south, another massive project is planned near 175th Street and Lone Elm Road. Lineage Logistics received approval for up to $310 million in industrial revenue bonds for an approximately 400,000-square-foot automated refrigerated warehouse on 65 acres. Earlier project estimates called for roughly 280 jobs there.
Put all of those developments on a map and something becomes obvious: Olathe is no longer simply a bedroom community where residents drive somewhere else to work.
In fact, the change has been happening for years. Garmin alone grew from about 2,700 Olathe employees in 2015 to more than 4,400 by 2024. Now another generation of large-scale manufacturing, distribution and technology companies is clustering around the city’s transportation corridors.
There are tradeoffs that come with that growth. Huge industrial developments bring additional truck traffic, demand for roads and utilities, and sometimes significant tax incentives. The Lineage project, for example, drew opposition from nearby residents before moving forward. Those are conversations Olathe will continue to have as more open land along the city’s southern edge develops.
But economically, the larger picture is hard to miss.
Coca-Cola is bottling drinks here. Walmart is packaging beef here. Indra is building aviation technology here. Faith Technologies is preparing a 1.4-million-square-foot expansion here.
A stretch of south Olathe that not many years ago was mostly open ground is rapidly becoming one of the Kansas City area’s most important manufacturing and employment corridors.
And judging by the amount of land still available farther south, Olathe may only be getting started
Something Different Media Group
