More by accident than by design, at least once a week in this column some random topic seems to come from way out of the blue for discussion and commentary. Sometimes it’s things like pickles or chicken gizzards, sometimes it’s a random restaurant suggestion or a Netflix recommendation.
This week’s random topic, which just hit me a few minutes ago as I was looking at the Downtown Master Plan for Platte City, is: How much foot traffic makes its way to Downtown Platte City?
Well don’t you fret, because the folks at RDG Planning and Design have some numbers for us. These numbers are according to Placer.ai data, and I’m going to assume their data is acquired through the pinging of cell phones/cell towers. Two reasons I assume this:
*Because the practice and technology of counting local foot traffic via cell phone activity was explained to me one time in a conversation I had in my office with Tom Cole during his short tenure as city administrator for Platte City. Cole told me the data service could be quite handy for economic development groups, for example, but the service is/was too expensive for the city to regularly employ it. The service can even pinpoint a phone’s last stop before the person carrying it arrived at the courthouse, for example, and a majority of times that last stop was at QuikTrip.
*Without the pinging of cell phones, I don’t know how else a firm would accurately estimate the number of folks coming in and out of a certain area without physically monitoring those areas, and ain’t nobody got time for that.
Anyway, according to Placer.ai data noted by RDG in its downtown study, we can give you the numbers of visits to Downtown Platte City by month during the year of 2025. Can you guess which month of the year had the most foot traffic? If you guessed December you would be correct.
I’ll get to the numbers in a second, but first, according to the RDG report, here is the designated study area for those numbers: The historic downtown, bounded by Hwy. 92, North Street, First Street, and Fourth Street.
Number of visits to that Downtown Platte City study area by month in the year 2025, listed from most to least:
*December 40,546 visits (Maybe a lot of people coming to see the Christmas lights?)
*October 37,430
*May 37,022
*November 35,653. (I’m surprised November isn’t higher on the list, frankly, given that the annual Holiday Lighting Celebration held on Thanksgiving Eve always draws a tremendous crowd).
*July 35,197
*June 35,196 (Yes, just one visit separated the June number from the July number, which is uncanny).
*April 35,078
*September 34,543
*March 34,451
*August 33,124
*January 28,870
*February 27,262
I was looking at the RDG report and writing this column on Tuesday afternoon and noticed this sentence in their remarks: “City Hall remains the top generator of foot traffic in the district, according to Placer.AI data.” Wait. I am assuming RDG means the Platte County Courthouse, not City Hall. There is no way City Hall draws more foot traffic than the courthouse, and if you want to get technical City Hall isn’t in the physical area described by the boundaries listed above.
“Downtown has a strong mix of commercial, office, civic and residential that attracts more visitors each year,” says the RDG report about Downtown Platte City.
Here are the past four years total visits to Downtown Platte City.
2022: 385,176
2023: 388,028
2024: 404,195
2025: 414,372
As you can see, it’s a number that is growing annually, with a nice increase of 16,000 visits from 2023 to 2024, and a 10,000 visit bump from 2024 to 2025.
Ah, via Google, here is something related to Placer.ai’s data gathering techniques that aligns with my speculation above.
“Placer.ai generates location intelligence by aggregating anonymized, privacy-compliant data from a panel of tens of millions of mobile devices. Key sources include location data from mobile application partners (via SDKs), GPS data, Wi-Fi network connectivity, and census demographic information to analyze foot traffic, dwell times, and consumer behavior.”
That’s a fancy way of saying what I already told you a few stanzas ago. Cell phone companies are providing info (selling the info, I’m sure) locations of pinging cell phones, allegedly in non-identifiable fashion related to the owner of each particular phone.
This kind of insightful journalism is why you always turn to The Landmark first for the news and whatnot.
Some more from the RDG report:
“Recently, the district has welcomed popular additions such as Barley and Vine and Virtual Links Golf, reinforcing Downtown as a destination for both residents and visitors. The Farmer’s House, an organization empowering youth and adults with disabilities, also expanded its Main Street presence at the end of 2024 in response to rising program demand, signaling confidence in the district’s momentum.”
And the rich history of the area gets properly mentioned:
“Downtown remains the historic and civic heart of Platte City. During the American Civil War, Platte City was burned in 1861, resulting in the destruction of the original courthouse. The Platte County Courthouse that stands today was rebuilt in 1869 and continues to anchor Main Street as both an architectural landmark and a center of county government. Historic buildings and traditional storefronts throughout Main Street strengthen the historic character of the district.”
(Foley won’t ping your cell phone but he will kick your ass in a game of ping-pong. Email ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)
