North Kansas City is its own city, not a neighborhood — a compact business district on the north bank with Armour Road as its spine, Harrah's on the riverfront, and the Northland spreading out behind it toward Gladstone, Liberty, and Riverside. The old Cerner campus here changed hands and changed names. The district around it didn't slow down.
It's close enough to downtown that your out-of-town guests won't know the difference, and far enough that the whole thing feels less like a logistics exercise.