World Cup 2026 at Arrowhead?

[DaveKCMO]

How are we downgraded for hotels when the city now has too many?

The measure for World Cup hotel demand is beyond any convention or even the Super Bowl. It's the equivalent of four Super Bowls.

[normalthings]

How are we downgraded for hotels when the city now has too many?

The measure for World Cup hotel demand is beyond any convention or even the Super Bowl. It's the equivalent of four Super Bowls.

I think that was sarcasm but you can’t tell with JM

[alejandro46]

KC may be over-saturated for the current convention outlook - according to some, I think the urban core is a different story, but that's just my opinion without having done any research - but a one-time event like the World Cup would push capacity depending on how many games are played here. KC's hotel rooms are currently at ~13,946 and will increase to ~16,931 by 2020 with the addition of the Lowes (per VisitKC). We ranked last in the broad "General accommodation and Intercity connectivity metric."

Historically, cities have had to build additional permanent infrastructure to meet the one-time need, such as mixed-use "villages" near stadiums that would house retail, and housing for athletes and event staff that could be leveraged after. However, this strategy has not been universally successful, for example, look at Cape Town whose once-revitalized Green Point neighborhood around the new World Cup stadium has been hurt by Stadium and suffers from under-use and dilapidation with many vacant shops as the nearby overbuild stadium continues to hemorrhage money and not maintain minimal usage.

Aside from a few maintenance men on the roof, one of Africa's most beautiful stadiums now sits empty and forgotten in the Atlantic Ocean breezes. Less than five years after being built for the World Cup, the $600-million Cape Town Stadium is largely abandoned.

"This is available for private functions, birthday parties, weddings and anniversaries," a tour guide cheerfully informed a handful of visitors recently as they wandered through the vast VIP suite where global celebrities and politicians once watched World Cup matches.

Even a walkway along the pitch, where soccer's biggest superstars once played, is now available for corporate receptions.

There are few takers. Like most of South Africa's former World Cup stadiums, this one is hemorrhaging money badly. The occasional Justin Bieber or Bon Jovi concert – along with the $4 tours for a few hundred visitors per week – is not nearly enough to cover its operating costs. The 55,000-seat stadium is losing an estimated $6-million to $10-million (U.S.) annually. Some residents have even suggested that it should be demolished to save money.

....
South Africa spent about $1.8-billion to construct and renovate six stadiums for the World Cup – more than 10 times higher than originally estimated. The price was hugely inflated by bid-rigging and collusion among the construction companies, which added nearly $400-million in unnecessary costs. (An official investigation led to $150-million in fines against the construction companies last year.)

It's a perennial problem. Eager to win the rights to the prestigious tournament, the host countries agree to FIFA's terms – and then they are burdened with massive costs and perennial operating expenses for the stadiums.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/ ... e19064519/

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/63e0/6 ... 240600.pdf

If KC were to build some mixed use facility around TSC, I could see some analogy to the Cape Town Scenario in this.

Unlike Cape Town, our stadiums have major league tenants. Yearly it doesn't add up to that many days. The real estate available around TSC is smaller than Village West and there is not sufficient room or need to construct anchor tenants like a big-box NFM. I don't know how willing people would be to drive to a nearby retail facility to shop like a Ball Park village. Plus any surrounding temporary or perminant development would have an impact on all that sweet, sweet surface parking revenue. Some cities worked to construct temporary attractions or like Beijing, stadiums; but unlike Beijing, Rio, Capetown, KC is not a massive international city sporting populations of $5m+ and the number of 3-5 star hotel rooms that comes along with that.

Accommodations

FIFA Requirement: FIFA requires 72 base camp hotels for teams and referees, as well as 4 hotels per stadium location. For spectators, they require 1,760 – 8,080 hotel rooms in each host city, based on which match will take place there.

Hotels need to be able to accommodate the huge influx of both foreign and domestic fans. Brazil, unable to meet the demand for hotel rooms, brought in 6 cruise ships to provide an additional 10,000 rooms. But doing so required the port to be revamped – a $7 billion project. At the cost of $45 billion, Qatar is building an entire city from scratch that will include 22 brand-new hotels, turning a vacant desert into a luxury 450,000-person, 38-square-mile metropolis. They are also building an off-shore luxury resort.

The 2018 World Cup will take place at 12 venues in 11 cities. Russia has constructed over 108 new facilities, including 96 training sites for the World Cup, as well as 27 new hotels, 26 transport facilities, and updates on 13 hospitals. One of the biggest challenges in hosting the World Cup is making these new facilities usable after the tournament is over. For example. Russia plans on turning the training sites into afterschool centers for children. Qatar is planning on disassembling their stadiums, breaking them down, and rebuilding smaller stadiums in developing countries. Brazil recycled components of training facilities to build primary cycles. And they are working on plans to turn some of their stadiums into affordable housing.

North America just won the bid to host the 2026 World Cup, with Mexico and Canada each hosting 10 games and the United States hosting the other 60, including all matches from the quarterfinals onward. But for the first time ever, the field will expand from 32 teams to 48 teams and from 64 matches to 80 matches, which could place an even greater strain on infrastructure and resources. Fortunately, the US has a well-established economy and most of the infrastructure already in place to handle a massive event like the World Cup.

[WSPanic]

I don't think the hotel rooms or stadium will be our biggest challenge - it's the transportation to/from the airport and stadium that will be a hurdle for our bid.

[alejandro46]

I don't think the hotel rooms or stadium will be our biggest challenge - it's the transportation to/from the airport and stadium that will be a hurdle for our bid.

Yea, our transit ranking is not good. It's not even close.

[brewcrew1000]

How the hell is Philly ranked lower than Cincy and Nashville and Orlando ranks as one of the best.

[alejandro46]

How the hell is Philly ranked lower than Cincy and Nashville and Orlando ranks as one of the best.

Here is the full report. Pg 131 - Transit. Seems to take into account three criteria- international access, intra-city access, and intercity access on match day (20% weighted each). I'm unsure if there are city specific feedback forms somewhere, but I can't see the exact criteria they used. Philly has a bigger international airport than both other cities plus a well functioning intercity and intracity rail network.

https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload ... lqbbteevvf

[langosta]

How the hell is Philly ranked lower than Cincy and Nashville and Orlando ranks as one of the best.

Here is the full report. Pg 131 - Transit. Seems to take into account three criteria- international access, intra-city access, and intercity access on match day (20% weighted each). I'm unsure if there are city specific feedback forms somewhere, but I can't see the exact criteria they used. Philly has a bigger international airport than both other cities plus a well functioning intercity and intracity rail network.

https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload ... lqbbteevvf

The transit rankings do not seem accurate whatsoever. Neverless, Kansas City is lacking in all 3 transit categories. I would assume that our score increases a bit when taking into account 1. New KCI Terminal 2. Streetcar to UMKC 3. Streetcar to Riverfront.

KC2026 has a new rendering for the event. Does anyone know where I can find the actual proposal?

[missingkc]

Pet peeve. No governmental or quasi-governmental entity representing KC should be allowed to use an image of the skyline that is more than 2 months old. Or 2 weeks or whatever.

[langosta]

Looks like it could be pre-Kauffman

[earthling]

KC may be over-saturated for the current convention outlook - according to some, I think the urban core is a different story, but that's just my opinion without having done any research - but a one-time event like the World Cup would push capacity depending on how many games are played here. KC's hotel rooms are currently at ~13,946 and will increase to ~16,931 by 2020 with the addition of the Lowes (per VisitKC). We ranked last in the broad "General accommodation and Intercity connectivity metric."

There are over 30K hotel/motel rooms across KC metro. Other estimates show over 34K if including some really low brow rooms.
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/read ... 53224.html

That's not particularly high compared to other metros around our size passing KC up. Back in downtown's golden years, there were supposedly 30K rooms just from downtown to Plaza, though many were used for long term stays given there weren't a lot of apts in those days.

[alejandro46]

How many people are estimated to travel here from out of town for your average group play match? What modes do we have to transport them from the airport to various hotels spread out across them metro? What methods to we have then to transport them from spread out hotels citywide then to our far-flung Football/Futbol stadium?

(1) Rapid special event shuttles running from airport to downtown drop off sites. Some walking included. Express BRT line from DT to stadium.
(2) Uber/Lyft/Taxis
(3) Rental cars
(4) Hotel shuttles
(5) People driving personal cars.

What wold be the total # of people moved and the timeframes? From airport to hotels, you have a longer time frame and less need for rapid transit, i.e. shuttle buses would work. However, getting to the stadium is going to be tough. Am I missing any modes of transit? Group consensus is dedicated ROW rail from DT to TSC is too expensive and would not get done in time, right?

[brewcrew1000]

If Manaus can get a couple matches KC sure as hell deserves it Manaus was a bad choice for a world cup.

[langosta]

Group consensus is dedicated ROW rail from DT to TSC is too expensive and would not get done in time, right?

You could build a center running streetcar/light rail hybrid down Linwood or 31st Street to the RI ROW over to the stadium. This ~6.2 mile line would require at least 1 new bridge and sizable earth works around the Blue River. Just scaling up the UMKC numbers, you’re talking about $335 million + $200million Federal Gov. contingency.

A TDD centered around Linwood or 31st wouldn’t be able to pay for that line. You’d need at least a city/county tax for that. I doubt the state or federal government would provide financial support for the project in a timely manner.

Conceptual Timeing: (1) KC is announced as a host in mid-2020. (2) The rest of 2020 is spent securing city/county/state funds via public referendums and or appropriations. Step 2 hinges on starting the conversations well before the official announcement. (3) 2021 rolls around and we start an accelerated design-build program. The Rock Island ROW probably requires the least amount of design work and so construction could commence there first. (4) A new vehicle storage and maintence facility is built either near the Blue River or at the stadiums. (5) Construction wraps up at the end of 2025. (6) CAF Urbos 5 or 7 car trains begin to arrive in Q4 2025 (7) Final Testing and closeout is completed in H1 2026. Testing Team shall take advantage of the design/build nature of the project and undertake most testing on individual segments as completed. Not waiting for the entire whole. (8)grand opening sometime in May/June 2026.

IMHO. State funding isn’t likely but it’s not impossible if done under a gas tax increase. The second previous gas tax proposal would have funded new rail and BRT lines in STL.


So, you’ve build a rail line to TSC! Now what? Arrowhead holds 76,416 fans looking to party down at P/L, Westport, or the Plaza. But our Urbos 3 - 100 can only carry 221 (5 car) or 304 (7 car) at maximum speed of 42 mph. Ride KC Streetcar would have to operate (5 car train) a frequency of 20.9 seconds to move just half of the attendees in 1 hour. For that reason alone it makes almost 0 sense for us to build a streetcar to the stadium. Really it’s only with a dedicated row light rail or commuter rail and more than 1 line to/from Truman’s Sports Complex that we could begin to move those World Cup Crowds

[normalthings]

Group consensus is dedicated ROW rail from DT to TSC is too expensive and would not get done in time, right?

You could build a center running streetcar/light rail hybrid down Linwood or 31st Street to the RI ROW over to the stadium. This ~6.2 mile line would require at least 1 new bridge and sizable earth works around the Blue River. Just scaling up the UMKC numbers, you’re talking about $335 million + $200million Federal Gov. contingency.

A TDD centered around Linwood or 31st wouldn’t be able to pay for that line. You’d need at least a city/county tax for that. I doubt the state or federal government would provide financial support for the project in a timely manner.

Conceptual Timeing: (1) KC is announced as a host in mid-2020. (2) The rest of 2020 is spent securing city/county/state funds via public referendums and or appropriations. Step 2 hinges on starting the conversations well before the official announcement. (3) 2021 rolls around and we start an accelerated design-build program. The Rock Island ROW probably requires the least amount of design work and so construction could commence there first. (4) A new vehicle storage and maintence facility is built either near the Blue River or at the stadiums. (5) Construction wraps up at the end of 2025. (6) CAF Urbos 5 or 7 car trains begin to arrive in Q4 2025 (7) Final Testing and closeout is completed in H1 2026. Testing Team shall take advantage of the design/build nature of the project and undertake most testing on individual segments as completed. Not waiting for the entire whole. (8)grand opening sometime in May/June 2026.

IMHO. State funding isn’t likely but it’s not impossible if done under a gas tax increase. The second previous gas tax proposal would have funded new rail and BRT lines in STL.

I agree that early talks are the key to KC getting anything built in time. At this time,I have only heard of Linewood BRT being considered for KC2026

[TheLastGentleman]

Really it’s only with a dedicated row light rail or commuter rail and more than 1 line to/from Truman’s Sports Complex that we could begin to move those World Cup Crowds

What route would you see this line taking?

[alejandro46]

Any rail planning for World Cup should still follow the Next Rail proposed alignment on 31st and Linwood, future TOD developed at Clever II and enabling access to VA med center, then following Stadium Dr info TSC.

Running special service for World Cup, barring the unlikely expansion beyond the main spur even, is going to need max capacity, I wonder if we beat out Cinci they would let us rent a few of theirs.

[langosta]

Really it’s only with a dedicated row light rail or commuter rail and more than 1 line to/from Truman’s Sports Complex that we could begin to move those World Cup Crowds

What route would you see this line taking?

You could put a light rail line down 31st or Linwood. I’m mainly saying that we would need speeds and capacity that streetcar cannot supply.

[kas1]

Scrounge up a few hundred buses that are being retired from service around the country. Run shuttle service between hotels and the stadium before and after games. Charge as much as you want because you have a captive audience.

Mass transit doesn't need to cost a billion dollars. The capacity needed for a World Cup game is orders of magnitude greater than the typical demand for that corridor. Don't pay for a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Design transit that works for the city and add supplemental service for one-off events.

[DaveKCMO]

There is no rail planning for World Cup, just so you know.