Downtown Baseball Stadium

[dukuboy1]

I guess the big upside will be improved pedestrian experience north, south, west & east where parking will be located. Improved lighting, better streetscapes, and perhaps more street level retail activation in areas not just immediate to the stadium. Plus an increased presence of police & security along the streets will have benefits as well.

[DColeKC]

Transparency was their mantra, not my request. Weird you keep carrying their water just because you got the site you wanted. Both things can be true.we all know these deals take back room dealing but to never make their site public on their own site until it was selected is just a failure. End of sentence. Even Sherman slides to it in his comments.

Moving on.

I'm the only one on this forum that knows more than the public on how it went. I'm not carrying water, I'm trying to give you and others just a bit more context so perhaps you have a bigger picture. I'm offering this as a courtesy to those who are interested, take it or leave it.

I'll move on as well.

[DColeKC]

https://globalsportmatters.com/business ... s-stadium/

You're never going to find an economist who will say tax-payer funded stadiums are a good investment. They don't work in anything besides numbers and the numbers are just one factor. Sports teams are so insanely important for a cities culture and reputation, not to mention it's the most bang for the buck when it comes to advertising for the city. Look at what the Chiefs have done for our little midwest town for example.

[Belvidere]

https://globalsportmatters.com/business ... s-stadium/

You're never going to find an economist who will say tax-payer funded stadiums are a good investment. They don't work in anything besides numbers and the numbers are just one factor. Sports teams are so insanely important for a cities culture and reputation, not to mention it's the most bang for the buck when it comes to advertising for the city. Look at what the Chiefs have done for our little midwest town for example.

Yeah...ok. No offense, but that's not persuasive. A private company may deserve support, and we may like them, but they can pay for their lucrative business for the most part.

Eminent domain for this purpose is unethical. The anticipated subsidy they're going to ask for is not justified, if I am hearing correctly.

Austin seems fine without football or baseball.

[Cratedigger]

https://globalsportmatters.com/business ... s-stadium/

You're never going to find an economist who will say tax-payer funded stadiums are a good investment. They don't work in anything besides numbers and the numbers are just one factor. Sports teams are so insanely important for a cities culture and reputation, not to mention it's the most bang for the buck when it comes to advertising for the city. Look at what the Chiefs have done for our little midwest town for example.

To that point, there was an economic analysis of the Super Bowl done back in 2006 which found that its impact on the host economies was not statistically different from zero. However, the authors also noted that given the sensitivity of their model, the Super Bowl would have to generate at least $300 million in benefits before they would pick it up as statistically significant. Any impact level below that, no matter how real the benefits were, could not be differentiated from the statistical noise.

Just saying it's tough to isolate something like this in the normal fluctuations of a region’s economy. It's easier to see the impacts at a hyper local level using metrics like sales tax revenue generated or the price of land in the area. And there have been many studies in the past 20 years which show significant increases in real estate prices and development activity near stadiums and areas.

Anyway... All that being said I am very excited for a downtown stadium but I do wish this whole process had been handled better by the Royals PR team. I feel like more people were open to a downtown stadium before their moves over the past couple years. In hindsight it might have helped them if they had enlisted Parson & Associates or whoever is running the show with the KC Current.

Austin seems fine without football or baseball.

Austin's a weird town. UT might as well be the NFL there

[Cratedigger]

By the way, regarding eminent domain... can you even legally eminent domain a church in Missouri?

[Chris Stritzel]

Austin seems fine without football or baseball.

They’re also in Texas. Don’t degrade us to that level by insinuating that we’d be fine without the Chiefs and Royals. We have better people, BBQ, and culture here than whatever it is they have going on down there. They got nothing but soulless garbage down there.

[Highlander]

Austin seems fine without football or baseball.

Austin's a weird town. UT might as well be the NFL there

Austin's not a slow growth midwestern city. It's a sunbelt city with the fastest growth rate of any city in the US and in a very business friendly state. There is not a 1:1 relationship between pro sport cities and growth or economic development. It's a very complicated relationship. Which makes studies such as this (https://globalsportmatters.com/business ... s-stadium/) completely worthless (and biased products of the political think tanks they sprout from). In fact, I'd guess that a pro franchise has a lot more value to a city like Kansas City than it does to Austin, Denver, Phoenix or Houston or any other city where the growth can be attributed to the demographic drivers of the past 30-40 years (sunbelt weather, recreational attributes, business friendly environments). KC needs to have such attributes to compete because it's not in the sunbelt nor does it have the recreational attractions that a Denver or SLC has.

But it's only a matter of time before Austin's fast growing population starts to attract the attention of the NFL or MLB. In fact, they are probably not an expansion target because MLB and the NFL already exist in the region in Houston and Dallas areas but a business group in Austin with deeper pockets than any Kansas owner group would ever have could start looking to poach a team from a midwestern city with stagnant growth. People think these things won't happen but they will as emerging markets become much more lucrative than existing markets.

[im2kull]

And so it begins.

How much influence do these dipshit propagandists really have? Please tell me it’s nearly none.

Is this parody?

They've single-handedly stalled nearly every development project since 2019. And, the city supports them.

[im2kull]

From https://www.kansascity.com/news/politic ... 55497.html

The Royals said last week that their plan is to buy the properties and then hand title to the county, which would own the stadium.

So the county owns the stadium? Then it’s not building a stadium for a billionaire at all. So that talking point can be kicked away.

The current stadiums are owned by the county as well.

[GRID]

Really hard to stay positive on the stadium. I think I just spent half my time this weekend in KC trying to get friends and relatives on board with a new stadium. They are being swayed hard by all this anti stadium stuff on social media.

If this were a Royals only vote, I think it would go down by at least 60%. Better hope the Chiefs save the day.

[kcjak]

Really hard to stay positive on the stadium. I think I just spent half my time this weekend in KC trying to get friends and relatives on board with a new stadium. They are being swayed hard by all this anti stadium stuff on social media.

If this were a Royals only vote, I think it would go down by at least 60%. Better hope the Chiefs save the day.

My social media is FILLED with the same couple of conspiracy theories that 1) the owner of the Royals is trying to pull a fast one over on everyone by making money from the attached hotel/conference spaces and 2) the photo of the sea of parking at $20-$30/game is better than the photo of the Crossroads where you have to walk several blocks after dark in a crime-riddled neighborhood.

I keep telling people to read up on the proposal and use their judgment to understand the impact, but we all know the influence of social media on sheep these days. Honestly, I'd rest easier with the Royals staying put IF people used sound reasoning in their decision instead of everything boiling down to not knowing where to park or navigate downtown.

[KCPowercat]

Transparency was their mantra, not my request. Weird you keep carrying their water just because you got the site you wanted. Both things can be true.we all know these deals take back room dealing but to never make their site public on their own site until it was selected is just a failure. End of sentence. Even Sherman slides to it in his comments.

Moving on.

I'm the only one on this forum that knows more than the public on how it went. I'm not carrying water, I'm trying to give you and others just a bit more context so perhaps you have a bigger picture. I'm offering this as a courtesy to those who are interested, take it or leave it.

I'll move on as well.

I am moving on but my point isn't being ungrateful to your insight, it's saying that the royals weren't being open and transparent with the public even though as we know from your posts (and various media stories) they were looking at this site for over a year. If they were transparent they could have easily done as much for a long time on their site and talked with the neighborhood.

[bricknose]

My social media is FILLED with the same couple of conspiracy theories that 1) the owner of the Royals is trying to pull a fast one over on everyone by making money from the attached hotel/conference spaces and 2) the photo of the sea of parking at $20-$30/game is better than the photo of the Crossroads where you have to walk several blocks after dark in a crime-riddled neighborhood.

I keep telling people to read up on the proposal and use their judgment to understand the impact, but we all know the influence of social media on sheep these days. Honestly, I'd rest easier with the Royals staying put IF people used sound reasoning in their decision instead of everything boiling down to not knowing where to park or navigate downtown.

What worries me is this type of paranoia and corporate conspiracy-peddling seems to only be growing. Not to say that there aren’t rich bastards who don’t give a damn about the externalities of their decisions, but being corporate or rich doesn’t automatically make one a bastard, and although I want those real win-lose sneaky situations to be called out when they happen, there’s so much crying wolf and pushing propaganda now that perfectly normal investments are being hyped up as a sneaky back room deal by a cigar-chomping fat cat just looking to swindle the city on a Captain Planet-style drive to make everything worse just to give a middle finger to the underclasses.

It’s activism without the honesty and intelligence to identify worthy targets and realistic solutions.

[Belvidere]

Austin seems fine without football or baseball.

Austin's a weird town. UT might as well be the NFL there

Austin's not a slow growth midwestern city. It's a sunbelt city with the fastest growth rate of any city in the US and in a very business friendly state. There is not a 1:1 relationship between pro sport cities and growth or economic development. It's a very complicated relationship. Which makes studies such as this (https://globalsportmatters.com/business ... s-stadium/) completely worthless (and biased products of the political think tanks they sprout from). In fact, I'd guess that a pro franchise has a lot more value to a city like Kansas City than it does to Austin, Denver, Phoenix or Houston or any other city where the growth can be attributed to the demographic drivers of the past 30-40 years (sunbelt weather, recreational attributes, business friendly environments). KC needs to have such attributes to compete because it's not in the sunbelt nor does it have the recreational attractions that a Denver or SLC has.

But it's only a matter of time before Austin's fast growing population starts to attract the attention of the NFL or MLB. In fact, they are probably not an expansion target because MLB and the NFL already exist in the region in Houston and Dallas areas but a business group in Austin with deeper pockets than any Kansas owner group would ever have could start looking to poach a team from a midwestern city with stagnant growth. People think these things won't happen but they will as emerging markets become much more lucrative than existing markets.

They are different. What originally made Austin attractive? It was affordable, weird, with great music. And then it became a victim of its own success and the people who made it cool are getting pushed out because they can't afford to live there.

See a trend?

Wanting something and needing something are not the same. The county and the city have deep unmet needs, especially when it comes to infrastructure. Kansas City is kind of a mess unless you can buy your way into a wealthy area.

What's the guarantee that the Royals won't pack up and move after we build the stadium? Isn't that pretty hard to enforce?

The economic study is based on numbers. That doesn't mean it's the complete picture, or that it's perfect, but dismissing it out of hand seems a bit much. They were not looking to show that stadiums were bad investments. That's what they found.

The argument appears to be that Kansas City is too humble or too unattractive as a city to say no to a billionaire's demands. I reject this argument.

If I were going to move today, a sports franchise would be the last thing I would think about. I would look at the architecture, how walkable and bikeable the neighborhood is, transit, parks, pools, crime, education, weather, etc. in other words, I would look how the city takes care of its residents.

[DColeKC]

Austin's a weird town. UT might as well be the NFL there

Austin's not a slow growth midwestern city. It's a sunbelt city with the fastest growth rate of any city in the US and in a very business friendly state. There is not a 1:1 relationship between pro sport cities and growth or economic development. It's a very complicated relationship. Which makes studies such as this (https://globalsportmatters.com/business ... s-stadium/) completely worthless (and biased products of the political think tanks they sprout from). In fact, I'd guess that a pro franchise has a lot more value to a city like Kansas City than it does to Austin, Denver, Phoenix or Houston or any other city where the growth can be attributed to the demographic drivers of the past 30-40 years (sunbelt weather, recreational attributes, business friendly environments). KC needs to have such attributes to compete because it's not in the sunbelt nor does it have the recreational attractions that a Denver or SLC has.

But it's only a matter of time before Austin's fast growing population starts to attract the attention of the NFL or MLB. In fact, they are probably not an expansion target because MLB and the NFL already exist in the region in Houston and Dallas areas but a business group in Austin with deeper pockets than any Kansas owner group would ever have could start looking to poach a team from a midwestern city with stagnant growth. People think these things won't happen but they will as emerging markets become much more lucrative than existing markets.

They are different. What originally made Austin attractive? It was affordable, weird, with great music. And then it became a victim of its own success and the people who made it cool are getting pushed out because they can't afford to live there.

See a trend?

Wanting something and needing something are not the same. The county and the city have deep unmet needs, especially when it comes to infrastructure. Kansas City is kind of a mess unless you can buy your way into a wealthy area.

What's the guarantee that the Royals won't pack up and move after we build the stadium? Isn't that pretty hard to enforce?

The economic study is based on numbers. That doesn't mean it's the complete picture, or that it's perfect, but dismissing it out of hand seems a bit much. They were not looking to show that stadiums were bad investments. That's what they found.

The argument appears to be that Kansas City is too humble or too unattractive as a city to say no to a billionaire's demands. I reject this argument.

If I were going to move today, a sports franchise would be the last thing I would think about. I would look at the architecture, how walkable and bikeable the neighborhood is, transit, parks, pools, crime, education, weather, etc. in other words, I would look how the city takes care of its residents.

And Austin is doing the best it’s ever done! It’s still weird and still has great live music all why allowing big fancy corporations to come in and out people to work. It still maintains its character even as people who could care less about the arts move in at a record pace.

It’s growth hasn’t “ruined” Austin like people say this stadium will do to crossroads.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Another take:
PICTURED IS FENWAY PARK in Boston where I lived for a couple years before returning to KC. I developed a genuine affection for Fenway and the Red Socks (‘’Yay Yastremski ! ! !’’) and from a distance kept periodic tabs with what was happening with the grand old gal.
In 1999 Earl Santee of Populous Holdings declared ’’you can't renovate Fenway Park’’ and maintained that a new stadium must be built. Bostonians told them to take a hike and a new ownership group decided that renovation of Fenway, built in 1912, was the way to go. Today the Red Sox are one of the most valuable franchises in Major League Baseball.
In 2024 and Earl Santee of Populous Holdings declares ‘’renovating Kauffman is not feasible or realistic’’ though that is precisely what the Kansas City Chiefs across the parking lot are doing. Will Kansas Citians also show Populous the door?
The Chiefs want to expand into the space where Kaufman Stadium is located. More power to ‘em. Once the finances are made a tad more clear, knock the current ballpark down and put a new one up. The Chiefs will love it. The labor unions will love it. But let’s be sensible – and honest – about this. If a downtown location is what the Royals ownership wants, within spitting distance to the northeast and east of the current proposed site are locations that are largely vacant and:
(1) give the Royals the downtown stadium they want,
(2) give east side neighborhoods a lift (which the city regularly mouthes that they want to do) while not destroying a vibrant neighborhood crammed with small businesses.
(3) give the Chiefs the development space they want at the current Kauffman site.
Parking and safety issues that will affect Crossroads businesses and Royals fans alike are regularly blown past, but they are addressed here, https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=112 ... 0150633664.
In both of the other downtown locations the parking, being close-alongside a new stadium, will also be safer to get to and from. If a police presence of 800 can’t prevent a modern-day repeat of the Union Station Massacre in the middle of the day and with thousands of people around, just how safe is it going to be as the throngs of exiting fans gets thinner and thinner as they reach the outer edges of that notional ‘’10-minute walking radius’’ at night? It’s useful to remember – if anyone does – that this was one of the principal selling points to get the Arrowhead-Kauffman complex built in the first place,
As for the affected local businesses that will get crushed, don’t be fooled. A year or so from now after additional traffic and parking studies are completed we’ll suddenly be informed that the obviously needed on-site parking will be required after all and the rest of what we know today as the Crossroads District will be flattened for that parking.
Royals owner John Sherman soothingly assures Kansas Citians that “We’re in the process right now of sitting down with people that are affected by this and making sure they understand that we’re there to kind of help with the transition.”
After April 2nd, the person who may need ‘’help with the transition’’ might well be Mr. Sherman himself. But only if people get out and resoundingly vote NO to this gridlock-generating, neighborhood-busting monstrosity.
-- Dennis Giangreco (D. M. Giangreco)

[Chris Stritzel]

NIMBYism for the sake of parking is a cancer that must be eradicated at all costs.

[WoodDraw]

I think people are a bit confused on the law.

The royals are not a condemning authority. That will presumably be Jackson county, which is a condemning authority.

The royals promise so far is to purchase land and transfer it to Jackson county. You can see where I'm going here.

Instead of in ev where they have a developer, here they can say we've spent money trying to get the property and they're being so difficult. That's why we're running behind.

And then ooh, we need to find partners to build this. We don't have experience.

All the the land in east village was (mostly) owned by the city and the proposed developer.

This is a dirty, dirty deal between a few people.

I tried to say

[DColeKC]

I think people are a bit confused on the law.

The royals are not a condemning authority. That will presumably be Jackson county, which is a condemning authority.

The royals promise so far is to purchase land and transfer it to Jackson county. You can see where I'm going here.

All the the land in east village was (mostly) owned by the city and the proposed developer.

This is a dirty, dirty deal between a few people.

The land is East Village was owned by 12 different owners. The Royals didn't have the support from the critical backers they needed the support from and I'm not talking about Cordish.

East Village required the demolition of a full residential apartment building - HELLO KC TENANTS ON FIRE!

East Village was off the table, it still is.