Downtown Baseball Stadium

[TheUrbanRoo]

I cannot believe, in my years of reading this board that a No vote is even being considered. Unreal. Go touch some grass.

Agreed. It’s so stupid I just stopped commenting on this topic now until people get real.

[KCPowercat]

I cannot believe, in my years of reading this board that a No vote is even being considered. Unreal. Go touch some grass.

Agreed. It’s so stupid I just stopped commenting on this topic now until people get real.

In what way? It really speaks to how bad this whole situation has gone to flip posters on this site to no. We vote for everything!

[Chris Stritzel]

If the Royals and Chiefs issues were separate ballot questions, I’d vote yes for Royals and no on Chiefs.

While the Royals stadium in the Crossroads is controversial, they’re at least making an effort to move much closer to the heart of the population and broaden their fan base as a result. If they kept Oak open and worked with the small businesses on site (minus Prime and Temptations strip club), this would likely win in a blowout. Working together gets you places and right now, those are the two top issues that need addressing. But I’d vote yes.

On the Chiefs issue though, I’d vote no. Not because of how they plan to keep Arrowhead. That’s fine. But instead on the basis that their enhancements do nothing to truly improve the Sports Complex or the neighborhood around it. Building more parking will add to an overburdened sewer system throughout the year. The lack of trees means this will be just as oppressive as it is today, but continue that way for years into the future. The Hunts contributing a fraction of what the Shermans plan to do to their own efforts is certainly rich. It gives off an attitude of “give us money, or else”. The Hunt plan is certainly more rushed than the Royals plan and, like others have said, we’ll be talking about a replacement for Arrowhead long before the sales tax expires.

But the issues aren’t two separate ballot measures. I’m voting yes on the basis that I feel that the Royals will make good on their plans and work with the community on a deeper level moving forward. The blowback on their plans forces them to make good. The Chiefs show no intentions of changing their vision despite blowback. The Royals vision presents an opportunity for a truly great baseball experience in KC. I might disagree with the comments made by Jill Cockson, including her awful comments blasting Royals fans as not her target demographic, but she is a small business owner. An argument can be made that if you don’t own your property, you will be left on the sidelines in discussions. But this is too large of an issue to do that.

Once again, I’m voting yes on the belief the Royals will make good with their plans, and their faults. They have to at this point. And from making good with their plans and faults, we will get to more firm details (likely released with those faults being resolved).

[Highlander]

Royals will end up downtown no matter this vote. I'd place a large amount of money on it

I agree and I would encourage anyone to vote no this time around because it will result in a better deal. If I'm wrong and the Royals end up playing Clay County or Nashville in a few years I won't lose a wink of sleep about it either.

Seems very anti city to be so caviler to say “you won’t lose a wink of sleep” should KC lose a MLB team. It would be a huge loss and one of the worst things to happen to the city since the flood of 1951. Obviously there will be no loss of life but the economic impact cost in loss was 1 billion and this impact will be measured in the billions..plural. The loss of sales tax & general tax revenue. The loss of free city advertising & publicity. Loss of millions of dollars each year for dozens of local charities & non-profits that help citizens. Loss of tourist revenue. The ripple effect would be seriously impactful. Careful what you so casually say “fuck it” to if you really want to see the city thrive in the long run it’s best with having the Royals in town playing ball downtown. I agree 100% the royals & their leadership completely fucked up this entire process. They deserve all the venom & criticism thrown their way. But they are starting to get things right & moving in a positive direction. I hate, hate, hate, the location chosen will displace businesses, businesses that built themselves up & took a chance on a neighborhood because they believed it what they could do. I believe they will be taken care of & should be. But as the saying goes “progress waits for no man” and given how backward ass the rest of MO is it’s up to KC & STL to still be beacons of progress

Losing the Royals would be an unmitigated disaster for Kansas City. I can't believe people are saying they are happy to see them go. We will never get another MLB team if that happens. Even if you don't like MLB it provides an affordable pro sport for families in the summer and gives the city some recognition. Yea, they suck right now but that hasn't been the case and won't always be the case. The Chiefs will suck at some point in the future too. The NFL is a very difficult league to sustain success in; We've been a little spoiled having what we have had so far.

If the vote fails (and I think it will by a huge margin), the stadium is not going downtown. It just isn't. The Royals know that East Village was not a reasonable option. It's isolated from the streetcar, P&L district and crossroads by the dead-at-night government district tucked up against I-29/I-70 with little highway access and separated by that highway from most of the homeless shelters in the KC area. It's barely better than TSC.

Of course the Royals jumped on the East Crossroads site. Why would anyone fault them for that? It has absolutely everything: Access to Crossroads, access to streetcar, P&L District, a relatively busy and safe environment for non-downtowners coming into the city, decent road and highway access, lots of parking and places to add parking.

The folks saying this is "vapor" or the Royals are holding back info or they don't even own the land aren't thinking this through. They are not going to make those major investments and spend big dollars to do all that without some kind of assurance this is going to work for them. They are not a rich organization and despite the class warfare nonsense on social media, Sherman does not have deep pockets by MLB owner standards, certainly not enough to foot the bill for a ballpark.

[wahoowa]

The folks saying this is "vapor" or the Royals are holding back info or they don't even own the land aren't thinking this through. They are not going to make those major investments and spend big dollars to do all that without some kind of assurance this is going to work for them. They are not a rich organization and despite the class warfare nonsense on social media, Sherman does not have deep pockets by MLB owner standards, certainly not enough to foot the bill for a ballpark.

your critique of this hypothetical voter conflates two different issues. you are addressing whether or not the end result will work for the royals org. that is a completely different question than whether or not the presence of a stadium will be integrated into the area in a way that benefits the users of the area who use it for purposes other than baseball. the hypothetical voter you describe is looking at the second question.

let's assume the factors you described above concerning the ownership group are 100% accurate. it would be just as logical to conclude from them that the things in the current proposal that seem to be value adds for the area generally, as opposed to directly printing money for the org, will be the things that are value designed out of existence and/or replaced with profit generating machines in favor of the organization (parking, etc). in that sense it would be entirely logical for someone to suggest that they are not going to assume the neighborhood improvement components of the proposal will become reality for the purpose of evaluating the proposal in connection with their vote in the next 30 days. that's not a case of "not thinking this through"; it's a case of looking at the same fundamental information and reaching a different, but equally reasonable, conclusion.

and actually i'm not even sure it's a different conclusion so much as the choice of which component parts of the overall conclusion are most impactful to a given person's voting choice. there are folks on this board that would probably cast a vote for any downtown stadium; some that would probably cast a vote to avoid even a 1% chance that the royals leave the city; etc. what is utterly fascinating about how this is unfolding is the number of people who were pretty damn sure they fell in one of those two camps, many for a period of several years, but now can barely muster up the will to vote yes. personally i think that says a hell of a lot more about the proposal than it says about those voters....

[WoodDraw]

I have no problem with people that vote differently than me. I think it’s a hard choice.

I respect what Chris said a lot, but I want to push back on it a bit.

I worry more about the royals because it’s defining the future of a neighborhood. I care less about the chiefs because it’s already a parking sewer.

I expected more details before the vote. Even though I preferred the East village location, I could have been convinced to go east crossroads. But I need to know the plan.

No one is really contributing anything right now.

Handing over millions with no public information is so arrogant, and I care a lot about where I live. Power and light, sprint center, the airport, ballroom, convention hotel, none of it has been like this.

That’s why I’m reluctantly voting no.

[beautyfromashes]

This is about downtown Kansas City finally knowing our worth. We don’t have to desperately take any deal brought to the table and deals have to be fair. We shouldn’t be negotiating from a place of weakness, like we did with Cordish and P&L.

[KCPowercat]

This is about downtown Kansas City finally knowing our worth. We don’t have to desperately take any deal brought to the table and deals have to be fair. We shouldn’t be negotiating from a place of weakness, like we did with Cordish and P&L.

Great point

[DColeKC]

This is about downtown Kansas City finally knowing our worth. We don’t have to desperately take any deal brought to the table and deals have to be fair. We shouldn’t be negotiating from a place of weakness, like we did with Cordish and P&L.

Yes, because making that deal with them helped get downtown where it’s at but we are not Austin or Nashville. Fucking this up and ending up with no downtown stadium will have drastic consequences.

I’m not exactly sure how this deal isn’t fair even with what we know right now?

I wish people could imagine this site in ten years. It won’t be any better than what the royals have suggested.

I also respect individual decisions that will be made but damn, I don’t like the idea of giving the vultures more time to circle.

[WoodDraw]

The problem is we’re asked to imagine.

I want them to commit.

I have no idea what I’m voting for. If you read back through my comments when East village was favored, I said the same thing.

I’m not an idiot. There are still empty lots next to sprint center, and places never leased at power and light. You’re talking with people that have lived through all of this.

You have to get it in writing at the start. None of us are against downtown, just against incompetence.

[beautyfromashes]

Yes, because making that deal with them helped get downtown where it’s at but we are not Austin or Nashville. Fucking this up and ending up with no downtown stadium will have drastic consequences.

I’m not exactly sure how this deal isn’t fair even with what we know right now?

I wish people could imagine this site in ten years. It won’t be any better than what the royals have suggested.

I also respect individual decisions that will be made but damn, I don’t like the idea of giving the vultures more time to circle.

We negotiated with Cordish from the worst possible place... desperation. I'm not saying that it wasn't the right deal to make because there wasn't any other and we had to do something, anything. We aren't in that place anymore and we shouldn't negotiate the same.

I'll tell you why this deal is bad financially. At first, it was said this would be a 50/50 partnership with the county putting up $1B and the team doing the same. But, now, lurking in the shadows is the idea that the city is also going to put up a big chunk and the state too. So, we don't even know how much public money is being put in and how much (if any) the Royals are going to put in. Also, they've said that the public money would go for the stadium and the team would put money towards the ancillary development. But, we don't have assurances that those pieces will be built or when. So, this just looks like the Royals are asking for a fully funded stadium. That's arrogant AF. We can do better. This first shitty deal is a no from me.

[DColeKC]

From CityScene KC -

Just read an opinion piece in The Star by a regular opponent of downtown reinvestment. He quotes a business owner who once had a place 20 years ago where the P&L District was built to criticize the plan to build a new ballpark in the East Crossroads. The former business owner is not even where the ballpark is proposed.

Look, the Royals could have done themselves a big favor by going to the place of least resistance, the East Village. For whatever reason, they picked the East Crossroads at the 11th hour. So be it.

All things considered, that site would do a much better job of building on investments already made downtown. The East Village site also would still work well, particularly if the Royals forgo the idea of building a competing entertainment district there.

But the debate over the East Crossroads has become very misleading. First and foremost, it's NOT an arts district. The arts-related uses in the Crossroads are several blocks away to the west.

While much has been written about a handful of contributing businesses that would be dislocated, remember they would likely be made whole if those properties are bought.
On the other hand, two of the properties in particular, the empty Star printing plant, which takes up two blocks, and the one-block U-Haul warehouse, occupy huge amounts of the site and are downtown liabilities, not assets. The Church of the Rez, which owns a key block, also would do just fine and already has said it would find an alternative location downtown.

One key point that has not been reported about is the huge economic boon a ballpark would provide to all the microbreweries, distilleries and eateries within the two-block wider East 18th Street corridor nearby. It would be a repeat of what happened in Denver in the LoDo District when Coors Field was built 30 years ago.

I also posted an article I wrote back in the early 2000s about how folks in Denver felt about the downtown ballpark.
There are a handful of restaurants and bars within the East Crossroads footprint that would have to leave. They should be compensated and very likely will be.

One good suggestion I heard recently is Cordish should provide a free or substantially reduced rent home for maybe a year or two for those displaced businesses in vacant spaces in the P&L District. Several have been empty since the District opened.
Since Cordish would be one of the biggest winners should a ballpark go up across the South Loop, it should help make it work for those businesses that would have to go.

Downtown baseball, whether its the East Crossroads or East Village, would be a major benefit to the city and downtown. We have an owner who wants to be there. While the Royals have done a poor job rolling out this idea, it doesn't diminish the merits one jot.
This is a generational opportunity our city must seize. It already will likely receive substantial opposition in eastern Jackson County simply because they want the status quo maintained.

But it shouldn't be opposed by downtown folks based on spurious arguments.
Quote from Mending our Broken Heart article, by the way, Hickenlooper went on to become a mayor, governor and U.S. Senator:
"At first, developers such as John Hickenlooper, the owner of the Wynkoop microbrewery, a LoDo institution, opposed the ballpark. They thought it would ruin the residential atmosphere.

He has since changed his mind.
“Baseball, unlike football or basketball, is a big family sport,” he said. “It brought all these people downtown who hadn’t been before.”
Moulton went further.
“Baseball attracts housing,” she said. “It’s a romantic sport and family friendly. People feel romantic about living next to a ballpark.”

[Imarealperson]

Every time something comes across my Twitter feed from the Star editorial board, it confirms that yes is the correct vote.

[mean]

Technically it is financing, but it's not the kind I could go out and get, which makes me wonder why they don't just go to the bank? Because of interest fees, and the whole concept of paying it back? Gotcha. Well, that's insanely good financing if you can get it.

They'd theoretically pay it back through the taxes collected, maybe someday, if they generate projected revenues. But I have to assume they won't actually be on the hook like a regular person who can't repay their debts. The whole system is kind of screwed up imo.

I think the idea is the money greatly impacts the city and its citizens in ways that can't be put down on paper. Especially for a city the size of Kansas City. The NYC's of the world would be just fine without a single sports franchise but we need them badly.

How do you put a dollar figure on things like:

Community identity/Pride
Civic Unity
Boost to local morale
National and International recognition.
Inspo and Role Models
Community engagement and Charitable Work
Cultural Diversity
Legacy/History
Networking/Business Relationships
and on and on.

I guess I don't understand the argument here, because it seems obvious the answer is, "You don't, because it's $0", at least in terms of pro sports. Does Austin or Portland not have any of these things? Real talk, I like the teams. I like going to games. I like having the shared experience of rooting for teams with friends and coworkers. It's good stuff, and I would have to search for different icebreakers if they moved. Other than that? I honestly don't care much, and if you do, you might do a little research on what has made cities great for the last two thousand years. It's not often tied directly to pro sports teams. Not that they aren't fun and cool and good entertainment! Potentially worth investment, even! But it's not what makes a city.

[DColeKC]

Fair point and I agree sports teams are not what make great cities solely on their own. I believe in our market they’re a major factor and so far more than simply provide entertainment.

You know cities like Portland and Austin did it differently with other smart moves. Portland with their smart downtown planning on the early 70’s and well, geographical location is hard to beat. In the 70’s, they leaned into being this liberal utopia by investing in civic groups while also implementing tight land use restrictions.

Of course now they’d love to have a MLB team.

Austin clearly made smart moves to attract huge employers 30+ years ago and once again, geographically they’re blessed.

They would also love a MLB team or pro sports in general.

KC leaned into pro sports 50 years ago so here we are. If we mess this up we will experience a serious setback. Just like Portland and Austin would if they suddenly took a left turn.

[WoodDraw]

Does anyone here actually think the royals are going to spend $1 billion of their own money?

It’s completely made up.

[KCPowercat]

Trying to spook people into voting yes isn't going to work. KC and jaxco specifically have been easy yes votes for these teams for years, this falls on those teams feet for fumbling this if it gets defeated.

Give us who want to convince others the ammo to do it. Right now it's nothing.

[WoodDraw]

Trying to spook people into voting yes isn't going to work. KC and jaxco specifically have been easy yes votes for these teams for years, this falls on those teams feet for fumbling this if it gets defeated.

Give us who want to convince others the ammo to do it. Right now it's nothing.

Agree with this. It’s pretty hard to get us to go against anything we think is good for the city.

[DColeKC]

Trying to spook people into voting yes isn't going to work. KC and jaxco specifically have been easy yes votes for these teams for years, this falls on those teams feet for fumbling this if it gets defeated.

Give us who want to convince others the ammo to do it. Right now it's nothing.

I’m not personally trying to spoke anyone. I’m just expressing my own personal feelings on the topic. Minds are made up as far as those who read this forum. I’ve not mentioned the royals leaving the KC metro once. I don’t think that’s a real issue but I’m focused on downtown. That’s all.

[DColeKC]

Does anyone here actually think the royals are going to spend $1 billion of their own money?

It’s completely made up.

100%. Now over what period of time, I don’t know. Cordish has held up their end of their master development agreement with no end in sight on expansion. Perhaps not at everyone’s preferred pace but the deal didn’t specify certain projects by certain dates. Ballpark Village got done. There are other public private partnerships where deals were executed.

We are talking about the Royals here. Not a proven land squatting developer. They may have no development history to look to but that’s better then a reputation of failed project one after another.