Downtown Baseball Stadium

[TheBigChuckbowski]

I don't know how to be more clear about this but I've seen the internal information where thousands of people across the metro were polled. The site and how it impacted the arts and small business wasn't a major concern for the majority of the voters who responded. It's brash to say but these people simply don't care about the fear mongering being pushed about "destruction" of a "vibrant" neighborhood. Many did not want it downtown period due to the constantly perpetuated misconceptions about traffic, parking and crime.

If polling showed that's what a majority of voters believe, what was the point of putting a downtown stadium on the ballot? I would also want to know when this polling was done.

[DMNBT_RCJH]

I don't know how to be more clear about this but I've seen the internal information where thousands of people across the metro were polled. The site and how it impacted the arts and small business wasn't a major concern for the majority of the voters who responded. It's brash to say but these people simply don't care about the fear mongering being pushed about "destruction" of a "vibrant" neighborhood. Many did not want it downtown period due to the constantly perpetuated misconceptions about traffic, parking and crime.

East Village isn't coming back on the table. The Royals are all in on this site. The city will have to get more involved and the city leaders want this in East Crossroads, not EV.

This may be true, but I would wager at least 1-2K people voted no because of the location and the impact on small business.

That’s not an insignificant amount when considering the vote total needed to get to a Yes vote.

We can bemoan the “save the crossroads” messaging all we want (the crossroads would be fine with the stadium there), but the messaging was effective and no doubt had a material impact on the final tally.

[DColeKC]

John Sherman needs to explain what happened to the East Village site and why it's not on the table. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the Crossroads site is leagues better than EV. But the last-minute (in relative terms) switch rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and he needs to be clear about why EV is not going to happen.

It's an open secret. Cordish didn't want them in the EV and went to the city and said it would be bad for the general fund. Q did shit. Switched to the crossroads to get out of the fucked up star building business issues too, just incestuous all the way down.

But it's no secret.

LOL -

Cordish wanted downtown baseball, they saw it slipping away and agreed to help however they could, EV or EC. Once EV was announced as a finalist, other interested parties started speaking up including MoDot and the GSA. The Mayor made it clear that if the Royals wanted the cities help, EC was the preferred site. A meeting was setup with the Mayor, city manager, John Sherman and Cordish. They went up to the 8th floor at three light to overlook the EC site and John Sherman saw the vision. This was too late in the process but they pushed for the April ballot anyway. Here we are.

[DColeKC]

I don't know how to be more clear about this but I've seen the internal information where thousands of people across the metro were polled. The site and how it impacted the arts and small business wasn't a major concern for the majority of the voters who responded. It's brash to say but these people simply don't care about the fear mongering being pushed about "destruction" of a "vibrant" neighborhood. Many did not want it downtown period due to the constantly perpetuated misconceptions about traffic, parking and crime.

East Village isn't coming back on the table. The Royals are all in on this site. The city will have to get more involved and the city leaders want this in East Crossroads, not EV.

This may be true, but I would wager at least 1-2K people voted no because of the location and the impact on small business.

That’s not an insignificant amount when considering the vote total needed to get to a Yes vote.

We can bemoan the “save the crossroads” messaging all we want (the crossroads would be fine with the stadium there), but the messaging was effective and no doubt had a material impact on the final tally.

Agreed, I'm not suggesting it didn't matter at all but not nearly to the point that some on here are trying to make it out to be. The, "if this were in East Village is passes" comments are just comical.

[aknowledgeableperson]

In thinking about why the issue lost one reason could be much of the public wasn't given a valid, in their eyes, reason why The K had to be replaced. Both stadiums were in many ways similar but one could have its life extended for another 25 years or so while the other was a total mess just waiting to fall down. Many of the public just didn't believe The K had outlived its useful like. Besides that point the Royals failed to convince most of the voters that there was a better option for the team besides The K.
Yes, people can blame Frank White, Sly James and Lucas among a few others but their role in this failure is minimal. Put the blame entirely on the Royals. This effort was doomed at its start by the team not doing its homework.

[DColeKC]

John Sherman needs to explain what happened to the East Village site and why it's not on the table. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the Crossroads site is leagues better than EV. But the last-minute (in relative terms) switch rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and he needs to be clear about why EV is not going to happen.

It's an open secret. Cordish didn't want them in the EV and went to the city and said it would be bad for the general fund. Q did shit. Switched to the crossroads to get out of the fucked up star building business issues too, just incestuous all the way down.

But it's no secret.

LOL -

Cordish wanted downtown baseball, they saw it slipping away and agreed to help however they could, EV or EC. Once EV was announced as a finalist, other interested parties started speaking up including MoDot and the GSA. The Mayor made it clear that if the Royals wanted the cities help, EC was the preferred site. A meeting was setup with the Mayor, city manager, John Sherman and Cordish. They went up to the 8th floor at three light to overlook the EC site and John Sherman saw the vision. This was too late in the process but they pushed for the April ballot anyway. Here we are.

And I'll add. What's incestuous about this? You think it's wrong for a developer who's invested hundreds of millions to do everything they can to protect that investment? You think it's wrong for a Mayor to want to protect a tax incentivized development that this city overprojected and is short yearly on those bond payments? You think it's wrong for the city to be thinking of ways to get the eyesore and forever vacant Star building torn down? You think it's incestuous to pick a site that could help the cap park move along quicker?

I'd say this is just good business.

[WoodDraw]

John Sherman needs to explain what happened to the East Village site and why it's not on the table. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the Crossroads site is leagues better than EV. But the last-minute (in relative terms) switch rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and he needs to be clear about why EV is not going to happen.

It's an open secret. Cordish didn't want them in the EV and went to the city and said it would be bad for the general fund. Q did shit. Switched to the crossroads to get out of the fucked up star building business issues too, just incestuous all the way down.

But it's no secret.

LOL -

Cordish wanted downtown baseball, they saw it slipping away and agreed to help however they could, EV or EC. Once EV was announced as a finalist, other interested parties started speaking up including MoDot and the GSA. The Mayor made it clear that if the Royals wanted the cities help, EC was the preferred site. A meeting was setup with the Mayor, city manager, John Sherman and Cordish. They went up to the 8th floor at three light to overlook the EC site and John Sherman saw the vision. This was too late in the process but they pushed for the April ballot anyway. Here we are.

What help exactly did the city give?

I'm familiar with what happened. Cordish didn't want competition to their east, feds feded, and Sherman got rolled because I said from the beginning they were never going to invest a billion dollars in something outside the stadium so this gave them an out.

It was silly money all around. It was just convenient for everyone so cordish didn't get a competitor, royals didn't have to invest, and the city was worried about a couple things that wound impact the general fund and close partners.

[GRID]

East village would not have gotten any more yes votes. I think it woukd have gotten more no votesi n the suburbs. You guys are in a bubble downtown in relation to the rest of the county

[TheBigChuckbowski]

East village would not have gotten any more yes votes. I think it woukd have gotten more no votesi n the suburbs. You guys are in a bubble downtown in relation to the rest of the county

What's the difference between EV and EC to someone in Eastern Jack?

[Anthony_Hugo98]

East village would not have gotten any more yes votes. I think it woukd have gotten more no votesi n the suburbs. You guys are in a bubble downtown in relation to the rest of the county

This is absolutely incorrect.

[KC_JAYHAWK]

Seems to me a big chunk of the PnL district is still empty and that's on Cordish. I drive up Main Street 3 days a week to 1KCP and there are a half a dozen empty storefronts (on Main Street of all streets), some of which have never been filled. It's actually embarrassing since the streetcar runs that route. Maybe Cordish needs to get going on 4 Light and fill up all the empty storefronts, especially those that have never been occupied and we are talking 15 years now?

[beautyfromashes]

Flashy ads and paid people knocking on doors do not win an election, at least in this town. What wins an election is passionate advocates who will sell the plan to their neighbors, people who live in the urban core now but whose parents still live in Raytown or Blue Springs and will sell the vote over Easter dinner. There was nothing to sell here. Those urban advocates would have sold the revitalization of a large part of downtown, turning EV parking lots into progress. They lost it in February (months after the site should have been locked down) when they chose EC.

[WoodDraw]

East village would not have gotten any more yes votes. I think it woukd have gotten more no votesi n the suburbs. You guys are in a bubble downtown in relation to the rest of the county

What's the difference between EV and EC to someone in Eastern Jack?

When you run a campaign like this, you split it.

The first thing I would do is union and neighborhood outreach so when I announce I have everyone endorsing as I announce.

Women and minority tend to be less union, so you come out at the same time and say we're going to guarantee best in class representation along with education for the next generation.

I would say we want the people that serve here to be able to live here so we're building affordable housing so the people that serve your beers also live there.

We all know that KC has the best sports architecture firms in the world, and that's why they put together this to show you just a brief of what this new KC neighborhood will look like with our homegrown talent building for our next generation of homegrown players.

While the stadiums are moving apart, we're one city. Together.

Shit like that. I'm drunk in Thailand and I just did better.

[WoodDraw]

East village would not have gotten any more yes votes. I think it woukd have gotten more no votesi n the suburbs. You guys are in a bubble downtown in relation to the rest of the county

This is absolutely incorrect.

Anthony is correct here. There was a lot of goodwill for the east village site.

[TheUrbanRoo]

John Sherman needs to explain what happened to the East Village site and why it's not on the table. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the Crossroads site is leagues better than EV. But the last-minute (in relative terms) switch rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and he needs to be clear about why EV is not going to happen.

It's an open secret. Cordish didn't want them in the EV and went to the city and said it would be bad for the general fund. Q did shit. Switched to the crossroads to get out of the fucked up star building business issues too, just incestuous all the way down.

But it's no secret.

In all honesty though, I actually don’t think that’s a hard sell to the citizens to be upfront about.

“Look, we didn’t want to have to build another entertainment district to compete against the one we have that’s already in debt. It was just smarter to fold them all into one, and quite possibly get the city out of the P&L debt hole”

[beautyfromashes]

^^^ Drunk in Thailand and it still makes loads of sense. Talk about residual benefit to the Historic NE, potential for rail transportation further east, jobs for real people... This campaign had zero passion.

[GRID]

East village would not have gotten any more yes votes. I think it woukd have gotten more no votesi n the suburbs. You guys are in a bubble downtown in relation to the rest of the county

What's the difference between EV and EC to someone in Eastern Jack?

I know so many people in eastern Jackson County. I feel like I'm one of the only people on this forum that has a lot of ties to eastern Jackson County. I have family and friends all over the suburbs there.

The EV didn't excite anybody. It was not enough of an upgrade from Kauffman. People in the eastern suburbs are more familiar with the east loop than people think. They use the courthouses, they have been to the MO state building, many work in the federal budlings. Most fed employees live in the east suburbs. They know how disconnected and isolated that part of downtown is. They know it's close to some of downtown's rougher areas to the east. When the Star site came up, most people I know really liked the site. The renderings made them give the downtown stadium idea a more serious consideration and many supported it. That is till the downtown and crossroads crowd didn't and the anti stadium people latched on to "destroy the crossroads" campaign and spewed a ton of mis information even while the Crossroads was actually working with the Royals to deal with concerns.

Then most jumped on board thinking. Well if downtown doesn't want this, then why should I?

I know of nobody that was for the EV location in the suburbs. They just saw nothing about that location that interested them. Most prefeed the NKC site over that site if it came down to it.

[WoodDraw]

John Sherman needs to explain what happened to the East Village site and why it's not on the table. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the Crossroads site is leagues better than EV. But the last-minute (in relative terms) switch rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and he needs to be clear about why EV is not going to happen.

It's an open secret. Cordish didn't want them in the EV and went to the city and said it would be bad for the general fund. Q did shit. Switched to the crossroads to get out of the fucked up star building business issues too, just incestuous all the way down.

But it's no secret.

In all honesty though, I actually don’t think that’s a hard sell to the citizens to be upfront about.

“Look, we didn’t want to have to build another entertainment district to compete against the one we have that’s already in debt. It was just smarter to fold them all into one, and quite possibly get the city out of the P&L debt hole”

The problem was it was all vapor.

[GRID]

Oh and the other reason that so many people I know to vote no was they felt bullied. By both teams. Shut up and vote yes or we are leaving. Pissed lot of people off.

[WoodDraw]

^^^ Drunk in Thailand and it still makes loads of sense. Talk about residual benefit to the Historic NE, potential for rail transportation further east, jobs for real people... This campaign had zero passion.

Elections are all about telling a story, preferably before someone else tells one first.

I'm mostly stupid, but I have friends that aren't! I think this was horribly managed.


I left out something I wound have done, which was make an enemy. You have to run against something.

Anyway, I truly found it incompetent with apologies to anyone that worked on it.