Downtown Baseball Stadium

Discussion about new sports facilities in Kansas City
kboish
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by kboish »

Agreed. EV seems to have the most stars aligned to moved forward.
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taxi
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by taxi »

If the stadium is built there, can we change the name of the neighborhood? East Village is stupid. Who came up with that shit? The same person who came up with "SoLo"?
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by KCPowercat »

I really thought with Commerce banking the north loop and being a lifelong Royals sponsor it was going to end up there but yeah sounds like EsOa (East of Oak...lol?)
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by TheLastGentleman »

Nyc-based names can be pretty cheesy, and calling something East Village is about as bad as you can get. Maybe call it something like East Park, assuming the stadium indeed goes there
kboish
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by kboish »

Even East Loop would be better. Or we could call it “The Lots” as an homage to the historic parking lots that will be destroyed to make way for the development.

Plus it fits with a ball park being like a sandlot.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by WoodDraw »

Lol
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by GRID »

Yes, east village is a retarded name, especially for an area that is nothing but a few buildings and parking lots. lol

But my question is this. Is this stadium thing even a real topic? Every single thing I see online on any social media or local media (kc star, tv news etc) to just bombarded with comments from people that HATE the idea of a downtown stadium. This is a hot topic when it comes up and draws lots of comments and like 90% of them on any platform sound like a bunch of country bumkin people that are scared to go within 10 miles of downtown.

Regardless if you are for a stadium or not, reading those comments makes me embarrassed to be a KC expat. You could say that it's just the vocal minority like the KCI airport crowd? I hope so, but right now, I think that at least 80% of sports fans in KC hate the idea of a downtown stadium.

So if it does happen, is it going to happen without a public vote and be funded with private money?
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by flyingember »

GRID wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:50 pm Yes, east village is a retarded name, especially for an area that is nothing but a few buildings and parking lots. lol
the name was from the proposed development. the name doesn't predate the idea of doing a single project in that part of downtown

So the east village refers to a collection of buildings from a project that's not happening. It stuck for the part of town since then
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by GRID »

flyingember wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:53 pm
GRID wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:50 pm Yes, east village is a retarded name, especially for an area that is nothing but a few buildings and parking lots. lol
the name was from the proposed development. the name doesn't predate the idea of doing a single project in that part of downtown

So the east village refers to a collection of buildings from a project that's not happening. It stuck for the part of town since then
I know, but even if developed, it will not be anything like the real East Village. At least come up with something original. Not really sure that downtown needs 12 different "neighborhoods" anyway especially with manufactured names. Downtown KC is not that big. It's basically the government district if anything. Why can't people say they live in the Government District? It needs residents.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by flyingember »

GRID wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:56 pm
flyingember wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:53 pm
GRID wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:50 pm Yes, east village is a retarded name, especially for an area that is nothing but a few buildings and parking lots. lol
the name was from the proposed development. the name doesn't predate the idea of doing a single project in that part of downtown

So the east village refers to a collection of buildings from a project that's not happening. It stuck for the part of town since then
I know, but even if developed, it will not be anything like the real East Village. At least come up with something original. Not really sure that downtown needs 12 different "neighborhoods" anyway especially with manufactured names. Downtown KC is not that big. It's basically the government district if anything. Why can't people say they live in the Government District? It needs residents.
Names also not original in KC: Downtown.

Downtown Kansas City is not anything like the real downtown <whichever city first used the name>

There's government staff in around 20 blocks of downtown. Downtown is almost 900 blocks of space. So the government takes up maybe 2-3% of downtown
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GRID
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by GRID »

Not trying to argue. I mean call it what you want. But the gov area of downtown includes the fed courthouse, the civic mall, the FAA building, city hall, the KCPD HQ, the city and county jail, the big federal building, the county courthouse, the state building etc. It just seems odd to name anything that is only like 6-8 blocks a name. A development name I guess, but not really a "neighborhood".

I have always thought downtown as having Quality Hill, CBD, Government and now maybe P&L. Maybe Garment? Library district, north loop etc all seemed overkill to me or are just areas of a larger district.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by kboish »

It’s definitely just marketing
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by kboish »

But as far as whether or not a new DT stadium is an actual possibility- I’d say yes. Mainly because the new owner says as much.

The last time it was a discussion I don’t think it was ever actually a possibility because the previous owner certainly didn’t care where the stadium was located, let alone would put any political effort into making it happen.

Current ownership group has the political pull and seems to have the desire.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by flyingember »

GRID wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:35 pm It just seems odd to name anything that is only like 6-8 blocks a name. A development name I guess, but not really a "neighborhood".
You need to think 3D for why smaller geography names make sense. A multi building development downtown can rival a neighborhood in scale

One Light: 315
Two Light: 296
Three Light: 300 units

That's 910 units.

North Kansas City east of city hall is super dense with homes compared to newer developments and it has about 720 homes
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by Highlander »

kboish wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:43 pm But as far as whether or not a new DT stadium is an actual possibility- I’d say yes. Mainly because the new owner says as much.

The last time it was a discussion I don’t think it was ever actually a possibility because the previous owner certainly didn’t care where the stadium was located, let alone would put any political effort into making it happen.

Current ownership group has the political pull and seems to have the desire.
I'd still love to see this happen. While it's true that it will not be the catalyst that it would have been 20 years ago, there's still a lot of space downtown that could benefit from it and East Village is the perfect locale. I've watched downtown development almost all my life and I don't see East Village being infilled within the next few decades. There is still so many gaps all over downtown that will be infilled before anything ever lands in East Village that we are still a couple of generations away, even with the accelerated growth in the urban core in the last 10 years.

The biggest difficulty will be on the Royals organization to sell downtown to those who buy the tickets. The vast majority enjoy the simplicity of the giant parking lots and a line-of-sight walk to the stadiums. Although I am absolutely convinced that traffic would be less of a problem for a downtown stadium than it would be for Royals Stadium (and parking, while less straightforward, would not really be an issue), those will be difficult concepts for most people to come to grips with. KC would need to find a way to move people from the west loop to east village but that's not an insurmountable problem.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by TrolliKC »

kboish wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:43 pm The biggest difficulty will be on the Royals organization to sell downtown to those who buy the tickets. The vast majority enjoy the simplicity of the giant parking lots and a line-of-sight walk to the stadiums....
If you build it they will come
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by DColeKC »

GRID wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:50 pm Yes, east village is a retarded name, especially for an area that is nothing but a few buildings and parking lots. lol

But my question is this. Is this stadium thing even a real topic? Every single thing I see online on any social media or local media (kc star, tv news etc) to just bombarded with comments from people that HATE the idea of a downtown stadium. This is a hot topic when it comes up and draws lots of comments and like 90% of them on any platform sound like a bunch of country bumkin people that are scared to go within 10 miles of downtown.

Regardless if you are for a stadium or not, reading those comments makes me embarrassed to be a KC expat. You could say that it's just the vocal minority like the KCI airport crowd? I hope so, but right now, I think that at least 80% of sports fans in KC hate the idea of a downtown stadium.

So if it does happen, is it going to happen without a public vote and be funded with private money?
It's the most infuriating thing when I read those comments. It's the typical folks who have zero ability to look into the future, they just don't like change. They fail to understand that by talking about a downtown stadium, no on his saying Kauffman sucks. We are saying it's old and doing nothing for the city in its current location.

I love when they say, "If you move it downtown, where will we tailgate?" Well, first off.... YOU DON'T TAILGATE BASEBALL unless your team is so miserable you'd rather eat hotdogs in the parking lot. Kauffman is near the bottom in concession sales in the league... those sales help with rosters... rosters help win games.

Then you have the "parking and traffic is a nightmare" stupidity. We all know there's ample parking, public trans and a traffic study has been and would be done again. Going to the K now isn't a traffic wet dream, so I'm not sure what they're worried about besides not having a billion acre concrete parking lot?
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by Anthony_Hugo98 »

DColeKC wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:03 pm Then you have the "parking and traffic is a nightmare" stupidity. We all know there's ample parking, public trans and a traffic study has been and would be done again. Going to the K now isn't a traffic wet dream, so I'm not sure what they're worried about besides not having a billion acre concrete parking lot?
I went to a game at PNC park a few years back (visiting family north of Pittsburgh and conveniently caught a Royals vs Pirates game) and we had shown up literally 20 mins before first pitch, parked 3 blocks away under the highway viaduct (which I imagine would be used for nothing if no stadium was there) and walked to the game. Made it inside with 5 mins to spare and left following the game within 20 mins. Not just made it to the car and was waiting in traffic, but on the highway heading home from the game. People who think it would be a parking issue are completely disillusioned by this suburban mentality that if you can’t see a surplus of parking there isn’t enough.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by flyingember »

The total money picture probably looks better

There's downtown residents that it could be an impluse event
There's the ability for a business to all go for a weekday game and use their existing parking
There's obviously more hotel rooms, and visitors could fit a game in after a day at a convention or other activity, many of these people picked up a hotel or event shuttle to downtown

It doesn't take much of a new increase in ticket sales to counter the lost parking revenue.


Four tickets at just $20 each is the revenue of 5 cars. One car could hold 3-4 people. Better to increase ticket sales than parking.

A Pick 10 pack is worth a minimum of $16 per game. For a car with four in it that's $64 worth of tickets
Parking is worth $15 per game

It just makes sense for them to upsell tickets
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by Highlander »

flyingember wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2020 9:49 am The total money picture probably looks better

There's downtown residents that it could be an impluse event
There's the ability for a business to all go for a weekday game and use their existing parking
There's obviously more hotel rooms, and visitors could fit a game in after a day at a convention or other activity, many of these people picked up a hotel or event shuttle to downtown

It doesn't take much of a new increase in ticket sales to counter the lost parking revenue.


Four tickets at just $20 each is the revenue of 5 cars. One car could hold 3-4 people. Better to increase ticket sales than parking.

A Pick 10 pack is worth a minimum of $16 per game. For a car with four in it that's $64 worth of tickets
Parking is worth $15 per game

It just makes sense for them to upsell tickets
All around, it's a better experience for the fans and a better situation for KC. I'm just surprised the new owner is able to see past the parking revenue (and potentially the loss of some food sales as well due to so many nearby restaurants) to push for a DT stadium. He must see the upside. I would think there's also room enough in East Village to build a stadium and provide at least some parking which the Royals could control.
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