Downtown Baseball Stadium

Discussion about new sports facilities in Kansas City
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Anthony_Hugo98
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by Anthony_Hugo98 »

StL_Dan wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:03 am
Anthony_Hugo98 wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:51 am
DColeKC wrote: Mon Jul 27, 2020 10:54 am Speaking of stadiums. There’s a great series on YouTube that follows the construction of the new Raiders Allegiant Stadium in vegas. While I hate the raiders, I can’t wait to attend a game out there. The stadium design looks to be one of the best in the world.
If you’re talking about the one narrated by Mike Rowe, it is an awesome series. I agree that it will absolutely be a world class stadium once complete.
I gotta see this
Here’s the link dan
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... gDIpZztURC
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GRID
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

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DColeKC wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2020 3:41 pm
GRID wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2020 2:29 pm
DColeKC wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2020 2:17 pm

100% agree. Let's not forget some of the reason for wanting it downtown is to be closer to residents who can walk to the stadium and tourists. No one is walking to the Truman Sports Complex right now and very few business folks in town for work are catching a game because it's cheap and easy to get to. Hopefully this means an increase in attendance. Not to mention the overall experience for out of town guests. Being able to stay downtown and walk to all the spots required for a family weekend trip is huge!
Being 30 miles from two very urban ballparks and having gone to dozens of games at both, I think you are overestimating the percent of crowds that walk to games form the immediate local area. It might increase weekday attendance some, but will it be enough to offset the loss from those that don't want to drive back into the city and deal with parking etc. And parking and traffic will be a problem not because there is not enough parking, but because KC's downtown highway and surface street infrastructure is just not designed for large crowds coming and going.

Downtown KC doesn't even have any major streets to collect and distribute traffic to and from the stadium like you have in Denver, ST Louis Baltimore, DC etc. In order for a downtown park to work in KC, you would need to spend a few hundred million on infrastructure improvements alone. Anyway, my point is that most people, even in very urban ballparks come from places that you have to drive from or take transit. The streetcar will help, but still most will drive. A VERY tiny percent of people gong to the game will be coming form people that live downtown or are staying in downtown hotels. You can see this in any city. Clev, Balt, DC, Sea, Toronto etc. Then you have Milwaukee which draws very well from a city smaller than KC without a downtown park. LA basically has a suburban park even though it's near downtown and they draw 50k a night. 99% of people that go to cards games are from the burbs. Baltimore, Pitts, Cleve all can barely get 10k on many nights with amazing downtown parks. Build it downtown, but don't expect it to change attendance much.

You still need a 35k seat park though or again, how do you even make the numbers work to be in the MLB in the first place. Got to be able to pull in those 35k crowds on fri and sat or during special games.
Only thing I disagree with is the STL comment. Nowhere near 99% come from the burbs. STL, Texas and Atlanta are the only mlb teams I have actual inside information on. STL games actually feature a solid percentage every game from out of town guest staying in downtown hotels. More so on the weekends of course. Big business attendance on weekdays as well.

Atlanta sees a big regular attendance from people living within 1 mile of the stadium. They average almost double the attendance of the royals.

Texas is a bit odd because it’s similar to KC’s current situation but does have the entertainment complex there and residential in the pipeline. Still somewhat Isolated from major residential.
I mean the local fans are mostly from the burbs. Obviously I was being a bit facetious there, but StL is a suburban city, probably more so than KC is on a relative scale. But yeah, the Cards have a massive draw, not only from out of state, but from most of rural Missouri.

I guess I just hope KC figures out how to do a downtown ballpark right. Honestly a lot of things KC does are half ass and on the cheap. I just think some money needs to be spent on a stadium and the entire east side of downtown for it to really be worthwhile. I just think a stadium plopped down on the east side of downtown with little to no real improvement to the area is sort of a waste especially if it's a cheap feeling minor league type ballpark compared to other new MLB parks. The highways and surfaces streets in all of eastern downtown would need to be redone and a lot of park space needs to be added and there has to be a major residential/office etc project that goes up at the same time (or it will never happen at any decent scale).

I honestly just don't see all this happening. I would love to see it, but with a downtown park, the city needs to go big or not do it at all in my opinion and that is nearly impossible to pull off in the fragmented KC area. KC just doesn't have the population to pull of such a massive project without metropolitan support and cooperation and that cooperation and support is still not there. It may not even be there in Jackson County, let alone the entire metro. Add in the fact that a massive amount of KC sports fans are against even the thought of moving the Royals downtown and KC is going to end up with the most scaled down, cheapest downtown ballpark built yet surrounded by parking lots for decades. Traffic will also gridlock trying to get to and from with KC's obsolete downtown highway system (downtown KC has a million lane miles of underused roads and highways yet can no way support high volume game traffic) because it's so poorly designed and none of it can handle any sort of volume. And in the lack of real transit won't help. That streetcar will not be able to handle any sort of real volume that would really make a big dent in traffic and the traffic in downtown going to games will clog up the streetcar's ability to move the few fans it can because it's not in its own right of way. Just my pessimist opinion of the matter.

If you can't do it right, then why not just make the TSC 1000 times better at a fraction of the cost. If you can do it right, than it would be pretty awesome.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by TheLastGentleman »

I don't think we have to worry about a sea of parking in the East Village. The stadium would take up the bulk of the area's surface lot wasteland, and there's not room to add vast swaths of parking unless they started putting it across the freeway in Paseo West.

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earthling
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by earthling »

^The stadium should also budget for and highly publicize trams that circulate existing downtown garages. As well as encourage taking city/metro buses to games.
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normalthings
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by normalthings »

The owners of the Royals are involved with some of the most successful businesses in the area/country. We have multiple built in potential tenants for a stadium side office project.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by dakkottadavviss »

I’m very curious how these plans would sit with MoDOT. It seems like the city is in favor of converting those streets to 2-way. MoDOT seriously has to improve access on the east side of the loop. It’s the shortest system-to-system interchange distance in the loop and has a multiple interchanges with zero spacing or merge lanes. At least the west side of the loop only has the one interchange at 12th st. It seems like I-70 from the east and west sides have good access on the east side of the loop but I-35 and 71 (mostly southbound) are somewhat questionable with the renderings shown.
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GRID
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

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normalthings wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:34 pm The owners of the Royals are involved with some of the most successful businesses in the area/country. We have multiple built in potential tenants for a stadium side office project.
That's good news. Maybe if the right people are doing this, it can be pulled off. I just wonder what can be done with the infrastructure, especially since MoDot has control of most of it and MoDot tends to put band-aids on everything rather than do a proper rebuild.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by earthling »

Looking at the concept from this perspective, could optimize the space by shifting the stadium to the right, fused into the buildings to right, allowing for more space to left for largish building(s), and could be 20+ floors, fused into stadium, overhanging the stands a bit with perhaps more luxury suites. If the block to the north is available for sale, could put hirises there. Then there would be a start for a 'skyline view' from within the stadium. And as mentioned, provide a couple dozen broad, publicly accessible amenities/services within these buildings so the area is active every day.

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Last edited by earthling on Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
dakkottadavviss
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by dakkottadavviss »

That grass field + parking lot to the north is owned by the city. So it's very likely that it could be handed over to developers for the stadium. I wonder if they'd be able to bury a parking garage underneath that block. Then maybe they could do an underground tunnel to the stadium like they have with Barney Allis Plaza and Municpal Auditorium. You're probably talking about the blocks next to the highway to the north though. I don't think there'll be a problem getting them to sell. Worst case scenario the city uses eminent domain to take the property. Hopefully the 2 blocks to the south can be developed. I know that one is used for the federal building, so owned by the feds, and I believe the other is KCATA property.

There's big potential for the governments and the Royals to really hit a homerun with this project (pun intended). It could be the P&L 2.0 for downtown. Just about anything they do will be a big improvement over the wasteland that side of downtown has been. Crossing my fingers this doesn't follow the path of ballpark village with all of the delays that project had.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by earthling »

Ideally would have much broader amenities/services than P&L, which is mainly eats/entertainment. I've thrown out ideas like another library branch, NLB/Monarchs and jazz museum moved within the surrounding buildings, with view of the field. Maybe some city/state functions, with waiting areas that have stadium field view. Would provide more daily public integration into the stadium that's inclusive to all citizens. What else could work? Think outside the box.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by gfenn11 »

Anthony_Hugo98 wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 9:27 am
StL_Dan wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:03 am
Anthony_Hugo98 wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:51 am

If you’re talking about the one narrated by Mike Rowe, it is an awesome series. I agree that it will absolutely be a world class stadium once complete.
I gotta see this
Here’s the link dan
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... gDIpZztURC
Anyone else notice in Ep. 11 at the 3 min mark there is a poster of the Western Auto building behind the guy being interviewed?
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normalthings
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by normalthings »

gfenn11 wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:40 pm
Anthony_Hugo98 wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 9:27 am
StL_Dan wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:03 am

I gotta see this
Here’s the link dan
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... gDIpZztURC
Anyone else notice in Ep. 11 at the 3 min mark there is a poster of the Western Auto building behind the guy being interviewed?
The architects and engineers are from KC. David Manica (3 minute mark) is designing the Reverb rooftop club.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by DColeKC »

earthling wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:53 pm Ideally would have much broader amenities/services than P&L, which is mainly eats/entertainment. I've thrown out ideas like another library branch, NLB/Monarchs and jazz museum moved within the surrounding buildings, with view of the field. Maybe some city/state functions, with waiting areas that have stadium field view. Would provide more daily public integration into the stadium that's inclusive to all citizens. What else could work? Think outside the box.
I agree the amenities should be similar to what you listed. Putting in bars/restaurants so close to a district mostly dedicated to that feature set would be counter productive and why have two projects involving tax dollars fighting each other for revenue.

Like I’ve mentioned, Cordish’s have been involved in this for years and they’re obviously going to want to do all they can to encourage fans to attend the businesses in PNL.
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FangKC
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by FangKC »

The new city manager agrees with me.
What’s your take on a potential downtown ballpark and if one is proposed, what would the city’s role be in helping develop it?

I know there have been discussions about a ballpark very close to City Hall on those vacant (East Village) properties. I actually think that location is better suited for high-rise development, residential, commercial, retail space with a lot of community benefits that activate the streets there 24 hours a day every day of the week.

We need to build up the population living in the core of the city that will help support the entire downtown area and the entire region. A ballpark is a really cool amenity, but it’s only an amenity that’s in use 80 days a year.

There are of course a lot of benefits to them and I think there are some better areas in the city, better locations, that would be better suited for something that would bring people to those neighborhoods.
https://cityscenekc.com/new-city-manage ... -ballpark/
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by WoodDraw »

I respect his thoughts and probably half agree.

The reality is that the redevelopment isn’t happening though. Part of this is because people are banking the land.

I think there is an opportunity to rethink what a stadium can be, both in size and in different uses when games aren’t being played. And not surrounding it with parking lots or garages.

A stadium could have a ground level hall of fame, bar for when the team is away, a team store, event space for weddings or corporate events (I know...). There are ways to activate it then surround with multiuse development.

If that happens, I think it could help development. Otherwise I’ll be very critical.

All I’ll say is watch this space.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by FangKC »

If the stadium was built in such a way where the base of it under the stands contained retail spaces on all four sides (or three if it's built against the interstate), I think it could possible benefit. The retail businesses would be open all during the year, so there wouldn't be dead blocks and long stretches with no street activity during the day and evening. It couldn't be just one business on each of the four corners either. It would have to be a full-stretch of businesses side-by-side down the block with the stands sitting above the first floor. Of course there would have to be entrances to the stadium at various points. And none of the big wasted plazas unless they can be used in off-times by restaurants for seating.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by WoodDraw »

I recommended “temporary parks” for outdoor dining and ground level restaurants and bars when the stadium isn’t being used, and a club level where you could dine year around with view of the fountains. Maybe season ticket holders get a discount?

And of course a museum and a store on the ground level. I’m sure people have better ideas. Encouraging development around it and not just keeping the lots.
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FangKC
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by FangKC »

A lot of small businesses might be more realistic since it's harder to fill bigger retail spaces these days. Smaller retail spaces can serve many needs for the neighborhood, and often become long-time neighborhood anchors. I would rather have 8-10 small businesses a long a block serving residents than four big retail spaces where one or two of them go vacant regularly.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by smh »

Also we always mention landbanking in East Village, but the vast majority of the land is owned by KCMO.
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Re: Downtown Baseball Stadium

Post by flyingember »

smh wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:59 am Also we always mention landbanking in East Village, but the vast majority of the land is owned by KCMO.
The East Village is 8th to 12th, Cherry to Charlotte. 8 city blocks

The city owns ~2.75 blocks. For well under 1/2 of the land in the district.

No one in the district owns a majority
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