30% of the population will always say we shouldn't spend this money until (insert cause) is solved or fixed!phuqueue wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:21 pm Swap whatever words you want, but you're still talking about spending a huge amount of public money. What does it mean to "host big events all the time"? The World Cup is a big event and the existing Arrowhead already landed it. The Super Bowl is a big event, but it won't come to KC unless the stadium has a roof (and would have already been awarded to the existing Arrowhead if it had a roof). The Olympics will never come to KC, and if they did, they would surely expect a new Olympic Stadium as part of the bid. Arrowhead already hosts miscellaneous other soccer and college football games. A roofed stadium might host some basketball stuff as well, but that's somewhere between one and a few dates in a given year, and probably not every year. Even new stadiums in much larger cities host only a handful of non-NFL events in a given year, and most of those events are not national or international draws like the World Cup, they are just concerts for especially big acts (Arrowhead has also hosted some of these, and I suspect that the reason it doesn't host more has more to do with KC's ability to turn out 75,000 people for a concert than with the quality of the facilities, though that is just my feeling, I'm not a concert promoter or anything).
A new stadium is likely to cost ~$1 billion or more as a starting point, before you even start throwing in nonessential bells and whistles. Whether that's an especially wise use of public money or not, it's going to happen, so we'll set that part of it aside. But when you start talking about adding hundreds of millions more to that amount, the question needs to become, is it worth those hundreds of millions of dollars to pull in two or three concerts and an extra college football game or two per year? Or might the city/county/metro be better served by spending that money somewhere else?
I'm opposed to a brand new arrowhead until some better reasons can be shown. I believe Arrowhead is in unique company and while not as old, it's one of 3 remaining historical stadiums. I can envision a SoFi style open-air, covered Arrowhead. The single biggest hurdle to do any massive renovation to Arrowhead opposed to building new is going to be suites. Arrowhead currently has 80 while the new SoFi has almost 300. This represents millions in revenue being left on the table.
It would take some crazy design work to add even 20 more suites, let alone doubling them. That could be the deal breaker on saving Arrowhead.
If they build new, it won't be about drawing more large events. That will be a nice side effect but it's going to be all about suites, seats and technology. Arrowhead typically has one large concert a year which nets them some great money. They don't do more because the expenses to host these shows are enormous. If they could schedule 2 very different acts back to back they could get in more than 1 per year. Would mean the field is not useable for a full month.
Arrowhead also hasn't hosted many college football games over the last several years. They do have a bunch of smaller events, especially private ones all over the facility on a regular basis.
