Ballpark

The Kansas City Royals continue to push forward on one of the worst organized ballpark plans ever put together

A few months ago, I wrote a story on the Kansas City Royals and their crazy ways of trying to convince taxpayers to give them a billion dollars through an increased sales tax (for a new ballpark). As I said in the story, the Royals decided that the best way to do this was by making sure that residents were “confused about every detail of their potential ballpark.” Rather than finish important deals months before the vote on the new sales tax, the Royals were completing them “just a week or two before the sales tax vote, leaving people…

Ballpark

“Business groups” in Kansas City push local officials to build the Royals a new ballpark…without disclosing the Royals connections to the groups

When the Kansas City Royals tried to garner some support for the sales tax vote last year, they paid a company, Jones Lang LaSalle, a Chicago-based real estate company, to write and release an economic impact report on a potential ballpark. But, it didn't take long for problems to come out of this idea. The Royals paid Jones Lang LaSalle to write this report without caring or realizing that Jones Lang LaSalle had no experience with economic impact reports for ballparks or even sports venues. Even worse, the Royals didn't just pay Jones Lang LaSalle but they also “worked…

Ballpark

The Kansas City Royals screwed themselves yet still blame everyone else

The Kansas City Royals held off on telling the public about the location of their new ballpark until just months before the sales tax election. This meant that when the team did announce the location, the people who live in or around the area of this proposed ballpark were likely to be quite shocked. The Royals proposed a new ballpark on a big piece of land that at the moment had “as many as two dozen businesses and organizations” currently operating and open. They would need to be removed.