In November of last year, the Kansas City Royals finally told the world that they would be leaving their current ballpark for a new one in 2030! The plans included the ballpark being downtown and the total cost being around $2 billion. The Royals owner, John Sherman, claimed in a letter to fans that a new ballpark was financially necessary for the team’s future success. He also mentioned that a new ballpark would “best (serve) our community to the fullest” without explaining whether he was joking or how this would happen. This wasn’t that much of a surprise, given that the Royals have spent the last 50 years at Kauffman Stadium.
When a team is moving to a new ballpark, many complicated things need to be figured out well in advance. At the time of their announcement, most thought the Royals had a plan for the future and were going after it. At least that is what we thought. But now that almost two years have passed since the Royals announcement, it isn’t difficult to see that the Royals have no idea what they are doing. Trying to get answers to the most basic questions is hard for Royals officials, even today. The Kansas City Star (Star) summed up the Royals ballpark progress by writing that “the only clear element of the exploration has been its deliberate pace”.
- They have yet to nail down the most basic questions, such as where the location of the ballpark will be.
- They have found a way to puzzle numerous local leaders with the way that the team is trying to go about the negotiations.
- They haven’t followed through on many non-major requests, such as a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA).
- They have yet to talk to several community groups that they promised would be an integral part of the ballpark process.
- The list could go on and on and on.
So let’s talk about just a few of these examples:
1. The most basic one is where will the new ballpark be located?
The lack of a definitive location for the ballpark is crazy considering it is almost the end of 2023. I would have thought that a team had somewhere picked out before announcing that they were moving. But when the Royals announced their plans, they had no idea where they would or could move to apart from it being in the downtown area. In Sherman’s letter to fans, the team acknowledged that they had several sites in mind, with nothing finalized. In late 2022 and early 2023, the Royals were cavorting with numerous locations around the city and state. In fact, they were talking to so many places that by March 2023, the Royals had narrowed their list to “four or five” locations. Not one or two…but four or five?
In June 2023, Sherman told the Star that two locations were now the only ones being considered, one which is downtown and another which is not downtown. We found out a little while later that the Royals actual list of locations may be a little longer. One landowner told the KC local media, that even though his press-printing location wasn’t on the Royals narrowed down list of sites, the team was still talking to them about purchasing their land. The Royals then decided to put themselves on a September 2023 deadline to figure out the ballpark’s location. The owner spent weeks talking to the media about how hard the team was working to find the best ballpark location for their future. The deadline came and went, and the Royals did nothing. They pushed back the deadline and made no decision. Considering we have already mentioned a possible third location, would it be that crazy to mention the rumored fourth location that is out of the state entirely? As the Royals SBNation blog wrote, this entire situation has been a “circus” since the proposal was told to the public.
The ballpark will be downtown! Nevermind, it may not. We are down to this many locations! Nevermind, it may be more than that. We will have a ballpark location by the end of September 2023! Nevermind, we still don’t know. Residents in and around Kansas City should be comforted that wherever the team selects, they have promised to provide results that revolve around on the local “community impact, economic growth, and an enhanced quality of life”. Good luck getting that enforced.
2. Is there going to be a ballpark district? What is included in a district? Who is paying for what?
Who is paying for all of this? Initially, the project was going to be funded “funded primarily through private investment” while still requiring a “commitment of public funding through a taxpayer vote”. Sherman has followed this up by claiming that he is “personally investing hundreds of millions of dollars directly into the ballpark and the ballpark district”. However, he also adds in that the project requires a “mixture of public and private investment”. Sherman told the Star after the original announcement that private money would pay for the “bulk” of the new ballpark. But when you see someone claiming that they will “primarily” fund a project or the “bulk” amount of it, does that not usually involve that person paying an amount that is substantially above 50%? Well, that is what Sherman meant to say. In September 2023, Sherman told the AP News that the Royals ownership would pay for half of the total price of everything and would cover “any overages”.
As stated above, Sherman wants a ballpark district near the venue. Since the beginning of this project, a ballpark district has been included when discussing any part of the project. In his letter to fans in 2022, Sherman mentions how he wants a ballpark district to include “shops, hotels, restaurants and affordable housing options”. Taxpayers should not worry about the ballpark district finances. Why? The Royals “pledged to absorb the cost of the estimated $1 billion entertainment district” and used this pledge in ads to help their chances of a possible vote in the future. Give that man a round of applause for doing this out of his own pocket!
Wait. Nevermind. Sherman now needs help with the district. According to the owner, the ballpark district only works with “investment from multiple local jurisdictions and the state of Missouri”. Hell, that sounds like he wants the city/state to pick up more than half of that tab. A few months later, KCUR reported that the inclusion of a ballpark district was not mandatory in negotiations. The team views it as “under consideration”. We still are not sure what that means.
Whenever Sherman talks about numbers, he brings out the same figures. By moving to a new ballpark, the Royals would create an additional $185 million in regional economic activity, create 600+ new jobs and “spur $60 million in new tax revenue over the first decade”. The Royals claim that these figures were done by a company called HR&A Advisors. I remember these guys. When the Texas Rangers needed help with PR, they hired this group to come in and claim that a new ballpark would bring in new economic activity to the tune of “$77.5 million for Arlington and $137.6 million for Tarrant County”. How did they come up with these numbers? We have no idea. They never tell us. Thankfully, FieldOfSchemes.com is bright enough to figure out that this group simply added up all Rangers local spending and multiplied it by some random stat model number. Furthermore, HR&A doesn’t seem to understand the difference between economic activity and fiscal impact. But I digress.
3. Do the Royals plan on actually speaking to residents and local groups? Or agreeing to a binding Community Benefits Agreement?
- Listening Tour
When this thing started last year, the Royals explained that this ballpark would be built with the community in mind. They wanted to communicate with everyone on this project. Just not right now. These talks will happen “over the next approaching months”. After several months passed, Sherman announced a “listening tour” that would occur throughout the area. Again, this will happen “in coming months” and will involve discussions about the “merits of a new stadium and ballpark district, and to gather community input”. Once the tour started, it became quite clear what the team was doing.
KSHB.com did a good write-up on what this tour involved:
- “The meeting is not open to the public”
- “Participants had to request permission to reserve a spot and questions will be pre-screened”
- “Team officials, who had yet to grant interviews with media outlets since Sherman published his open letter, will not take questions from reporters”
How could the team not learn so much from such a diverse and random crowd?
- Community Benefits Agreement (CBA)
The Royals consistently tell the public that they support having a strong CBA, since the team agrees with many of the ideas given to them by community groups. Sherman told fans in his 2022 letter that “affordable housing options will be important to our efforts”. But be patient. They want everyone to hold off just for a little. Then the team will talk. But until this unknown point in time? Patience. Months ago, several community groups began to question why a CBA was not finished already. Sherman responded by asserting that “details of a community benefits agreement…are premature”.
A group called “Stand Up KC” has been talking to the team for months now about including several protections and guarantees in a CBA that deals with wages and other things. When they began to protest recently about the lack of movement on a CBA, the team wrote them a letter telling them that it was just too soon to get into specifics. Not to worry, though, as the team super-swears that once they select a location for the ballpark, only then can they have “fully informed and thoughtful conversations”. The group can see what the Royals are trying to do. The Royals want to have all the finances done and locked up before agreeing to a CBA. This allows the team to have the most leverage and to do the least guaranteed. Thankfully, local media have written about the Royals intentionally “leaving the community benefits agreement to the end” of the project.
Yet even with these absurd rules, in the last meeting, a team official got quite the pushback when asking about a CBA:
“I think it’s really important that we fully acknowledge the need and commitment around a community benefits agreement,” said Sarah Tourville, Royals senior vice president of business operations. “At the same time, I ask you to be patient with us because that community benefits agreement will be dependent upon our new home,” she added.
Workers were not satisfied with the answer.
“Regardless of where this stadium is being built, they can tell us that there will be affordable housing, that there will be a wage floor, that workers will be a part of negotiations and have a seat at the table. There are things that they can commit to even before a location is picked,” said Terrence Wise, a member of Stand Up KC. – Missouri Independent, 03/15/23
The team has repeatedly said that they want a strong CBA that includes affordable housing language. But when it comes to any additional information? Patience.
- Shutting Out Groups
Maybe just give the team a call? Good luck getting the team on the phone or in person. Multiple people/groups are frustrated with the lack of reach-out from the team. KC Tenants is a renters right group who went to a “listening tour” session and brought up their housing concerns to team officials. The team told them on the tour that they had no plans of displacing anyone. But nothing else. One KC Tenants member humorously noted how the team said, “affordable housing” 22 times in response yet never was able to actually define what they meant by “affordable”. Since this meeting? The team has not met with or even called back KC Tenants about any future sit-down or conversation.
The Kansas City School District expects any downtown tax breaks to substantially hurt their budget. Yet, they haven’t been approached or talked to about this issue. Superintendent Jennifer Collier was so frustrated that she wrote a letter to the team, owner, mayor, executives, and others in the hopes of getting some type of seat at the table during negotiations. As of today, I have not seen any reports that the team has reached out to her yet.
- City of Independence
Did you know that the current ballpark, Kauffman Stadium, is literally next door to the city of Independence? If the Royals leave Kauffman Stadium, the financial hit to the city, estimated to be around $7.5 million, would hurt their already-small bottom line. A consultant shared a report with the city council showing that if the Royals leave Kauffman Stadium, the city of Independence could lose roughly $285,000 in revenue due to the lack of game day parties, fewer hotel trips and an estimated 80 fewer jobs. The city council of Independence therefore asked the City Manager to look into what they could put into any CBA to help offset these likely losses. Former mayor of Independence, Eileen Weir, made everyone aware that the “majority” of the city’s hotel tax revenue is a “direct result of Royals home games”.
4. So many other questions and issues still unanswered
- Public Transportation
The Royals have said that public transportation will be built near whatever land they select for their new ballpark. Will they help pay for it?
Sherman added that new public transportation options would be created for the area.
- Give us money AND the 3/8 sales tax money?
The Royals want taxpayers to pay for half of the new ballpark and district AND extend the 3/8-cent sales tax for an additional 40 years? This week, one person on the Jackson County legislature introduced an ordinance that would have approved ballot language for an April vote on the 3/8 cent sales tax extension. It did not pass. It didn’t pass because many were upset at the person who even introduced this proposal before any city had a deal with the team or even a CBA. Keep in mind that this sales tax pays for the “debt incurred for renovations at the Truman Sports Complex more than a decade ago” and supplies money to the Royals and Chiefs for any “stadium maintenance and repairs and operations”.
Why would locals want to extend this for 40 more years when you may be announcing your departure in several years? Can the person who brought forward the legislation this week tell us? Outside of the donations, he no doubt gets from the team?
