New Kansas City T-Bones owner plans to transform KCK’s beleaguered team and stadium
Standing on the concrete concourse behind home plate, Mark Brandmeyer rattled through the vast to-do list ahead of opening day for the beleaguered Kansas City T-Bones franchise.
Completely new food and beverage options. Suite renovations. And a new bar greeting visitors at the main gate. Collectively, he plans a major overhaul of the Kansas City, Kansas, stadium — and the organization itself. But the clock is ticking with opening day about 10 weeks away.
And though the new team owner showed off plans for the stadium renovation at a celebration with public officials Tuesday, he still lacks an official agreement with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, which owns the stadium.
Brandmeyer is a partner at Built Interior Construction and a principal at health care investment firm Brandmeyer Enterprises. His family previously owned Enturia, a Leawood company that made medical devices that help prevent infection. The family sold that company to drug wholesaler Cardinal Health in 2014 for $490 million.
His ownership group, called Max Fun LLC, recently bought the T-Bones from the Ehlert family after it struggled for years to operate the team, which unlike minor league clubs plays in an independent league without any affiliation with a Major League Baseball team.
“It would have been a shame for Wyandotte County to lose such a great asset as the T-Bones,” Brandmeyer said at a press conference Tuesday, standing in front of the team’s refreshed logo.
Brandmeyer highlighted his family’s own history in local baseball. He held up a black-and-white photo of the minor league team for the American Meat Company, the entire team decked out in baseball caps that said only “KC.” His grandfather owned the team and his father — who went on to work at Marion Laboratories — was the bat boy.
“They were the Meatpackers,” Brandmeyer said. “I mean how synergistic that I own the T-Bones.?
Wyandotte County padlocked the stadium on Oct. 14 and evicted the team after previous owners had accumulated more than $760,000 in back rent and utility payments.
But on Tuesday, UG officials cheered on Brandmeyer’s purchase of the team and his pledges for a revival.
“I’m ready to hear the crack of a bat,” UG Commissioner Tom Burroughs said at the press conference.
Just days after the October eviction, the UG Board of Commissioners voted 9-1 to approve a stadium lease and management deal with the new owners, who committed to spend at least $500,000 on facility improvements. The local government also pledged to spend at least $1 million from Kansas sales tax revenue, or STAR, bonds.
Under the agreement, the government and the team’s owners will split the cost of utilities for the first year. Afterwards, Max Fun is responsible for those bills. The new owner would not be obligated to write a monthly rent check, but is responsible for paying property taxes on an adjacent parking lot and covering all operating costs of the stadium.
Commissioners approved a five-year lease with three five-year renewal options.
Though the commission acted months ago, county officials and team owners have yet to ink a final contract as negotiations have dragged on for months.
Wyandotte County Administrator Doug Bach said he expects a contract to be finalized in the coming days. Though the back-and-forth between lawyers has taken longer than expected, he said it won’t change the fundamentals of the agreement voted on in October.
He said the county was spending money mostly on replacing some stadium seats and improving HVAC and electrical systems.
But Brandmeyer has far grander plans for improvements.
Renderings on display at the event Tuesday showed new bars, a bourbon and cigar deck, a family tailgate tent and eight pickleball courts in the outfield. The Boneyard bar will be carved out of a metal shipping container and a craft beer garden will include room for yard games, live music and food trucks.
“We want to make this a 365-day venue,” Brandmeyer said.
But those changes won’t all be immediate.
In an interview, he said the new ownership group started with basics like improving the team’s website, computers and other deferred maintenance projects. He said most of the former staff has stayed on and they’re working on a new naming rights deal for the stadium, which is currently only known as T-Bones Stadium.
Brandmeyer said he wants the new Home Plate Bar, parking lot improvements and suite renovations to wrap up before opening day.
“That will happen in the next 10 weeks,” he said. “Some of the other improvements will happen a little bit more over time...It’s not going to all be done the first year.”
The baseball season kicks off with a May 8 exhibition game, followed by the regular season opener: a home contest against the Sioux City Explorers on May 19.
If Brandmeyer’s group is successful, it would represent a major turnaround for an organization that has struggled for years.
The team has been the recipient of several government bailouts: the UG had previously committed about $8 million to buying and improving the baseball stadium, which was privately built in 2003.
Even after multiple infusions of taxpayer dollars, county officials have maintained the importance of keeping baseball in the area. They view the T-Bones as an important piece of the wider retail development at Village West, which is also home to the Kansas Speedway and Sporting KC’s Children’s Mercy Park.
Brandmeyer hopes to enliven the business by creating a more active ballpark that doesn’t necessarily revolve around the action on the field. He wants the stadium to be a major destination for corporate, church and other group outings — a key customer base he said the previous owners didn’t cater to enough.
“There were some things that they missed,” he said. “I think there’s a whole leisure-tainment or eater-tainment opportunity here that they were not really capitalizing on. I don’t think they were engaging fans the way that we’re going to engage them.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 5:42 PM.
