Park across from Crown Center pitched for Royals 20 years ago — before downtown renaissance
Constructing a new Royals ballpark across from Crown Center in Washington Square Park is a hot topic of discussion in City Hall these days, Star sports columnist Sam McDowell reported this week.
That site got zero public discussion in the years-long lead-up to April’s sales tax election, when voters rejected a sales tax to help pay for a new Royals stadium in the nearby Crossroads Arts District, as well as upgrades to Arrowhead Stadium.
But it’s far from a new idea.
Washington Square Park was first proposed 20 years ago as a potential site for a new stadium and got its first mention also in the pages of The Kansas City Star. Another Star columnist, Kevin Collison, had asked sports architecture firms to pick the perfect spot for a ballpark in or near downtown.
Collison’s first response was from Ellerbe Becket, a now defunct Minneapolis-based company whose sports division was founded in Kansas City. Ellerbe Becket thought Washington Square Park and some neighboring acreage was well suited for a playing Major League Baseball.
.png "Screenshot 2024-08-05 at 2.44.29 PM (1).png")
But it was one of many sites being talked about at the time and soon faded from serious consideration, recalls Collision, the now-retired reporter who put out that invitation to the city’s wealth of sports architects two decades ago.
“During that discussion 20 years ago, that site got tossed out,” Collison said. “The Downtown Council also came up with some sites.”
The only other firm that responded to Collison’s request for proposals, Heinlein Schrock Stearns, suggested a spot in the Crossroads a few blocks from the location the Royals proposed in the East Crossroads ahead of April’s vote. And like Ellerbe Becket, that small firm also was absorbed in a merger and is no longer in business.
Like now, downtown baseball was a hot topic in 2004. What’s different is that most of the push was coming from civic boosters looking for ways to jump-start redevelopment of the city’s moribund downtown area. The Royals weren’t all that interested in exiting the Truman Sports Complex. Unlike current owner John Sherman, who is anxious to leave The K, his predecessor David Glass, was perfectly fine staying put at Kauffman Stadium, as long as there was a path to getting a public subsidy to modernize and add money-making amenities to the ballpark.
Two years later, he got his wish when Jackson County voters approved the current 3/8th-cent sales tax that paid for upgrades to Kauffman and Arrowhead stadiums.
In 2004, the gabbers on sports talk radio and downtown business people were trying to coax Glass into joining the growing trend across the league toward downtown baseball. Kansas City’s downtown needed a big boost then. The city’s voters were eight months away from approving the tax issue that would pay for construction of what is now known as T-Mobile Arena.
The Power and Light District wasn’t open yet. And the dollar went a whole lot further, judging by the rough cost estimate that Ellerbe Becket provided Collison.
For $350 million, the firm said, one could build a 42,000-seat ballpark that “would offer dramatic city views, and the Liberty Memorial would tower behind home plate,” Collision wrote.
The Royals envision a smaller ballpark, about 34,000 seats for the Crossroads location, at a cost of more than $1 billion in today’s dollars.
Ellerbe Becket said that even that bigger ballpark would fit at the Washington Square Park site, as long as the adjoining properties occupied by Blue Cross and Blue Shield and its parking lot could be acquired as well. Together, that site between Main Street and Grand Boulevard, Pershing Road to the Kansas City Terminal Railroad tracks total 11.6 acres, according to the city’s real estate parcel viewer.
Back then, Blue Cross Blue Shield had no interest in leaving its headquarters building at 2301 Main St. and a top company executive dismissed the proposal as “a way, way premature concept.”
Fast forward to today, Blue Cross Blue Shield announced plans in 2022 to abandon its building for a home within the downtown freeway loop. And unlike then, the site is ever more attractive because the KC Streetcar has a stop across the street outside Union Station.
Two decades ago, the streetcar didn’t exist.
But Crown Center did, with its parking garages, shops, restaurants and two hotels. And Bill Lucas, then the president of Crown Center Redevelopment, was pumped about having a Royals ballpark at Washington Square Park. He thought it made a lot of sense.
“It’s one of the most efficient sites they could find because of the built-in amenities and parking,” he told Collison. “It’s probably the one thing that would connect downtown with Crown Center, and that’s always been a goal.”
That’s the way the folks at City Hall see it now, too. That and their desire to keep the Royals in Kansas City by finding a way to make a downtown ballpark project work this time.
“It has a lot of people thinking about how to connect that area with the Crossroads district, because right now, there are too many stale blocks between them,” an unnamed member of the City Council told McDowell. “I couldn’t tell you whether this is going to happen or not, but there is certainly some support for that location.”
This story was originally published August 16, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
