What’s up with plans for new Royals stadium? JoCo site off the table, KC one up in the air

Questions continue to swirl about where a future Royals ballpark could be and whether it would be near downtown Kansas City, as the team had initially described, or even in Missouri, as site options for a stadium become increasingly uncertain.

As of this week, two sites the Royals had reportedly been eyeing — on either side of the state line — lost momentum.

After Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax to build a Royals stadium in the Crossroads last spring, officials have instead considered Washington Square Park, near Crown Center, as a potential location. And legislators in both states have worked on funding packages to keep the Royals in Missouri or to entice them to move into Kansas.

The Washington Square Park site, which publicly emerged as a possibility last summer, would include the headquarters at 2301 Main Street that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is vacating to move to a new downtown high-rise, which was in the works well before talk of a stadium on the site started. Developers reportedly entered a contract to try to hold the site for a future ballpark.

But now the Blue KC property is on the market and listed as an “exciting opportunity” with “endless potential” after the investors looking to develop a ballpark there recently backed off. It’s being marketed as a vacant office site that an owner could occupy or redevelop.

Meanwhile, prospects for another site in Kansas seem unlikely, after the real estate company behind a corporate office complex in Overland Park denied speculation that the Royals are in talks to move there.

What’s up with Washington Square Park?

Blue KC put the Main Street site on the market in summer 2023 after announcing plans to move in 2022, according to previous reporting from the Kansas City Business Journal. By summer 2024, an affiliate of Kansas City-based firm 3D Development entered a purchase contract for the site.

3D Development worked with an investor group to assemble contracts necessary to develop the site as it worked to build the case to bring the Royals to Washington Square Park. But the team’s decision took too long for the firm to keep the process going, the developers said.

“We held the 2301 Main contract for 8 months with extensions, yet due to delays in the stadium decision from the end of 2024 to an expected June-July 2025 and without any commitment from the Royals, our group has chosen to terminate the purchase contracts,” 3D Development said in a statement first provided to the Business Journal. “We are very concerned that the Kansas ballpark incentives and site have become very compelling and we are at risk for missing this once in a half century opportunity to attract the Royals to downtown.”

3D Development continues to work with Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office, the Downtown Council and other stakeholders and businesses to demonstrate the benefits of a downtown ballpark and haven’t given up on the future possibility of reactivating the site, “but the logistics and risk of helping assemble the real estate, given the continued state of uncertainty, was no longer tenable.”

In a follow-up statement to The Star, 3D Development said that some of the greatest cities in the U.S. have downtown ballpark as fixtures of their urban cores and that it remains optimistic that the Royals belong downtown.

Mayor Lucas said he is looking forward to rooting on the Royals on opening day at the K, but also that he’s frustrated the city and the team haven’t been able to move forward on plan for a ballpark in downtown Kansas City. He said he wants to keep talks going.

“While Kansas City remains unwavering in our support of the Kansas City Royals’ interest in moving baseball downtown, I am disappointed we — private and public actors alike — have thus far not been able to move exciting ideas, such as Washington Square Park, into a true development plan,” Lucas said in a statement. “I and my City Council colleagues have shared with the Royals a comprehensive proposal to help ensure the financial viability of the project, and we continue to make ourselves and city staff available to advance discussions. I hope to have more to share after speaking with Team leadership at The K this week.”

What about the Johnson County site?

At the same time, another site in Kansas has reportedly been under consideration for a Royals stadium: the Aspiria Campus, formerly Sprint, in Overland Park near 119th Street and Nall Avenue.

But the Aspiria site’s managers have denied that they are in talks with the Royals and dismissed the idea as “just a rumor.”

“After hearing and seeing reports and social media posts regarding the Kansas City Royals potentially locating to the Aspiria campus, OPS-KC Aspiria, LLC would like to state that it is NOT in discussions with the Royals about being a potential new site for their stadium,” Occidental Management president Chas Stafford said in a statement. “There is a lot of speculation out there. This is just a rumor, and we are not talking with the Royals about moving to the Aspiria campus.”

Stafford said Occidental is committed to keeping Aspiria a mixed-use campus with office space, restaurants and amenities for tenants and the community.