Businesses plaster sign on KC building, pleading for Royals to move downtown
As stadium talks for the Kansas City Royals ramp up, some downtown businesses have made their alliances known by showcasing an 8,100 square foot sign advocating for a downtown stadium.
More than two dozen people and organizations contributed to the sign, on the north wall of the Mainmark Building at 1627 Main Street, which reads “Downtown Baseball. Grand Slam for Royals,” according to Gibb Kerr, chair of the Downtown Council of Kansas City.
The sign also features a QR code that leads to a website advocating for the Royals to pick the Washington Square Park site for its replacement of Kauffman Stadium.
“I think this is a great way to send a message to the Royals and to all of our elected officials that the downtown community wants to build their stadium down here,” Kerr told The Star. Kerr is also the managing director of commercial real estate company Cushman and Wakefield’s Kansas City office.
Cushman and Wakefield is one of the companies that proposed the Washington Square Park site, independent of the Royals and government officials, according to the website.
The website, welovekcbaseball.com, asks users to contact local officials to advocate for a downtown stadium, as well as supplying renderings created by local architectural firm BNIM. The website also contained a short list of individual supporters while boasting that “hundreds of individuals and 80+ businesses” are behind the move.
Recent stadium talk
Last year, Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax to help fund a Royals stadium in the Crossroads, leaving officials to seek other options like Washington Square Park, near Crown Center, as a potential location. Legislators in both states have worked on funding packages to keep the Royals in Missouri or to entice them to move into Kansas.
The Royals have considered several locations across the metro, including downtown, as possibilities throughout the years-long process of finding a stadium before the lease is finished at Kauffman Stadium in 2031.
Recently, a location in Clay County in North Kansas City has bubbled back to the top of the stadium talks with legislation supporting a possible move there.
For the downtown advocates, Kerr said they don’t want a seat at the discussion table; they want to encourage decision makers that downtown is the best destination for a new stadium. Kerr pointed to downtown staples like Union Station, Crown Center and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for part of the reason why a downtown baseball stadium is in the city’s best interest.
“If we could add a baseball stadium in that mix, it would make downtown Kansas City one of the greatest tourist experiences in the country,” Kerr said. “It would be a huge missed opportunity for us to put a stadium out in suburbia where there’s no walkability, there’s no restaurants or other entertainment amenities easily accessible nearby.”
Kerr said the sign will remain on the building for at least one month.