A new Royals stadium at Washington Square Park? What’s in that space now?
So far, Kansas City has had two major league parks for baseball. Both were built on wide open spaces.
Municipal Stadium (Muehlebach Field when it was new) hosted Monarchs and A’s games at 22nd Street and Brooklyn Avenue.
Then in 1972, Royals Stadium (renamed Kauffman) took baseball even further from the city’s center.
But as the Royals continue to search for a new home, Washington Square Park on Pershing Avenue between Main Street and Grand Boulevard looks like a prime contender.
And it’s a very different kettle of fish.
Attractions like Union Station, Liberty Memorial and Crown Center, as well as hotels and office towers, surround the site. Not to mention the TV-ready Western Auto building just a few blocks away.
And soon, the streetcar line will run right past it.
Suddenly, the scruffy little green space with the statue of George Washington is getting a lot of attention. Some praise its possibilities and proximity to downtown. Others worry about access, egress and the strain on the neighborhoods near it.
Architects’ renderings aside, it’s hard for most of us to picture exactly what’s on the site, much less how it might be successfully re-imagined.
To get a better feel for that, I dropped by the park on a recent June morning. I stood under the sixteen-foot likeness of our first president on horseback—donated by Kansas City’s Daughters of the American Revolution in 1925.
I walked past crews setting up for an outdoor festival and some homeless folks who sometimes seek shelter there.
Closer to Main Street, I saw trees give way to several man-made objects. One is a memorial to Missouri’s Korean War veterans.
A few yards away, people passed through The Link—the overhead walkway connecting Crown Center and Union Station.
But the real key to this whole stadium thing is the big office building just north of the park—the one that says Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City.
Blue KC recently moved out of its aging bunker into some new digs downtown. That means the land it sits on, combined with the park property next door, spans nearly 11 acres—suitable for an MLB team to build on.
Especially if that stadium incorporates urban design elements used at venues like Target Field in Minneapolis. For example, a smaller capacity and seating tiers that go up instead of out. (Less space to work with might also mean scaling back the fountains we’re used to seeing at the K.)
That’s a lot to process, and I haven’t even mentioned OK Street yet!
It’s the odd little road named after OK Creek which runs from Grand Boulevard through the middle of the site, dips underneath Main Street and down into the bowels of Union Station. (But that’s a story in itself.)
Frankly, this is a job for pictures. The moving kind.
With the help of visual journalists Dominick Williams and Tammy Ljungblad, I’ve put together a short and sassy video primer. With ground level scenes and drone’s eye views of Washington Square Park that capture the way the space looks right now. I hope you’ll take a peek.
Whether this busy midtown site will win the hearts and minds of KC baseball fans remains to be seen. But one way or another, hard choices are about to be made.
After all, mustard, ketchup and relish have to race somewhere.
Having trouble seeing the video? Watch it here.
This story was originally published June 26, 2025 at 5:00 AM.