Chris and Angie Long: How KC Current owners are forever remaking the riverfront

It was a mild autumn day along the Missouri River. Chris and Angie Long — the two people who, more than any others, are on a path to forever change the Kansas City riverfront — climbed the outdoor stairs to the top of CPKC Stadium, home of the KC Current, the women’s professional soccer team they own.

Instead of looking east, toward the green pitch, or to the 11,500 teal seats inside the stadium — built with $140 million of their own capital and opened last year — the Mission Hills couple looked north to the river, and west to a tower crane, where phase 1 of their 10-year, $1 billion plan to remake KC’s riverfront is now under speedy construction.

“So, as we look out in this direction, you see two different multifamily buildings, one closest to the water and also one over there,” Chris said of the complex: 433 apartments, plus 55,000 square feet of commercial space, that has already risen seven stories from the ground, and is set to be done by the June 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Chris and Angie Long

At age 50, Chris — who is the founder and chief executive of Mission Woods-based Palmer Square Capital Management, an investment company with more than $36 billion under its control — is lean and fit, a former McDonald’s All-American basketball nominee in a gray suit, white shirt and purple Nikes.

Angie, his wife and partner, stood alongside him, her wavy hair swept back in a ponytail. A former Wall Street executive with J.P. Morgan who is now Palmer Square’s chief investment officer, she, too, was a standout athlete: an All-American, two-time national rugby champion at Princeton University who, at age 51, continues to compete in sprint triathlons, and looks it.

For 90 minutes recently, they laid out their vision: Hundreds of apartments beyond the hundreds that, since 2018, have already come to occupy the 1.5-mile waterfront strip between the Heart of America and Christopher S. (Kit) Bond bridges, a second boutique hotel, Michelin-quality restaurateurs, a comedy club, bars, ice cream and coffee shops, added public squares, and new Levee Park with walkways extending over the water.

“We’re going to have a production studio in there,” Angie said, pointing to unfinished commercial space. “Think ‘Good Morning America’ meets ‘College Game Day’ . . . telling the stories of our players. It’s just that a place for that doesn’t exist right now. So we’re going to create it.”

The Longs also shared their own creation story, and how a perhaps fateful coalescence of random events, friends, family and, to be sure — a lifelong love of sports — placed them in a role neither ever imagined: changing the map of Kansas City.

“It has to be done right,” Angie said. “This is the next 100 years of Kansas City. We’re creating an area of Kansas City that didn’t exist before, and hopefully it will be one of the reasons people want to come to Kansas City.

“I mean, we think it’s just such a special area . . . the river is the reason Kansas City is here.”

Development on the riverfront

As anyone who has recently wandered the water’s edge knows, the area where Kansas City was born close to 200 years ago is booming with development.

A literal contaminated dumping ground for generations, what’s now known as the Berkley Riverfront, named for former mayor Richard Berkley, took 20 years and millions of local, state and federal dollars to clean, hauling away some 60,000 tons of debris and toxic soil to turn its 110 riverfront acres into developable space. Under the aegis of PortKC, the Port Authority of Kansas, the area has been transformed.

Flaherty & Collins Properties were the first to buy in, opening their 410-unit luxury apartment complex, Union Berkley Riverfront, on the riverfront in 2018. Bar K, the bar and dog park that permanently closed in July, opened that same year. In 2022, NorthPoint Development followed with 355 units in its CORE apartment complex. CORE II, adding another 153 apartments, is now well under construction.

KC Current owners

What no one doubts is the influence of the Longs, who in March 2024 opened CPKC Stadium. Not only did the stadium bring tens of thousands of KC Current fans to the riverfront, leading to sold-out matches, it also brought the area international acclaim. The CPKC Stadium is the first and only in the world built exclusively for women’s professional soccer.

Now the Longs, through Palmer Square and Marquee Development, the real estate arm of the Ricketts family, owners of the Chicago Cubs, are tossing another $1 billion into the mix in three phases. Marquee is involved in the first phase.

“Years from now,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told The Star, “the names Angie and Chris Long will be mentioned with Lamar Hunt and Ewing Kauffman . . . Kansas City is proud of what the Missouri riverfront is becoming and is grateful to have the Longs as partners to the city and the Port Authority in delivering the greatest connection our city has had to the river since the 19th century.”

Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who well remembers the decades of riverfront squalor and was instrumental in cleaning it, went further, likening the Long’s influence to that of the first settlers.

“What some saw as a dumping ground,” Cleaver said, “they saw as fertile ground on which unbelievable things would happen. They have become, in my estimation, just about as valuable to the riverfront as Francois Chouteau.”

The stadium alone, Cleaver said, brought the district worldwide recognition. “If that weren’t enough,” he said, “look to the west.”

Jon Stephens, the president and CEO of PortKC, said he realized that he and the Longs shared the same vision the first day they walked the riverfront together.

“That vision was to create a truly world-class riverfront in the heart of Kansas City,” Stephens said. “Chris and Angie brought jet fuel and a relentless spirit to the effort . . . Their driving commitment to the shared vision we have has already transformed the riverfront and how we, as citizens, view our own city.”

As effusive as the praise is, it’s not something the Longs seek. Asked, in fact, whether any of the plazas or parks or streets in the development will bear their name, Chris was adamant.

“Definitely not,” he said. “No. No street will carry our name. It’s the city’s. It’s got to have names that show the history, that, you know, keeps the traditions of down here. No, it just doesn’t make sense to do that.”

‘My mother always thought I’d return’

To understand the path that brought the Longs to this spot, it helps to know their history.

Angie Long, born Angie Knighton, is a Kansas Citian from the suburbs.

Raised at 101st Street and Mission Road, the daughter of Bob and Mary Knighton, she has two younger brothers, Chip and Bret. Her father, a Wichitan who attended Kansas State University, was a serial entrepreneur. Her mother, who attended the University of Kansas, was born with the maiden name Kerr.

Angie’s uncle, Whitney Kerr Sr., is a prominent Kansas City real estate broker whose son, Gib Kerr — Angie’s first cousin — would come to later play a significant role in bringing the KC Current and stadium to the riverfront.

But that wouldn’t happen for years.

Angie attended Shawnee Mission East High School, class of 1993.

“It’s where I went. It’s where my mom went,” Angie said.

She excelled at both mathematics — cue the future in finance — and as an athlete: At East, she played golf, basketball and soccer. In summers, she swam.

“I mean I played every sport,” she said. “Loved it! Loved it! I mean I grew up playing everything — with my brothers, with the neighbors. We played football in the front yard. We played soccer all the time . . . As much as I loved sports, I loved competing.”

After East, it was on to Princeton, where she played golf, but then switched to rugby, becoming team captain and an All-American her senior year. Meantime, she was studying economics, with no clear thought that she would ever return to Kansas City.

“My mother always thought I’d return,” she said. “I think I didn’t know. I know I loved where I grew up and how I grew up. But, you know, I was pretty ready to get out of here when I was in high school, for sure, just to experience something different . . . Had I not married Chris, you might have found me in Colorado on a horse ranch.”

But she did marry him — the boy she met in class.

For love of basketball, Princeton and Angie

The younger of two brothers, Chris Long was raised by Dale and Diane Long in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

“Both were teachers,” Chris said.

His mother taught for almost 40 years; his dad for 36, partly as a principal and also, for more than 15 years, at the community college night school.

“So education,” Chris said, “obviously was a massive part of my upbringing.”

Which was providential: Studying landed him at Princeton where he’d meet a girl who’d change his life.

In high school, Chris was also a stellar high school athlete, class of 1993, playing baseball (second base) and basketball, becoming the school’s first player to score more than 1,000 points by his junior year.

“My true love was basketball,” Chris said. “I spent every living moment focused on basketball. I mean I played on every team I possibly could, traveled all over the East Coast. I mean, it’s fortunate that my parents were so dogmatic about education, and making sure to be in the top 10, and to score well on exams, and all that sort of stuff, because, leave it to me, I would have just been playing sports all the time.”

In 1993, he would lead Hazleton Area High to the Class AAAA state championship game, one they would lose. He became a McDonald’s All-America nominee, with thoughts and offers to play in large Division 1 basketball schools. He was eyeing Penn State.

Then he stepped on the campus at Princeton, where he could both play and study economics.

“I definitely fell in love with the place,” he said.

Then he fell in love again.

Chris and Angie’s meet-cute

Chris literally first saw Angie across a crowded room. They were sophomores, Princeton class of 1997, and Chris and his roommates were throwing a party.

“I didn’t get a chance to meet her that evening, but, immediately, I was like, ‘I have to somehow get to know this person.’”

They had never spoken. Still, he was smitten.

“Just a beautiful, beautiful presence,” Chris said, looking toward Angie. ”You know, it’s something that’s very striking when you’re kind of taking it in for the first time.”

The second time came at 9 a.m. at corporate finance class. Angie was looking for a seat.

“I remember kind of walking in, ‘Oh, I sort of know that guy, Chris, I’ll just sit here,’” she recalled. His was a familiar face.

They became study buddies.

“You obviously want to play the friend role,” Chris said. “Angie had a boyfriend at the time. So that was sort of the way to like just keep it cordial and get to spend time together. . . We really got to know each other.”

The boyfriend faded.

On a Sunday in 1996, prior to a midterm review, the two went on their first date across from Princeton’s Nassau Hall at Winberie’s Bar & Restaurant on Palmer Square.

Thirteen years later, when Chris began his own investment company, he would give it a name: Palmer Square Capital Management.

But, before that, their New York City marriage and Wall Street.

Oh baby, time to leave New York

Angie and Chris were in demand.

Fresh from school in 1997, each had received an offer from the global financial giant, JPMorgan Chase.

Chris accepted. Angie didn’t.

“I was like, ‘I think I’ll do my own thing,’” Angie said. “I don’t want to work where my boyfriend’s working.”

But after working elsewhere for a short time, she changed her mind, joined JPMorgan and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a managing director at age 29.

New York was a blast.

“Oh, so fun,” Angie said. ”We were there like all of our 20s.”

An investment banker, Chris stayed at JPMorgan for two years, then left and went to another firm. In 1998, the couple got engaged. They married in October 1999. Life was good. In 2003, Chris attended Harvard Business School, while Angie remained in New York. He graduated with his Master of Business Administration in 2005.

“We came back to New York City, I think, with the mindset that we would honestly not leave,” Chris said.

Fate had something else in mind.

Abigail Long was born in September 2005. Now 20, she is a sophomore at Yale University.

“Quickly, we made a decision to completely relocate,” Chris said. “And Kansas City was the obvious choice.”

He had been visiting since they began dating. He loved the town. Angie’s family was in KC. It offered a different lifestyle.

Angie would eventually stay at JPMorgan for 13 years. She also understood that having a family, while also being obligated to a job in which she was at her desk at 6:30 a.m. and entertaining clients until 10 p.m., were not compatible.

“That’s a pretty difficult lifestyle to have with kids,” she said. “It’s really hard and just all very different from how I grew up. I think living in Kansas City, we thought — and I think we’ve been right — would give us the opportunity to have a more balanced lifestyle.

“You try to do that in New York, and you probably fail, right? Because you’re competing against everyone that’s working 6:30 in the morning until 10 o’clock at night.”

“Neither of us grew up that way,” Chris said. “There was always family around, cousin or what have you, to take care of each other . . . Part two, we both wanted to have a large family.”

They packed up for Kansas City in 2006. The big family arrived.

Daughter, Mary, 18, is an early graduate of Shawnee Mission East High School and professional soccer player, who now plays forward for the KC Current. Accepted to Duke University, she played for the university before coming to the team, while still taking classes at Duke online and in the summer.

Christopher Jr., 17, is a junior at Shawnee Mission East; Teddy, 15, is a freshman.

A trip to Paris changes everything

Chris, in 2009 — with expertise in investment banking, private equity and hedge funds — launched Palmer Square Capital Management, where Angie would join on as chief investment officer.

They created a fulfilling life.

Although they were ardent sports fans — with season tickets to the Kansas City Chiefs, to Sporting KC (then called the Wizards), and to the short-lived professional women’s soccer team FC Kansas City — the notion to one day own a sports team, let alone build a stadium and develop the riverfront, never crossed their minds.

Still, In 2017, the Longs said, they were shocked to read in The Kansas City Star that the FC Kansas City Blues were leaving for Utah.

“Heartbroken,” Chris said. “We just couldn’t understand. Sports is part of our DNA. I mean, this community supports everything that it has. Why didn’t it support this team?”

Destiny met them in France.

The Longs traveled to Paris in July 2019 for the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Mary, their daughter, had been invited to play in youth-friendly matches in and around the capital city.

At night, the family watched the national teams, electrified by the World Cup games, the size and devotion of the fans, the skills of the players.

“Angie and I were both struck by the level of investment that was now happening on the global stage,” Chris said, “from European countries, to New Zealand, to Australia. The U.S. was already investing in women’s soccer in a big way.

“We knew then what we know today: Kansas City is a sports town. We’ve got to get a team back . . . That really started the journey the moment we got back.”

Angie is candid. Although they’re passionate sports fans, their trade is investing. The businesses needed to make sense.

Back in 1999, Angie said, she had convinced herself that women’s professional sports, and women’s professional soccer in particular, had found the moment it needed on the heels of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s World Cup win.

Players Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain had become national sports heroines. The photo of Chastain whipping off her jersey, shouting in triumph, her sinewy arms flexed, was immediately historic.

“I remember thinking at that time, ‘This is it. Something is going to change in women’s sports,’” she said. “And like nothing changed whatsoever.”

But a decade later in Paris, Chris and Angie felt the atmosphere, thrill, and interest surrounding the games had only intensified.

“It was global,” Angie said. “It wasn’t just the U.S . . . I get there (to Paris) and there are like all these girls playing, and all the dads, all the grandads are cheering. You could feel this seismic shift.”

She said the couple thought, “How do we become a part of it?”

“One hundred percent,” Chris said, “we looked at it as an investment. That’s how we’re geared.”

They ran numbers. They consulted experts — one from Shawnee Mission East.

A friend in need . . . and $265 million

One year before Angie graduated from East and headed to Princeton, another East student had done the same: Grant Wahl, class of 1992.

Sharp, talented, a compelling storyteller, Wahl would go on to graduate from Princeton to become Sports Illustrated’s premier soccer reporter, as well as a champion for women’s sports.

In 2022, at age 48, Wahl would die suddenly of an aortic aneurysm while covering the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The Longs would later name the press box at CPKC Stadium in his honor.

But in 2019, he was in Paris covering the matches.

“Went to his hotel. Had breakfast,” Chris said. Wahl told them what they sensed: women’s soccer was burgeoning. He offered advice and league introductions. “When we were back stateside, we started telling him, ‘What if we built a stadium?’”

In December 2020, the Longs — with former professional soccer player Brittany Mahomes and her husband, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, as partial owners — purchased the Utah Royals’ team roster and franchise rights for $5 million.

The price was double what franchises had been going for.

“One thing that I think is important,” Chris said, “is the way we thought about it. It was, ‘Did we think women’s soccer was going to succeed in the United States? And would this be something that we would want to be in for a long, long time?’ We thought generationally.

“And the answer to both of those was, ‘yes.’”

In other words, they were investing for the long haul in a product they believed in.

Five years on, Forbes.com in June reported that the KC Current franchise — not including the stadium — is worth $265 million, making it the second most valuable team, behind Angel City FC of Los Angeles, of the National Women’s Soccer League’s 14 franchises.

Two new teams, representing Boston and Denver, are to be added in 2026.

‘Have you looked at Berkley Riverfront?’

The Longs’ philosophy for riverfront development has been the same as for the team: Success requires serious investment.

In women’s professional soccer, Chris said, “everybody was trying to either break even or just lose a little bit of money. Nobody was actually putting money forth to have a return on it.”

So the Longs spent millions.

Step one: Create a top-notch training facility.

“How do you expect your product to flourish” without proper facilities, Angie said. “How do you expect them to play?”

In September 2021, nine months after purchasing the team — then called Kansas City NWSL — the KC Current announced the purchase of 75 acres in Riverside to build a $15 million training facility with three practice fields. It opened nine months later, and more fields were added.

This summer, in July, the team announced that the investment would balloon to $52 million, adding four more pitches for youth soccer, a 2,000-seat outdoor stadium with a heated grass pitch — 12 fields in all — and a 35,000-square-foot training facility/headquarters.

Then, on Oct. 26, 2021, came an even bigger announcement: Asking Kansas City for no incentives, the Longs would use their own personal capital, eventually $140 million, to build a new stadium, the first in the world dedicated to women’s professional soccer.

For the team’s first two years, they had played in Kansas City, Kansas, first at Legends Field and then at Children’s Mercy Park. For a permanent home, they wanted to be in an urban space, near downtown, one that would be meaningful to all of Kansas City.

“It didn’t take us too long to figure out that a sports team is not actually your team. It’s the community’s team. It’s the city’s team,” Angie said. “Ultimately, it was my cousin, Gib Kerr (a managing director with real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield), who was like, ‘Have you looked at Berkley Riverfront?’ I didn’t even know, really, what it was.

“It was the perfect site. There’s a special feeling about it when you’re down here.”

Four days after the stadium announcement, the team on Oct. 30, 2021, as part of their opening game, was given a new name, evocative of the river: KC Current.

Since the CPKC Stadium (named for the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railroad) opened on March 16, 2024, every one of the team’s 13 home games has been sold out, both seasons. In the end, the project would receive $6 million in state tax credits for infrastructure costs). The Longs already have plans to increase the number of seats from 11,500 to around 18,000. Music concerts at CPKC Stadium are in the offing.

Chris shed tears on the stadium’s inaugural night, with the KC Current beating the Portland Thorns 5-4. Angie called it, “magical, joyful, surreal.”

Not long after, Angie said, they spoke of development — and all that is happening now: the apartments, the shops, the retail, the new parks.

“You’re sort of like, ‘Wow,’” Angie said, “’we’ve changed the whole landscape down here.’ And that (the riverfront) is our front door. It needs to be just as special.”

“It became apparent,” Chris said, “that this could become one of the best entertainment districts in the United States if we can acquire development rights to everything around it. We can create this seamless experience . . . and really control everything from the branding, down to the security, to the pavers, to the experiential aspects.”

Although excited about the project, both understand the responsibility.

“I really think we’re reshaping the narrative around the whole community,” Chris said. “Now, you have the area upon which the city was born — not only reactivated, but thriving. And it’s a place for people to come. You’re back to being a bastion of commerce and entertainment and excitement that it always was.

“I think this will be one of those — you know, for us, at least — once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to do something that will be generational.”

Said Angie, “I want this to be one of the jewels of Kansas City.”

This story was originally published October 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

Eric Adler

The Kansas City Star

816-234-4431

Eric Adler, at The Star since 1985, has the luxury of writing about any topic or anyone, focusing on in-depth stories about people at both the center and on the fringes of the news. His work has received dozens of national and regional awards.