Kansas City voters didn’t reject downtown baseball. They nixed an awful Royals PR job | Opinion

Now that Question 1 to build a new Royals ballpark in the Crossroads and give Arrowhead Stadium a major overhaul has lost big, we’re not here to say, “We told you so.” But rather, let’s go back to the business of Kansas City supporting the teams we love — and getting some love back.

The voters’ message was loud and clear: They expect to be listened to and hear answers to the questions asked. That’s all we wanted, too.

Tuesday night, the measure failed 58% to 42%. In total, 56,606 voted yes and 78,352 voted no, a wide margin by anyone’s expectations.

We recommended a no vote on Question 1. We said we are fans of the Chiefs and Royals and want to see them succeed. “We understand and agree that the two professional sports franchises are essential to the Kansas City area,” we wrote last week.

But we couldn’t say yes because of all we didn’t know. And now, there’s another opportunity to get it right. Those issues can be dealt with, including:

• Reconciling with stakeholders: The community benefits agreement unveiled at the last minute didn’t sit well with many of the people it would have affected. Multiple Crossroads entrepreneurs who would lose their places of business said they had no firm deal with the Royals, even right up to the vote.
• The cost: The Royals said it would have been a cool $1 billion to build the new stadium. The extended replacement sales tax would have provided roughly $350 million of that. Where would the other $650 million have come from?
• Would the state contribute? It wasn’t clear. Voters didn’t know if Missouri would have chipped in, or when.
• What would happen to The K? If the Royals moved, who would pay for demolishing Kauffman Stadium, as the Chiefs’ renderings for their redo show?

So what’s next? We know, of course, that the idea of a new baseball stadium in the downtown area isn’t dead.

And despite the message of a joint letter sent to fans and Jackson County voters on Monday — “There is no redo of this campaign. This is not going back on the ballot in November. There is no plan B.” — we see no reason for finality.

In fact, we welcome a plan B — an arrangement that certainly could remedy the one big question we had: “What took so long? Why is this agreement being finalized now, just days before the votes are counted?”

The resounding defeat of the project is one of the more memorable PR blunders in recent Kansas City history. Whoever advised Chiefs owner Clark Hunt and Royals owner John Sherman that the way to voters’ hearts was to spook them with threats that the teams would move elsewhere if the public doesn’t pony up isn’t very good at reading the room.

The Chiefs’ suggestion that they’d take their ball and go to another city was particularly absurd. As Slate recently pointed out, there’s no peer metropolitan area in the United States that could credibly offer the team anything close to the level of support it’s enjoyed right here since 1963. And Sherman has even said he didn’t even mean it, but was simply following his strategists’ bum advice. Don’t try that one again.

We’d also recommend not revisiting the ploy of claiming The K’s concrete is falling apart. Way too many of us have climbed those steps and sat in those well-secured seats to buy the idea that the stadium’s foundation is faltering.

So please, Royals and Chiefs, Mr. Sherman and Mr. Clark, and everyone in your organizations with a grand vision of city-center baseball and a renovated and reinvigorated Arrowhead: Kansas City’s minds and ears are open. Come up with a solid, systematic blueprint for exactly what voters should expect. Show us charts and spreadsheets that prove you’ve done your homework — and do the legwork to get advance buy-in from each and every shop, church and restaurant that would be displaced.

Take your time. Act like you’re writing your first business proposal, and your job is to put on your best suit and convince the bank loan officer that you’re worth the risk.

And most of all, consider the optics. If the advisers you hire tell you the best strategy to get public money for your multimillion-dollar game is extortion, walk them to the door.

Be aboveboard. Be proactive and positive. Convince the voters that you love Kansas City back just as much as they love their teams.

This shouldn’t be a hard sell. Take another swing.

This story was originally published April 3, 2024 at 5:04 AM.