Kansas City’s ‘World Cup jail’ likely won’t be fully ready for the World Cup | Opinion
Kansas City has been racing to build a temporary jail ahead of the World Cup in June, concerned that the influx of visitors could strain the city’s already limited detention system.
Bad news: It likely won’t be fully ready by the time soccer fans roll into town in June.
“It will be operational by June 1, but most likely won’t be at full capacity,” city spokesperson Sherae Honeycutt acknowledged Friday.
The modular jail, designed to hold approximately 100 detainees, has been a source of anxiety since officials approved the $22 million project in October.
There remains confusion as to just how temporary the facility will be. It was pitched as a three-to-five-year solution, but some have suggested it could be functional for as many as 25 years.
Last month, City Council members who received an update on the temporary jail’s progress raised concerns about its warehouse-like design, with some comparing it to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility.
And in January, the council voted to speed up construction, putting an additional $3.8 million into the project and waiving LEED environmental standards after city staff reported that underground utility and site placement issues had surfaced during the design process.
But it now appears the extra cash and the building shortcuts won’t be enough to get this thing across the finish line on time.
Municipal jail issues
Honeycutt clarified that even though many people refer to it as the World Cup jail, “the modular detention facility is not being created for the World Cup,” but rather for the city’s broader detention needs.
That’s fair, to a point.
Kansas City does have broader detention needs. The city hasn’t operated its own jail since 2009, instead shipping detainees to other Missouri county jails — first in Jackson County, and more recently to the jails in Johnson County outside Warrensburg and Vernon County in Nevada.
To address that, voters last year approved a public safety sales tax to build a permanent municipal jail, planned for the East Bottoms near Interstate 435 and Front Street.
But that facility won’t be ready for several years. In the meantime, the city remains dependent on other jurisdictions, with limited space and less direct oversight of detainees housed in facilities hours away.
That issue predates the World Cup. But the World Cup put a deadline on it.
City officials have been explicit about the urgency.
Deputy City Manager Kimiko Gilmore said last year that if the city wanted a temporary facility ready in time for the World Cup, it needed to “move — now.”
Assistant City Manager Jeff Martin told council members in October that construction would need to start in December in order to meet the “desired deadline of having this facility operational by the World Cup.”
“The World Cup’s coming whether we are ready for it or not, so we’ve got to get this built,” Councilman Wes Rogers said that same month.
Both Honeycutt and Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office on Friday emphasized in separate responses to questions about the deadline that the city’s contracts with Johnson County and Vernon County remain in place and can be extended as needed.
Honeycutt said the Department of Community Safety is actively recruiting and hiring staff to support operations at the facility and that “operations will ramp up as staffing and training allows.”
Looking for a silver lining? Here’s one: Flights into Kansas City International Airport are up only modestly in June and July, when the World Cup matches will be played here. Which raises the possibility that we won’t need those jail beds at all — because the hooligans may not even be coming in the first place.
This story was originally published April 13, 2026 at 7:39 AM.
