Stadium departures have blighted KC before. Kansas City can’t let East Side down | Opinion
Finally, we know. After two years of questions, a failed stadium vote and losing the Chiefs to Kansas, the Royals are moving to the Crown Center area in a public-private partnership.
Having visited city-center baseball stadiums in other cities, such at Seattle and Baltimore, and I’m actually excited about what this baseball district could do for Kansas City.
But, as I’ve mentioned before, I worry about what will happen to the present locations of both teams, on the East Side of the city bounded by interstates 70 and 435, and the people who live there. Do the private partners, as well as the public ones, have a responsibility to protect what they leave behind?
I used to live near those stadiums, within biking distance along Sni-A-Bar Road, in a working-class neighborhood where people keep up their lawns and care about community. Without the stadiums, I fear the worst for development in that area.
To be sure, there’s a lot to look forward to based on Wednesday’s announcement. But there are also some things that need to be addressed about the land the teams will leave behind. And so far, I haven’t heard anyone sharing any plans, except maybe that George Brett wants the Kauffman urinals.
For example, in Wednesday’s televised announcement, where stakeholders and partners talked about the move, Royals Chairman and CEO John Sherman didn’t mention the side of town where the team currently plays when he named “important” parts of our city:
“You got the river, you got downtown, you got the Crossroads. We’re here in the heart of it at Crown Center. You got Midtown, you got the Plaza. I can go to Brookside and Waldo where my neighborhood is, but I think … there lots of places important in this town, including Leawood and North Kansas City and Clay County, but this is the core of it, and we’re standing right in the middle of it.”
Mayor Quinton Lucas’ remarks on Substack looked to the future without a clear path to remembering the past.
Perhaps most importantly, Hallmark Executive Chairman Don Hall reminded us that when the Kansas City Athletics left KC in 1967, that area around 22nd and Brooklyn was blighted. In a historically significant turn, Crown Center grew from the ashes.
If the Royals and Hallmark have taken on the responsibility of building the future in Crown Center (and the Chiefs in Kansas), whose responsibility is the past? What will replace Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead?
A’s leave Kansas City
Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, Municipal Stadium at 2123 Brooklyn Ave. served as the home for the Kansas City Athletics when they moved here from Philadelphia in 1955. Following the A’s’ departure for Oakland in 1967, it would be six years before the construction of Kauffman Stadium in 1973, which was built next to Arrowhead, erected the previous year.
But back in the city’s urban core, the area sat empty. Hall called Wednesday’s announcement a legacy moment, and reflected on the business decisions his family made that positively affected the area.
“When the A’s left Kansas City in 1967, downtown was in decline. This entire area where we are standing right now was blighted. Crown Center was conceived out of a desire to make downtown more vibrant.”
I salute the Hall family’s vision, but now I call on them, the Royals, the Chiefs and other private Kansas City visionaries to remember that blight and not let it happen to the location of the current Truman Sports Complex.
Hall rightly said, “Welcoming a stadium into the neighborhood will bring change.” Change can be for the good, and I believe the Royals coming to the city core can bring lots of good. But change can also leave neighborhoods behind.
During the announcement Wednesday, Lucas said, “we never abandon our history.” Will that be true in this case?
What will grow from two empty stadiums in east Kansas City, and does anyone care?
This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 10:33 AM.
