Behind KC Current’s goal to expand CPKC Stadium to 18,000 seats — and renderings
Not that Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas wasn’t intrigued. But when the fledging franchise soon to be named the Kansas City Current in 2021 announced it would build its own stadium on the Missouri River, Lucas recalled Monday, he wondered how it would play out.
Beyond what he understood would be the obvious significance and implications of establishing the world’s first stadium purpose-built for a women’s professional team, he wasn’t sure how it might be additive from playing at Children’s Mercy Park — the home of Sporting KC.
But any of the healthy skepticism he may have had back then has been resoundingly answered since:
The Current has sold out (11,500 seats) every regular-season home and playoff match since it moved into CPKC Stadium in 2024. And it catalyzed what already has become an entirely new neighborhood on the Berkley Riverfront with what it says is $350 million already put toward a $1 billion private investment commitment.
“I think that it shows that this isn’t a fad, this isn’t a flash in the pan: This is instead ... a great model,” Lucas said in an interview with The Star.
He added: “They carved out a part of the core of the city on the end of public transit in a city that doesn’t have enough public transit and said, ‘This is where (we’ll) plant the flag.’ This is the best in urban development, it’s the best in sports development, and I look forward to even more growth.”
That’s why Lucas is advocating for the club to receive up to $235 million in bonds for the creation of a new Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district in attempts to further transform the Berkley Riverfront into a destination location.
As it should be, the proposal driven by co-owners Angie and Chris Long no doubt will be scrutinized and questioned as of being put before City Council’s Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee on Tuesday morning.
But here’s what it’s all about: further enhancing the Current Landing district around the stadium and the construction of a parking garage with a pedestrian bridge and, most strikingly, expanding the stadium capacity to 18,000.
That’s an eye-opening increase of more than 50% (with the ability to add 2,000 more temporary seats when needed) that could make it potentially suitable for some 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup matches if Kansas City prevails in its ambitions to host ... another World Cup.
“Having a venue that can support matches at that level (would be) pretty spectacular,” Chris Long told The Star in a recent interview at the couple’s Palmer Square Capital Management office. “You can’t deny what a World Cup means to a city and a region. … If we can kind of help something like that occur again, why would we not want to do that?”
But there are ample more fundamental reasons to add capacity.
“Our suites are sold out. We have a waiting list for season tickets. We have had demand for the stadium, where, because it was 11,500, we couldn’t host events,” Chris Long said. “So think about giving exposure for more people to not only our matches, but also getting even more events.”
Turning to renderings, he added: “From an aesthetics perspective, I mean, look, it’s, like, breathtaking.”
The capacity would be increased not with the addition of another deck but largely by filling in corners and adding grandstands on the north end adjacent to the Missouri River while still allowing for proper perspectives of and from the nearby Kit Bond Bridge.
It was a point of emphasis, Chris Long said, to “not mess with the iconic Kit Bond Bridge view and what that stands for for our city (as) … the entryway.”
With a canopy already designed to reflect acoustics back down, the more fully encompassed structure “is likely going to become louder (and) … an even more energetic place to be and to play,” said Mukul Sharma, a partner at Palmer Square Real Estate, the master developer for Current Landing.
Related but all the more significant, Angie Long said via video call, is that this approach allows fans to feel as connected as ever to the pitch.
Speaking of which is the broader point of connectivity, including the prospect of the pedestrian bridge across Front Street from the would-be multi-level parking garage into the heart of Current Landing.
The concept as drawn up would open up traffic passage and, in fact, feed into freer movement through an area soon to open an entertainment district and revitalized riverfront trail.
Asked about the broader sense of flow, after all, Angie Long said as if on cue, “We are the Current.”
As such, the stadium and ensuing further reimagination of the area upon which Kansas City was founded and later left to ruin for decades stands for more yet than being purpose-built for a women’s team.
It was “purpose built for the environment,” Port KC president and CEO Jon Stephens said, calling the stadium a development “that is really of that space on the river” — a space from which trails are becoming increasingly connected to the region.
Nicely symbolizing the resurgence of the area that was a dumping ground for, among other things, 34,000 tons of rubble from Wayne Miner Court, Stephens noted that the KC Streetcar expansion excavation unearthed bricks from the public housing project imploded in 1987.
The Current building the stadium, of course, helped compel the expansion that opened in May with a stop that is about a five-minute walk from the stadium.
“That’s how things start, right?” Angie Long said. “We put the stadium there, they expand the streetcar. The extension of the streetcar allows us to think we can expand the stadium. And then everything’s developing around.”
All of that and more is why the Current is seeking the TIF district that Sharma described as intended to reinvest in the riverfront — where the Current has further ambitions with an as-yet undisclosed next phase that reflects a belief that the riverfront could be on a par with activated waterfronts such as those in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.