Royals downtown stadium project deserves cautious, open mind, not naivete or cynicism
Whatever you might have expected at the first stop on the Royals’ listening tour, as they pursue a potential downtown stadium district project, it probably wasn’t this as the first question vetted through the team beforehand:
“Why does a perpetual last-place team deserve a new $2 billion stadium?” came the question for team chairman and CEO John Sherman as read by broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre. “If you won’t invest in the team, why should we invest in you?”
Well, then.
Sherman would later joke that he thought Lefebvre would start with an easy one. But he hardly seemed fazed. He pointed to the tens of millions the Royals had spent bringing the likes of Andrew Benintendi, Carlos Santana and Michael A. Taylor to Kansas City to demonstrate that the new ownership would indeed invest in the team.
“That really didn’t work out for us, right?” he said. “... The objective was to accelerate our growth and our development. (But) the young core of this team wasn’t ready, and the pitching didn’t develop.”
Under new management and a new manager, as it happens, the plan now is to develop this young team, “and when the time is right we’re going to invest very, very significantly to win on the field.”
But the compelling point about investment emerged in Lefebvre’s clarifying follow-up question about the public-private nature of funding the $2 billion project — which in an earlier presentation was described as half toward a new stadium and half for the development around it.
“We would expect that private capital would take care of a major part of the ballpark,” Sherman said in part, “and that private capital will develop all of the ballpark district around the ballpark.”
That was quite an amplification of the more vague term “hundreds of millions” Sherman had used in an open letter to fans last month, and it was the most emphatic takeaway of a two-hour session in the auditorium of the Plexpod Westport Commons.
Also striking: the team’s stated embrace of a community benefits agreement. As reported by The Star’s Kevin Hardy, the agreements can include public benefits such as the creation of affordable housing, childcare access and new public spaces and parks.
The Royals are committed to that, senior vice president Sarah Tourville said, adding that such agreements need “to be done in collaboration with our local residents, local public and community officials and organizations. Those are not answers the Royals have.
“Those are answers the Royals need to work and collaborate on together, but the commitment is there, absolutely.”
Those make for substantial pieces of a puzzle even as many remain to be added, most of all a proposed location among 14 they’ve considered, a timetable and more thorough details about funding and the nature of the project itself.
Sherman, Tourville and the six others on stage, including three other Royals executives and two from Populous, also emphasized everything from:
*the project being a catalyst for growth in Kansas City (noting how nearly nothing has been developed near the Truman Sports Complex over the last half-century) to
*the cost of keeping The K up to code and date in the years to come, which apparently would exceed that of a new stadium, to
*a commitment to be inclusive and not displace and be safe and green and walkable to
*there being more-than-sufficient parking spaces downtown … even if they aren’t all exactly in the proximity parking at the stadium is now.
The cynic might hear all of that and think it’s too good to be true or that it’s all some kind of scam.
A naive person hears it and pictures it exactly as is with no complications.
Somewhere in between are healthy skepticism and an open mind, and if you’ve followed Sherman you know he has a remarkable history of philanthropy and civic-mindedness. It’s our belief that he wouldn’t want to take this on unless he truly believed it could benefit Kansas City.
That being said, he’s also a shrewd businessman.
For that matter, it’s understandable for anyone to simply prefer seeing the Royals stay at The K … and wonder about perhaps putting that billion toward better players.
So it’s too soon to be able to advocate one way or another with conviction over a momentous decision that also will have ripples with the Chiefs and whatever their intentions are if the Royals leave.
But it’s also true that it’s early in the process, one that figures not to go on the ballot until late 2023, and that this listening tour is a rare sort of outreach that already has revealed more than might have been anticipated.
When a proposed site is determined, many of the other details that will vary with the location also will become more clear.
And as more and more gets sorted out and unveiled, and if the Royals will continue to take on more uncomfortable questions, maybe what’s best for Kansas City will become obvious, too. At least if you have an open mind.
This story was originally published December 14, 2022 at 7:30 AM.