On dilemma of Kansas City Chiefs-Royals stadium initiatives being voted on together
When Jackson County voters in June 1967 approved a bond issue that included $43 million toward a revolutionary twin-stadium concept, the prospective tenants were the Chiefs and nomadic Athletics — whose move to Oakland months later became tethered to Major League Baseball awarding the expansion Royals to Kansas City.
Since then, the Chiefs and Royals have been rather uniquely entwined at what would become known as the Truman Sports Complex.
Despite the cost overruns, construction strikes and other strife along the way to finishing the stadiums several years late, their separate aesthetics and collective clout became a regional gem that has served the teams’ mutual interests almost symbiotically for more than a half-century.
And the relationship still binds them now ... even as they try to move in divergent directions.
Speaking after the Chiefs presented renderings for an $800 million renovation of GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium weeks after the Royals clarified their intention to move into the East Crossroads neighborhood near downtown, Chiefs president Mark Donovan said the “great partners” that have long supported each other will continue to do so.
“But at a certain point, you’ve got to focus on your own project,” he said. “We both understand that, and that’s what we’ll do going forward.”
The twist to all this, though, is that the projects at once are independent undertakings and entirely clasped together:
Consider the lease they both remain under until 2031, and the Chiefs’ future plans being partly contingent on the grounds of a demolished Kauffman Stadium. And, most resoundingly, the fact Jackson County voters essentially will be asked in April to vote simultaneously on distinct stadium matters with considerably differing implications.
It makes for a confounding dilemma for voters pondering whether to extend the current 3/8th-cent sales tax for decades to come.
In certain ways, their circumstances aren’t so much in harmony as discrete — making voter discretion a complicated challenge.
Because beyond financial questions remaining in each case, each is a different sort of abstraction to weigh and project.
Not just because the Royals are trying to put together a far more ambitious project that at its best would have the capacity to synergize and further connect the city, while the Chiefs are working largely to preserve and enhance what owner Clark Hunt called “the spirit of Arrowhead” and the fan experience.
And not just because the Royals have said they will privately finance about $1 billion of their proposed $2 billion stadium and development project while Hunt says his family will contribute $300 million to the $800 million projected.
However you might feel about the wow factor — or perhaps perceived lack thereof for the price — in what the Chiefs put out Wednesday, it hinges on a different foundation than what the Royals want to do.
Literally, to some degree: The Chiefs, after all, are seeking to reinforce their roots at a site Hunt correctly calls a “cultural landmark” and one of the most iconic stadiums in professional sports.
So it doesn’t take a leap of faith to envision what it would be like to go to future games there with spiffy new amenities and attractions. And their proposal doesn’t figure to arouse conflicts with the heart and imagination the way the Royals leaving Kauffman and five decades-plus of memories would.
There just isn’t the same angst to it.
Then there’s this: Whether or not you relish the idea of downtown baseball, and I do, embracing it as currently pitched requires a suspension of disbelief that the vibe of the Crossroads won’t be wiped out and that parking will be just fine, etc.
And it requires an abiding belief that dramatic change can be for the greater good. That it will create and stimulate more than it might disrupt.
“This is bold. But in that boldness comes transformation,” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick, a proponent of the Royals’ downtown move, told me after their presentation earlier this month. “And I know that sometimes people are reluctant because they get a little afraid. You can’t be.
“If you’re afraid, you stay stagnant. And this city’s on the move.”
Indeed, those concerns could ultimately be alleviated.
But they’ll linger until answers are more tangible — part of the dichotomy voters will face as they assess the more relative knowns of the Chiefs’ plan vs. the broader, deeper Royals vision with repercussions that remain more in the eye of the beholder.
Another obvious contrast also looms.
The astounding recent success of the Chiefs, including three Super Bowl victories in the last five seasons — with the sense of more ahead in the Patrick Mahomes era — logically lends more currency to the cause than the Royals are enjoying.
When they began their listening tour for the project at the Plexpod Westport Commons in December 2022, the first question for Royals owner John Sherman went thusly: “Why does a perpetual last-place team deserve a new $2 billion stadium? If you won’t invest in the team, why should we invest in you?”
Even if that might seem like an apples-and-oranges sort of point, or maybe chicken-and-egg is the better cliche, the question was valid and understandable. I’ve heard it in many different forms since.
But after tying a club-worst record (56-106) last season, it ought well to be noted that the Royals went on an offseason free-agent spending spree of more than $100 million — fourth most in Major League Baseball — and recently rewarded emerging star Bobby Witt Jr. with an 11-year, $288.7 million-guaranteed extension.
All of that makes the 2024 Royals intriguing. And it rationally should help sway skeptics whose fundamental issue with the Royals’ hopes to move to the East Crossroads is that point alone.
In the meantime, though, it’s evident that their chances of getting what they want are boosted by their ongoing relationship with the Chiefs — who also would get what they want if the Royals move.
Some will want neither change. Some will want both. Some will favor one over the other ... and the Chiefs are a simpler, easier sell.
So much so that Hunt anticipates success.
“We don’t have a Plan B,” he said. “We feel very very confident that we’re going to be able to make this plan happen.”
Even so, Donovan said a defeat at the polls means the Chiefs will “have to look at all our options” … the implication being that those options could include examining sites outside of Jackson County.
All of which means that the longtime Chiefs-Royals partnership still is vital, even as they seek to separate.
But it also makes things far more complicated for taxpayers, who are challenged not merely by the vote at hand but the consideration of what a “no” would mean to likely separate future ballots.
This story was originally published February 29, 2024 at 6:00 AM.