May 12, 2004
K.C. mayor pitches $250m arena
Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes promised last week that an announcement about a new downtown arena was "coming soon," and today she dropped the other shoe: a plan for a $250 million arena, paid for half by private sources, half by taxpayers.
Details are still sketchy, but Barnes' plan calls for $50 million to be invested by billionaire Philip Anschutz - owner of the L.A. Kings, shares of the L.A. Lakers and Staples Center, and a whole mess of Major League Soccer teams - another $10 million by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and an unspecified amount by Sprint in exchange for naming rights to what would be the Sprint Center. The rest would come from "tax credits," a $1.50-a-room hotel-tax fee, and a $4-a-day surcharge on rental cars. Barnes will ask the City Council to schedule an August 3 referendum, which is required by law for the tax hikes.
Still unknown: How revenues from the arena would be divvied up between the private and public partners, and - oh, yes - who the heck would play there, since Kansas City's last NHL team skipped town in 1976, and its last NBA franchise eight years later. "I can assure you that there will be an anchor tenant," said Anschutz Entertainment Group VP Timothy Leiweke. "We have had conversations specifically with those leagues' franchises. I don't think there's a better time to get involved with a National Hockey League team than now." That sound you just heard was the ka-ching! of cash registers in the souls of NHL owners, smelling a move threat to wave in the faces of local elected officials come August.
