Royals owner Sherman wants $1B for a new downtown stadium? In this economy?

access_time personNeil deMause

Stadium deals, like bankruptcies, happen in two ways: slowly, then all at once. Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman has been mumbling vaguely about wanting a new downtown stadium for over a year now, to the point where it’s just kind of background noise behind the somewhat more active Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays stadium campaigns. So, naturally, Sherman yesterday upped the ante, also naturally on Twitter, though for some reason without first changing his name to Elon Musk:

I’ll save you from having to squint at all that tiny blue type, and supply the highlights:

  • “We have enjoyed many exciting moments together at the Truman Sports Complex over the years. In the spirit of Ewing Kauffman, our current mission is to look ahead to ensure that Major League Baseball and the Kansas City Royals will thrive in this region for decades to come.” Translation: It’d be shame if something was to happen to your paratroopers, Colonel.
  • “We also want to ensure that we have a world-class ballpark that stays competitive with our peers nationwide.” Translation: But Mommmmmm! Johnny has a bull-riding bar!
  • “It’s becoming challenging to maintain the K. When its current lease with Jackson County concludes at the end of this decade, it will be 60 years old. The renovations required at The K to achieve our objectives would cost as much or more than the price tag to develop a new ballpark.” Translation: Yes, we know that Kauffman Stadium is regularly rated among the best stadiums in MLB and just got a $250 million renovation at public expense in 2009, but it’s still older than Leonardo DiCaprio and Seth Green, and to make it newer than that we would have to tear it down and build a new one, so may as well tear it down and build a new one somewhere else.
  • “We have several leading locations under close consideration.” Translation: Some somewhere else we’re still thinking about, we’ll tell you later.
  • “We want to construct a world-class experience — a new ballpark district and all that comes with it.” Translation: Bull-riding bar. Seriously, we want one of those.
  • “Revitalized.” Translation: Everybody drink!
  • “Mixture of public and private payment.” Translation: Everybody drink again! Also, we’re carefully not saying how much public and how much private.
  • “Our own intention to invest hundreds of millions of dollars directly into the ballpark and the ballpark district [resulting in] the largest public-private development in Kansas City history, expected to be $2 billion as currently envisioned.” Translation: Or maybe we are saying! $2 billion minus “hundreds of millions” equals not sure exactly, but certainly well over $1 billion in public money. It’s always possible a third-party developer could kick in some as well, but if that’s part of the plan, Sherman wasn’t saying.

There’s more, but let’s stop there and cut to “What the hell is John Sherman thinking?” For one thing, he’s clearly thinking that the time to strike is now, while the iron is hot: Downtown business interests and the local media have been hyped up about a new stadium for a while now, and with all that stupid infrastructure money floating around Washington, now’s a great time to propose some giant project that can soak up a bunch of federal grants along with whatever Kansas City and Missouri can be enticed to kick in this time around. Admittedly, a moment when interest rates are going through the roof and the economy seems to be sliding into recession is maybe not the ideal moment to launch a huge development project, but hot irons don’t come along every day, and anyway if more than a billion dollars of the project would be covered by Not Me, it can’t hurt to ask, can it? (Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas responded last night that “we already anticipate perhaps the ask being a Jackson County sales tax extension, and I think that’s something that a lot of people might be comfortable with,” so that should be a few hundred million dollars right there, not bad for the work of writing one press release.)

Finally, Sherman included some vaportecture for us to ogle, the better to distract us from all those zeroes after the dollar sign:

Okay, that’s an image of the Royals in the World Series, at a stadium that looks a bit like Kauffman but isn’t, with fans waving those oversized flags that seem to be all the rage in all vaportecture images, including one that for some reason reads “#ALWAYSROYALS.” (Hands up, all who think that Twitter and hashtags will still exist the next time the Royals are in the World Series.) And, in the middle of it all, there’s this guy:

I know just how you feel, pal.

Other Recent Posts:

Share this post:

29 comments on “Royals owner Sherman wants $1B for a new downtown stadium? In this economy?”

  1. KC already has an entertainment district requiring public subsidies with a bull-riding bar, so sorry John!

  2. Just like the Bills and Titans recently, they claim it’s just as expensive to renovate as it is to build new, to “achieve our objectives”, whatever they are. There will probably be forthcoming a bogus study to show renovation is just as expensive.

    The only thing “wrong” with Royals Stadium is lack of corporate suites, restaurants, etc. 95% of fans would be fine with the present ample parking, good seats, decent food fare.

    If Sherman wants more than he’s free to do so with his own money. No public money! The lease is good until 2030, and in the unlikely event the Royals move they could probably get the Rays or A’s to move into what is still a good stadium.

  3. The original amount for a downtown stadium was $800 million, now with a ballpark district, it’s up to $2 billion before any planning has been started.

    Now THAT’S inflation

    And the grift begins from there. One of the owners in the Royals ownership group, JE Dunn, is one of the largest construction companies in the world

    I’m sure the vetting process will be fair

  4. If I were a Royals fan, this vaportecture would not excite me. It seems inferior to their current stadium. And baseball doesn’t allow large flags. Those are LaLiga fans mascaraing as baseball fans.

    1. I mean, the Royals might do better in La Liga? Though on the other hand, they might also have to worry about relegation…

  5. “It’s becoming challenging to maintain the K. When its current lease with Jackson County concludes at the end of this decade, it will be 60 years old. The renovations required at The K to achieve our objectives would cost as much or more than the price tag to develop a new ballpark.”

    I have no idea how Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Lambeau Field, and many college football venues have made it to today.

    1. Have you been to Lambeau Field? People sit on BENCHES there. Wrigley Field is constantly being altered for greater attendance. Fenway Park put seats on the left field wall. Most college venues are nothing short of trash. If this is the future you want the K to enjoy, have at it. I’d rather watch the game on TV, anyway.

    2. Tiger Stadium in Detroit should have been on your list too.
      Wonderful park.
      Greed sucks…..

    3. Dodger Stadium is sixty years old now, and the Dodgers renovated it.

      If you read comments on social media about this stupid Downtown Kansas City ball park pipeload, it’s a bunch of dishonest baloney. Backed up sewers and falling concrete at Kauffman Stadium? Really?

      Come on!

      The only people I see benefiting from this scheme are John Sherman and the Downtown developers, boosters and property owners for whom he’s acting as the front man. Royals fans certainly won’t benefit from it. A Downtown ball park would be much more difficult to access by car than Kauffman Stadium is. The Royals draw a very substantial percentage of their fans from the suburbs (on both sides of the State Line) and from outside Greater Kansas City. If those fans can’t drive to games, they won’t attend them. It’s as simple as that.

      Furthermore, Sherman’s target seating capacity for this retro monstrosity he wants is in the 30,000 to 32,000 range, which is pretty skippy for a supposedly “Major League” ball park. More to the point, since there would be fewer available seats, that will make tickets more expensive.

      And last but not least, a Downtown ball park won’t make the Royals a more competitive team. They need intelligent management: something the Royals haven’t had since Ewing Kauffman died. Sherman fired the only really capable front office executive the Royals had, Dayton Moore.

      This Downtown ball park will simply offer fans newer and fewer seats to stay away from.

  6. Kansas City native that was alive, but not old enough to remember the KC Athletics. I grew up with the Royals, and have always been a fan, though I moved away from KC decades ago.

    I’ve spent my life in professional sports, but not at this end of it. That said, I see 7 U.S. MSAs larger than Kansas City, many growing much faster, that don’t have MLB. This is a classic first move in “nice little MLB team you have there, shame if it were to disappear” hostage situation.

      1. There are zero vacant markets larger than Tampa-St. Pete or the SF Bay Area:

        https://methodshop.com/nielsen-dma-rankings-full-list/

  7. They know they have a website they can link to instead of posting a headache-inducing picture, right?

    Anyway, Nashville seems to have the money gun all cocked and loaded, might as well throw some at big time baseball too.

  8. There’s always time for love in vaporware land! I hope in real life they don’t make the outfield too big again…..

    1. Love? I don’t see any love. Unless there’s an outfield hotel I’m missing with the curtains open…

      1. Neil, when you highlighted “this guy” the picture is so blurry I thought it looked like a man holding and kissing a woman.
        Obviously, my 63 year old eyesight is not good.
        Can you tell me what it really is please?

  9. $2 billion? Let ’em walk. We’ll develop East Village with or without ’em, and we could replace them with an NBA and/or NHL franchise at the Sprin..er, T-Mobile Center.

    And I say this as a Royals fan since ’89.

    1. Not sure that’s gonna happen. The arena is super profitable without a team, and KC doesn’t really add much to the NHL or NBA, maybe you could lure the Coyotes there after the Tempe experiment ends

  10. I’m sure they’ll get a deal, either in missouri or Kansas. They can play metros and states against each other, and if that doesn’t work they can threaten to move from the region completely.

  11. #Alwaysroyals was the teams media hashtag for the 2020 season, which is why the images likely have that in them. Most likely because they’ve been sitting on these images since 2020.

Comments are closed.