Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman is reportedly exploring new stadium sites, including some across the state line in Kansas:
“The Royals are in real and advanced discussions with the state of Kansas to potentially build their new stadium in Johnson County,” [sports radio host Bob] Fescoe said on his show Tuesday morning, citing multiple sources. “It’s going to move fast and a lot of quickly.”
A lot of quickly, eh? Fescoe went on to say a potential announcement (of a site? of how a stadium would be paid for there? he didn’t specify) could come before the MLB Winter Meetings that start on December 8. The two sites mentioned by Fescoe are a former Sprint campus in Overland Park about six miles south of downtown Kansas City and two miles from the state line, and another a couple of miles northwest of there.
This represents the first real flareup of Kansas move threats since June, when that state’s legislature gave approval for secretary of commerce David Toland and eight legislative leaders from both parties to unilaterally approve selling upwards of $700 million in bonds apiece for new stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs, with the debt to be paid off with money from state sales tax receipts and state lottery proceeds. At the time, it wasn’t clear if Sherman and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt were serious about a Kansas move or just trying to nudge officials in Missouri to up their own ante — but since the latter has mostly fizzled for now, kicking the tires on Kansas makes sense as the next move, whether the team owners are serious about a move or just seeking to poke the embers on a bidding war.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, at least, seems game, saying “the border war that [the Kansas STAR bond plan] has reignited is unhelpful” and then in the next breath that “I think Kansas City and the state of Missouri are in an active position.” Lucas said he spoke to Sherman as recently as last week about stadium plans on his side of the border, though he didn’t divulge any details about a site or what kind of public money could be used now that voters there rejected a sales tax hike to pay for one.
If all this is reminding you of the Chicago Bears‘ eternal parade of potential stadium sites, it should, because it’s the same strategy: Keep dropping hints about different locations until one either sticks or shakes loose money from a different government body afraid of being left out when the music stops. For the Bears it’s been a matter of trying (unsuccessfully so far) to pit Chicago and its suburbs against each other; the Royals already attempted that last year with Kansas City and North Kansas City, but getting Kansas involved as well gives Sherman more options, for threats if nothing else.
Not that it’s much of a stick: If you don’t give us stadium money we’ll go across the border and let somebody else pay for it only works as a threat if the potential economic gains from hosting the Royals are greater than the public construction cost, and there’s almost no chance of that happening. But all you need is for one set of elected officials to bite, so expect Sherman — and the Bears owners, and the Cleveland Browns owners, and pretty much any other sports owners with two local jurisdictions that can be played off each other — to keep up the move threat gambit as long as is necessary to shake loose some government cash from somewhere.
These guys are amateurs. If you want to create leverage you don’t threaten to move to a suburb. You threaten to move to another city. Jerry Reinsdorf is preemptively spinning in his grave.
MLB teams have a difficult time threatening to move to another city or state when no one is offering to gift them a MLB ballpark.
Clown Boy Fisher might never get the A’s out of California, and the Rays are also moving to a tiny minor league park because they have nowhere else to go.
Tell the Royals to put a fresh coat of paint on Kauffman Stadium and call it a new ballpark.
You are forgetting that they have competing state and local governments to play off each other. This ain’t the Bears fishing around Chicago. This is the Royals playing Kansas vs MO.
True, Dave, but so long as the Royals/Chiefs are still talking about building in the same geographic area the reality is that for a certain percentage of fans (somewhere between 20 and 50% I would guess) a different location will actually be easier or at least no harder to get to.
So the “play” has less pull than moving to Greensboro or Pensacola (natural rival for Jacksonville), for example.
Some become billionaires by inheritance, some by intelligence and some by dumb luck. Its becoming obvious how Sherman got there. Less obvious is how those around him can be so clueless.
Carry on, wayward son.
I see what you did there!
A lot of quickly. Like 6 quicklies.
Thank you Neil for your humor and good sense in covering our Rays Stadium deliberations. I am with the League of Women Voters of the St. Petersburg Area. We studied the Rays deal for 18 months; interviewing economists, journalists and developers. We took a position against the proposed stadium/development deal. We wrote two op ed pieces for The St Pete Catalyst. We formed alliances with other non-partisan groups including Faith in Florida and many neighborhood associations. We encouraged our Council members to request an analysis from the independent Florida Tax Watch and conducted a poll of 32,000 registered City voters.
We are not opposed to a new stadium. However, financing a private use stadium with tax increment financing is fiscally irresponsible. Prohibiting public votes on a mega public deal is poor governance. Sadly, 60 acres of valuable public land located in the middle of our City may still be owned by a baseball team who may not be playing in our City. This is a cautionary tale for every voter.
Is it clear that Sternberg gets to keep his sweetheart deal to buy the land even if he’s the one who pulls the plug on the stadium? Seems like any time someone has asked a city lawyer about this, the answer has been along the lines of “good question.”