Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas said a thing:
Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said Tuesday the city has offered more than $1 billion to the Royals to help the team build a new downtown stadium or renovate Kauffman Stadium.
“We do have, I think, a very robust offer that combines state and local incentives,” Lucas said. “It’s my view that gets you to a $1.2 to $1.4 billion range with no tax increase. It doesn’t calculate or include the current Jackson County sales tax.”
What’s that, now? The last Royals stadium funding plan that Lucas mentioned was a state bill that would raise an amount of money Lucas didn’t disclose by means he also didn’t disclose, though apparently it’s a super-duper-STIF, funneling 50% of state sales and income taxes plus up to $100 million in state “matching grants” for “qualified entertainment facility projects.” The total state subsidy is limited to 33% of a project’s total cost, meaning Lucas must have city and county subsidies in mind as well, though — stop me if you’ve heard this one — he hasn’t disclosed what those would be.
Meanwhile, the owners of land in Overland Park, Kansas who had been reported to be negotiating the sale of their property for a possible new Royals stadium say they’re “NOT in discussions with the Royals about being a potential new site for their stadium.” Facts are passé, man, future stadium projects will be entirely based on vibes.
Any state money Missouri offers has to be doubled. Because if you offer it to Kansas City, eventually you’ll have to offer it to St. Louis too.
Well, at least “STIFF” is a better acronym for what these billionaires are up to when the subject of stadium extortion is on the table.
Not sure how Lucas gets to his “no new taxes” moment on this one, but hey… as George Costanza once said “It’s not a lie if you believe it”
I think that was meant as an example of his character’s utterly deceptive and untrustworthy nature. But it appears to have become a mantra in the 2020s all the same…
Off topic: Now that spring training is over, I am thankful that the Rays and A’s can move out of these cavernous and impossible to fill spring training homes and get back to more intimate facilities…
Your off topic remark was the most hilarious thing I’ve read all day. Thank you for that…
I LOL’d as well, delightful.
Given the rays averaged 16k fans per game and Steinbrenner field only holds 11k fans there should definitely be a reasonable number of sellouts. The A’s will also likely sellout several games. Part of the above presumes people being willing to pay the increased seat prices…..