Royals owner opens talks on North KC stadium subsidies to go along with his $750m from the state

Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman has tax subsidy offers in hand from two states — $700 million and up from Kansas and $750 million from Missouri — but he hasn’t had much to say publicly of late about where in either state he might want to build a stadium, let alone how much more in city and county money he would want on top of his state checks. On Friday, however, North Kansas City in Clay County took a step forward as a potential Royals stadium site … well, two steps forward … well, two baby steps forward:

• Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the Clay County Sports Complex Authority bill into law. When this was first introduced back in May, it was intended to set up a county sports authority and seed it with enough state tax money to pay off an additional $200 million in stadium expenses; now the bill just says that the state legislature “may” contribute $3 million a year toward the sports authority, provided that the county provides matching funds. (It actually says the county must “contribute at lease [sic] $3 million per calendar year”; can’t wait to see if there are any hilarious unintended consequences of that typo.)
• Clay County Western Commissioner At-Large Jason Withington posted on Facebook that “Just before the July 4th holiday, Clay County, Missouri Government received a term sheet from the team outlining their vision for a potential deal at the #NKC site. This is a big step, but there’s still plenty of work ahead as we move forward in negotiations.” What’s in the term sheet? Withington and other commissioners didn’t say, though he did reveal that it was (in the Kansas City Star’s words) “at least eight pages long and centered on a potential North Kansas City stadium,” which makes one wonder if Clay County commissioners have trouble counting past eight.

Neither of these steps are all that significant. The sports authority would be a necessary step for a North K.C. stadium, but the amount of money included is trivial (and nonguaranteed). County commissioners, meanwhile, stressed that the term sheet only represented the start of talks: Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte said, “We should be optimistic, but it’s not like there’s something imminent,” while Withington added, “I just wanted people to know, hey look, we are negotiating with the Royals. Yes, we are having conversations with the Royals. We are not close to a deal, but we are having conversations.”

Kicking the tires on Clay County seems to be Sherman’s way of launching a bidding war between Kansas City and North Kansas City for his team’s affections, even while he’s still conducting a similar bidding war between Missouri and Kansas. It’s a tough dance to pull off, but with potentially well over a billion dollars in public money at stake once city and county funds are included, you know that he’s going to do his damnedest to pull it off, just like any other red-blooded American billionaire with tax dollars in his eyes.