T-Mobile announced yesterday that it will move its 3,500 workers from its Aspiria Campus office in Overland Park if the Kansas City Royals are allowed to build a stadium next door, saying the site “cannot accommodate both our workforce and a stadium.”
While the phone company said it hopes to stay “preferably within the city and state,” this does throw a new wrench into the idea that luring the Royals across the border to Kansas would represent an economic boon for the state. There were already plenty of good questions about whether that would be true, but this adds new ones, especially if T-Mobile seeks some kind of taxpayer incentives to stay in Kansas at a new site.
All this is happening against the backdrop of Kansas officials having set a December 31 deadline for Royals owner John Sherman to negotiate, or at least propose, a new stadium in their state if he wants to cash in on several hundred million dollars in state tax money that was approved a year and a half ago. (The money is technically on the table until next June, but Kansas legislators have warned they won’t consider any stadium deals after the end of 2025.) There’s been talk for a few weeks now that Sherman was about to announce a stadium proposal for the Aspiria site, which may still happen, but the T-Mobile announcement isn’t going to help — especially not on top of Johnson County residents already organizing to stop any stadium construction based on traffic concerns.
No Kansas officials have responded publicly yet to the T-Mobile announcement, and Royals execs continue to stress that they’re looking at all options, in both Kansas and Missouri. At this point, any particular stadium site has to be viewed as part leverage play — not just how much Sherman would get from it, but how much he could get from other local governments by waving it in their faces as a threat. That’s not likely to be resolved by the end of the money, making the December 31 date pretty much moot; it’ll still be interesting to see what Kansas legislators do once their self-imposed deadline arrives and all they get are some renderings of fireworks.
Just think of the prestige Kansas will gain by having a team most people already think plays in Kansas, actually play in Kansas. Can you really put a price on that? If they stay in Missouri, the legislature should force them to change their name to Kansas City Royals of Missouri.
I don’t see any way Kansas will let the Royals build a stadium in that area. Too much wealth living nearby. The KC Washington Park area would not allow Sherman to build his taxpayer funded entertainment district. That only leaves North Kansas City, a city of 5500 and a smallish suburban county to fund a new ballpark. Maybe Clay County will be dumb enough to try but I can’t see voters approving it.
At this point I think Sherman will come back with some short term extension to stay at Kauffman Stadium until he figures out a better scam.