For some reason, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas was up at 4 am local time this morning replying to my hours-old X posts about city and state officials’ plans for a new Royals stadium on the site of Hallmark’s headquarters building on the Crown Center campus. After checking that I wasn’t still asleep and dreaming this, I took the opportunity to ask the mayor some questions that weren’t covered in yesterday’s presentation:
Sadly, either Lucas went back to sleep after that or left for work, because he hasn’t responded. (Though he did find time to post this in the meantime.) If he gets back to me with answers, I’ll update this post.
Fortunately, we do have some independent reporting to address some of the many questions about yesterday’s Royals announcement. For starters, KMBC has reported that “the Royals will convey 15 acres of land to the city for the ballpark itself,” which would make it exempt from property taxes unless the team agreed to a payments in lieu of taxes deal. And according to University of Colorado Denver property tax guru Geoffrey Propheter, a full tax exemption for this project would come to between $678 million and $1.384 billion spread over 30 years — which comes to between $428 million and $873 million in present value in foregone tax payments.
KMBC also reported that the outlay of direct public cash for stadium construction would involve the previously discussed $600 million in city tax increment financing money — it’ll be interesting to see how that’ll work when much of the surrounding Crown Center area is already in either a TIF district or a separate “Chapter 353” property tax abatement district — plus “at least $350 million” from the state. The amount of state money, according to the Show-Me Sports Investment Act passed by the Missouri legislature last year, would be based on the annual payments being no more than the team and its players and employees paid in income, sales, and other taxes in 2025; no one has calculated that number yet.
So we have $1 billion-ish in state and city spending, plus at least $400 million and possibly as much as double that that Royals owner John Sherman would get from the city letting him build a stadium on tax-free land. Let’s call it “at least $1.4 billion,” that’ll do until we get some more precise numbers.
And this just in: The Missouri Workers Center has said it intends to try to force a public ballot measure on the Royals stadium plan, exploring “all legal and political options” for doing so. Not sure what’s possible there, but at least they have the advantage that the Royals funding still has a long ways to go before it’s finalized, so at least they won’t run into the St. Louis Cardinals‘ no backsies precedent.
Would any money from Royals ownership being put into this project be offset from Personal Seat Licenses, which as you know are paid by fans to the Royals and not really their money in the first place.
Unknown as yet. I’d be surprised if they tried, though — the Royals would have a hard time selling out an entire stadium of PSLs for 81 games, and if they’re not required, lots of people will just choose PSL-free seats. It’s why PSLs are far more widely used in leagues where sellouts are common, like the NFL.
Exactly. I don’t know that anyone has tried to do PSLs for a ballpark, though, don’t give them ideas.
There are a few:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_seat_license#Major_League_Baseball
I am sure naming rights will go to the Royals and count towards their “contribution”. All the land going into the district can be valued at whatever the Royals say since for tax purposes it will not be a sale.
If there is a win for the dumbest statement one of our local politicians blamed the Power and Light shortages on not having a large enough TIF district.
Those twitter replies from locals, one of whom seems to be bragging that he and every other citizen is going to be on the hook for about $1000 in new taxes.