Kansas City Royals execs have submitted a rezoning plan for their proposed new stadium development at Crown Center, which Fox4KC, citing the team’s application, describes as “a vibrant mixed-use destination that supports a wide variety of year-round activities – including professional sporting events, concerts, festivals, community gatherings, private events, sponsorship activations and other programmed experiences.” Or as that looks in an overhead schematic:
That is definitely a baseball stadium — with center field pointing just west of north, making for some potentially troublesome summer sunsets in the eyes of left-handed batters — and a lot of Areas where new or renovated buildings can go. The Kansas City Star notes that “the preliminary plan does not specify exactly what new buildings could contain, noting that would be determined in final plans,” but you can be sure that whatever they are, they’ll contain gobs of exciting sponsorship activations and programmed experiences!
A public hearing of the City Plan Commission on the rezoning is set for August 19. K.C. Mayor Quinton Lucas is trying to get all the elements of the Royals deal — including $1.35 billion or so in city funds and state money that he hasn’t formally requested yet — approved before November so he can forestall a possible ballot measure allowing voters to block the stadium plan.
Presumably the Royals’ professional vaportecture artists are still at work on prettier pictures; if you want examples of those, you’ll have to turn to Washington, D.C., where only nine months after the city council passed its $7 billion-ish Commanders stadium subsidy, there are finally some renderings of what the surrounding development could look like: Fall foliage! Canoes! Not a translucent parking garage in sight! Overhead schematics are probably more realistic, but realistic doesn’t get the re-socials, we’re talking about building mindshare here.
KC has spent millions turning 4 lane streets into 2 lanes so that a few bike riders can use them on the 10 days a year that its not too hot, too cold, or raining in our miserable climate. Now they are proposing tearing out some of the bike lanes so that traffic can move around the proposed stadium. Of course all of our urban lovers who think that no one should ever own a car are upset.
https://parkingreform.org/resources/parking-lot-map/
29% of downtown KC is parking lots.
They blew it by not having an Area 51.
I am looking at the plan and there are three carve outs marked as “excluded from rezoning.” Spot rezoning has been ruled illegal in many place but these appear to be spot-non-rezonings.
is there a case that these are illegal also?
the world may never know.
Those 3 locations are Apartment or condo buildings. I guess removing rental and owned (even in a Condo) housing was a bridge too far, even for Kansas City