Representatives of the Kansas City Royals and the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation held a required public hearing on their rezoning proposals for a new Royals stadium complex yesterday, and and they absolutely heard from the public:
“We already said no to a downtown baseball stadium, and here it comes back again,” said Mary Ellen Vincent, a Roanoke neighborhood resident. “[It feels like] a trick, like they went around us, and they’re going to jam this through no matter what we say.”
Roanoke neighborhood resident Olo Szylleyko, shared her concern about bypassing a public vote and raised broader economic concerns, pointing to mixed results at stadium developments in other cities.
“You have to look in other cities and you see what are the pluses and minuses of this type of enterprise and how much money they actually been spent by the taxpayers and by the owners,” he said. “We’re looking at this as an absolutely perfect success. We don’t know that.”
And:
“I think a lot of us are really excited for the development,” said Ben Lindner, board president of the San Francisco Tower Association. “We’d love to see some new life being breathed into the Crown Center area, but this plan seems to create more questions than it’s answered.”
And:
About an hour into the meeting, as the last remaining speaker was at the podium, members of the Missouri Workers Center erupted in chants of “let us vote.” The progressive labor advocacy group broke out in chants and heckled speakers….
The meeting ended about 15 minutes early. During a question-and-answer period, when presenters addressed prescreened questions from the crowd, a host announced they would end the meeting amid the ongoing outburst.
(You can see the “Let us vote!” chants here. Nobody seems to have gotten video of any heckling or the announcement to end the meeting, so it’s hard to tell how disruptive it was; KCTV did an entire lengthy report without even mentioning that the hearing ended early, though it’s always possible their reporter didn’t stay till the end.)
The Missouri Workers Center, you will recall, has collected signatures to put a vote on the stadium plan on the November public ballot, to which Royals officials have responded, pretty much, “ha ha, not if we get all the approvals first!” And whether or not the rest of the attendees approved of the chanting — “a lot of people were at the wrong meeting,” groused one local resident — the general sentiment seems to have been that Kansas Citians have multiple concerns about the project that they would like to have addressed. This should be no surprise to anyone, given that at past public hearings residents have raised questions about the public cost (unspecified as yet, but likely $1.3 billion or more) and that the city is pushing this plan forward after voters overwhelmingly rejected another public funding plan for a Royals stadium in 2024. It’s almost like people in Kansas City want some way for their opinions to be heard beyond writing down questions and having team officials pick and choose which ones to answer, hmm, there must be some provision in democracy for doing this, can’t think of what that would be right now.
Are y’all starting to understand that rich people are going to do whatever they want, whether you like it or not?
It’s just how democracy works! No wait, not democracy, the other one.
To show how ignorant sports fans can be one commented on a Royals blog that if taxpayers didn’t subsidize sports stadiums only the New York and LA teams could survive.
Which is also what they said about the reserve clause.
Bravo! Well done Roanoke area residents etc.
Of course, the scumbags you elected in conjunction with Royals’ management and ownership will just find a way to approve this spending without having to have another noisy public meeting, but you all turned out and said your piece.
I salute you for doing so, whether it ultimately makes any difference or not.
Maybe those voters will RECALL that they have a way to remedy the problem of elected officials not listening to them.