Kansas City has revealed the dimensions of the mega-TIF district where all increases in sales and income tax receipts, and half of all increases in hotel tax receipts, would be siphoned off and given to Royals owner John Sherman to pay off a new stadium, and it looks like this:
The city didn’t provide an exact size for the district, but it looks to be a little over five square miles of downtown Kansas City. That means that, as the Kansas City Business Journal puts it, redirected taxes could “range from utilities selling power to new East Side homes to customers buying tacos along Southwest Boulevard, a roughly two-mile drive from the Royals’ site.”
On the face of it, that’s not as egregious as the Chiefs‘ plan to grab sales taxes from a 293-square-mile swath of northeast Kansas — though given that downtown K.C. is a lot more thickly settled than Wyandotte County, it could be close. The tax district is expected to generate $710 million in funds — over what time period hasn’t been reported — to help pay off $560 million in city stadium bonds, up from $510 million previously because reasons.
That’s a lot of tax revenue to give to the team, so how did Sherman and Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office justify it? By rebranding the TIF district as a “stadium impact area,” in the hopes that people will focus less on handing over sales taxes collected far from a new Royals stadium and more on how a Royals stadium will (somehow) create new economic impact miles away. That’s pretty bald-faced, and even K.C.’s legendarily credulous local news media couldn’t possibly—
Restaurants like Brick House and Martin City Pizza’s Crossroads location fall within the draft boundaries, and both said they are ready for the boost.
Deep, soul-rattling existential sigh. Much of my gripes on Friday about the glacially slow pace of change in the world of sports grifting were more musings from fatigue than anything — I didn’t really expect one book, or even many, to turn around a public policy that is creating so much in profits for such powerful people, like Silent Spring or something — but if journalists reporting on it could be just slightly less gullible, that’d be a nice start.
Years ago before KC spent billions subsidizing downtown city leaders decided to expand the definition of downtown. Historically none of the TIF district would have been considered downtown and especially not the ballpark area. The TIF district contains several distinct neighborhoods, most of which will not see any change from the ballpark.
To be fair, those newly zoned “downtown” residents will have plenty of people parking in front of their house to try to avoid extortionate prices and taxes on gameday parking garages.
Some of those people may even stop at a 7-11 for a Big Gulp on the long walk to and from the park, injecting valuable commerce into the heart of Kansas City.
Between June 1 and Aug 31, there were 53 days of Mon-Thurs. The Royals had a home game 18 of those days, a road game 24 of those days, and were off 11 of those days.
I am sure businesses could produce sales receipts to show how much effect Royals games had on revenue. A similar survey could be done with weekends.