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The Kansas City Royals’ search for a new home remains ongoing with a new site that includes Washington Square Park on the southern edge of downtown emerging as the focal point of the conversation this week.
“You’d have to ask the Royals on all of the places up for consideration,” Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said. “The city certainly is aware of Washington Square Park as one of the areas.”
Washington Square Park is the patch of green across East Pershing Road to the north of Crown Center and across Main Street from Union Station, catty-corner to the northeast from the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
The proposed site would include property currently owned by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, which announced plans two years ago to relocate its headquarters to 1400 Baltimore Avenue.
The city-owned park is 4.75 acres, while the Blue Cross building, parking lot and access road add another 6.65 acres for a total area of at least 11.4 acres.
That’s much smaller than the 17.3-acre Crossroads Art District site, which is located one mile to the north and was the proposed site in an April vote, but it’s still large enough for a new stadium. It’s unclear if any additional development would be included in that footprint.
The Royals would not comment on their reported interest in the Washington Square Park site except to say that the team is “considering all options” for a future home site.
After the failed April vote, when some voters cited the piecemeal manner in which information was made public as “messy,” the club may prefer to choose a site and announce the details of its plan all at once this time — and that could include a move to Kansas.
“We’d be remiss if we let them slip out of the city and the county and move somewhere else, so I’m all for keeping them in Kansas City,” Cale Doornbos, who has lived in downtown KCMO for 25 years, said. “I’ve been going to Royals games my whole life. They’re a big part of the community and I’m glad to see them being successful this year.”
Does Washington Square Park make sense?
Doornbos voted yes in April for a sales-tax extension that also would have funded renovations at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. He said he’d also support the Washington Square Park site.
“You’ve got the Liberty Memorial, it’s 100 years as an icon in Kansas City, followed by Union Station and Crown Center,” Doornbos said. “There’s not a whole lot of intersections in the city that have that much architectural significance as far as the history and evolution of the city. Adding another piece of that would be great and, quite frankly, Washington Square Park is underutilized today.”
Other than events like Irish Fest and Boulevardia, the park doesn’t see a lot of regular activity, but that would change if the Royals played 81 games a year in a new stadium on the site.
“It would be a nice addition if it doesn't unduly congest this area, which can be a little congested at times anyway, but I think it’s a very viable site,” KCMO resident Cathy Doyal said. “... It’s (a downtown stadium) become a standard in a lot of major cities and it’s created a lot of energy around it in those cities. I’ve spent some time in Baltimore and know the effect that their stadium has had. Not that we need much of an infusion of energy — Kansas City tends to be a very enthusiastic sports city, for sure.”
Union Station, Crown Center and several nearby office buildings have parking garages and Washington Square Park is adjacent to the KC Streetcar line, which means it will be a highly accessible site for fans coming to the games.
“If the Royals are looking at downtown, then we’ll do all we can to make sure — while having respect for our taxpayers — that we come up with that proper balance, which is a good location downtown that addresses ingress and egress, that has good parking, that has good amenities nearby, but that also allows us to have the type of stadium that Kansas City deserves,” Lucas said.
The team has publicly and repeatedly said it won’t stay at Kauffman Stadium past the current lease, which will be up before the 2031 season.
The Royals hoped to be settled into a new home by 2028, but voters rejected a proposal for a new stadium in the northeast corner of the Crossroads — including The Kansas City Star’s former printing press — four months ago.
So, the search continues.
“I love the stadiums where they are now,” Doyal said. “... But I understand that times change and tastes change and needs change. I’m not opposed to introducing more people in the area to downtown and to Crown Center.”
Doornbos lauded the idea of having the “Liberty Memorial as your backdrop to home plate and the hotels around it with the Western Auto Lofts on the outside — I think it’s a really great setting for baseball. It’s an intimate site.”
He also noted that Union Station and the Memorial’s north lawn have hosted four championship celebrations — one for the Royals and three for the Chiefs — since 2015.
“Union Station is kind of the heart of all the successes of the Chiefs and Royals the last 15 years, so just to bring that here would be great for the city,” Doornbos said.
Financing without a public vote
The Harry S. Truman Sports Complex is owned by Jackson County and operated by a governor-appointed state board, the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.
Had voters signed off on the sales-tax extension in April, the Royals would have negotiated to buy the necessary property then conveyed them to the county. The site would have become the “Truman Sports Complex 2.0” and remained under the operational control of the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.
If the Royals move forward with a site like Washington Square Park, the stadium probably would be municipally owned and would not be conveyed to the county, Lucas confirmed.
“The way that we will do it, in a conversation with City Council — necessarily different boards and commissions of the city — is to say what can work financially, what types of incentives and redirections would be part of it and, then ultimately, how do we look to (do) a land transaction as well?” Lucas said.
Revenue bonds similar to Kansas’ STAR bonds, which are repaid from tax revenue generated by the development, would be an option for helping pay for the stadium.
Such a funding mechanism would avoid implementation of a new tax or the extension of an existing one, thus avoiding the need for a public vote.
“We are nowhere there yet,” Lucas said. “I think (Missouri) Gov. (Mike) Parson said the other day that the Royals need to kind of make a decision where they want to be.”
But Lucas made it clear that the city is eager to help figure out financing once the Royals are ready to move forward — and without risking another public vote.
“There’s never a desire to avoid public comments, public votes,” Lucas said. “I think those are things that can be interesting and helpful. That being said, I think we can accomplish a lot in this site or any site without new taxes being raised on the people of Kansas City, without us looking to increase taxes.”
He added, “I think the challenge that many of us here at City Hall were feeling after the April vote was to say — how can we actually lay out a path that does not have new tax liability on the voters of Kansas City? How can we lay out a path that makes sense and is based on those that are using the facility itself? I think we’ll be able to get to a good position in connection with that.”
Lucas said he was targeting a mid-November timeline to work out something related to the Chiefs’ future in Kansas City and confirmed a similar timeline for the Royals’ stadium ambitions.
“It continues to be my view that this is something where we want decisions sooner rather than later,” he said. “I think the voters want us to make a decision and get moving. ... Hopefully, by the holiday season at least, we’re looking at how we've retained the Chiefs and the Royals and we can just talk about wins and losses rather than where teams are playing.”
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