KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There’s no perfect site downtown to drop a Royals baseball stadium in, but one of the developers of a proposed stadium at Washington Square Park explained why it might be the best fit.
“You have these museums, monuments, parkland — all this stuff that we’ve put a lot of public dollars into already,” 3D Development Partner Erik Wullschleger said. “If you think of the city as a business and you think about the business people involved in this, it’s about getting a return on some of those big investments we’ve already made.”
The 11.5-acre site, located between Main Street and Grand Boulevard from Pershing Road north to some train tracks, includes the city-owned park and the soon-to-be-vacated Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City headquarters along with its employee parking lot.
The KC Streetcar, which runs along Main Street, would drop people off at where home plate would be located under the proposed design put forth by BNIM, a local architecture firm that has partnered with 3D Development.
“Fun fact, this stop right here,” Wullschleger said pointing with the expanded service to the stadium and down to the Plaza is exactly equidistant to each edge.”
It’s also ringed by more than 19,000 parking spots in a four-block radius and nine highway exits within a one-mile radius, according to Wullschleger.
“You won’t find another site in this city that has as many four-lane roads surrounding it, nine interstate exits and 20,000 cars of parking,” he said. “It’s ready for it. ... What we love about this site is, with zero business displacement and minimal demolition, you’ve got everything that you need assembled for a ballpark site and an associated redevelopment of what could be a ballpark village.”
The concept started to come together in January when 3D Development partnered with BNIM, Highline Partners for marketing, Cushman & Wakefield for assistance with assembling property, and Withers, Brant, Igoe & Mullennix for legal counsel.
“The biggest events in our city happen here at the corner of Main and Pershing,” Wullschleger said, gesturing to the intersection where World Series and Super Bowl parades culminate and the NFL Draft took place in 2023. “We are very excited to have the Royals consider this site. We think it makes a lot of sense — not just from a business perspective, but from a civic perspective for the city.”
The Royals have acknowledged they are “considering all options,” but declined to address any specific site.
Chairman and CEO John Sherman said the Royals want to build a downtown stadium and announced in November 2022 plans to vacate Kauffman Stadium, but voters shot down a sales-tax extension in April that would have built a stadium a mile north of Washington Square Park in the northeast corner of the Crossroads Arts District.
That’s opened up alternatives, including a new stadium in Kansas, but three downtown sites — the Crossroads location, East Village and now Washington Square Park — have been the focus of conversations to date.
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