KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman said the club plans to announce the site for its new proposed ballpark district by the “end of the summer.”
Sherman made the remarks during a wide-ranging news conference with members of Kansas City media Thursday at the team’s Hall of Fame at Kauffman Stadium.
In his opening remarks, Sherman addressed the team’s performance on the field, saying the “results are worse than I thought they’d be.”
His comments come after the latest Royals loss, a 14-1 thrashing Wednesday at the hands of the Cleveland Guardians — a team Sherman was previously part of the ownership group. The loss dropped Kansas City to 22-58 this season, last place in an anemic AL Central and the second-worst record in baseball.
Sherman pivoted to discussion of the team’s plans for a $2 billion ballpark district, roughly $1 billion of which Sherman said would come from the private sources.
"This is a 50-year decision," Sherman said.
Jackson County tax payers attending Thursday's Royals game said they would like to see the ballpark stay in the county after years of paying sales taxes for the stadiums at the Truman Sports Complex.
“I think it would be a great opportunity for other fans from both sides of the line to go and I think it would be a great spot to be," Jody Cates-Collins said. “For the fans of Jackson County that have been paying for so long, it would be hurtful to the fans to move to Clay County when we’ve been in Jackson County for so long.”
While some residents of the sunflower state said they would like to keep a more sprawling stadium campus.
"I’m just worried if we move it downtown then you are going to lose a lot of this [tailgating], and it’s going to be more transactional type deal instead of an event,” said Royals fan Landon Snook.
Earlier this year, the team announced it had narrowed a list of potential sites to two: a location in the East Village district of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, which has long been considered the front-runner for a new stadium's location, and a second location in North Kansas City.
Sherman said that the Clay County option entered the process only recently, but he described the site as a “serious bid.”
In comparing the two sites, Sherman said the East Village location would be around 20 acres and a "more vertical" project, while the Clay County site would be around 80 acres and "more horizontal."
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