Leaders of the Kansas City Chiefs held a press conference on Wednesday to unveil their plans for the Truman Sports Complex should the Royals move their stadium downtown. If anyone doubted that the April 2 vote is really about Royals owner John Sherman wanting to move the team to a new stadium downtown, this event made it clear.
The Chiefs are putting in a relatively small amount of money for renovations. According to Kansas City PBS affiliate KCUR:
The total cost of the proposed renovations is estimated at $800 million. Chiefs Chairman Clark Hunt says the Hunt family would pay $300 million of that total. Jackson County taxpayers would be on the hook for the remainder . . .
Got that? Taxpayers are putting up the lion’s share of the renovations to a stadium owned by billionaires. It gets worse. As if learning that taxpayers will fund the majority of the Chiefs’ plans isn’t bad enough, Chiefs President Mark Donovan chose to insult voters’ intelligence. Again, according to KCUR:
Unlike the Royals, who last year cited structural concerns at Kauffman Stadium as one of the main reasons for building a new downtown facility, the Chiefs intend to stay in the same arena bowl over the long haul. Arrowhead opened in 1972, one year before Kauffman Stadium.
Donovan chalked the contrast up to construction differences.
“Believe it or not,” Donovan said, “One team got a good batch of concrete, one team didn’t.”
This is more ridiculous than it sounds because we already know, thanks to KMBC News, that Kauffman Stadium is perfectly fine:
The Royals have repeatedly said the concrete has an issue, but a study reveals that Kauffman Stadium is in “satisfactory condition,” consistent with a “first-class” MLB baseball stadium.
Jackson County voters are being asked to support a new tax because John Sherman, the billionaire owner of the Royals, wants a new stadium in downtown Kansas City. The Chiefs don’t need a new tax. The existing Royals stadium isn’t falling apart. The deal won’t add value to downtown or be good for residents. This press conference made it fair to wonder how much of this is just a power play for personal gain.
