The Kansas City Royals unveiled new designs for its downtown ballpark on Thursday, with team and city officials saying it will offer one of the most intimate experiences in baseball.
The renderings offer the latest and most detailed look so far into the team’s vision for a baseball stadium at Crown Center — first unveiled in April.
Royals officials and project leaders said at a press conference on Thursday that the yet-to-be-named downtown ballpark will give new life to downtown Kansas City.
“Imagine every summer night: 25,000 more people downtown, 25,000 more people in our museums, at our restaurants, at our shops,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said. “Think about how important an investment that is for us in Kansas City.”
The team projects that groundbreaking on the $2 billion project could take place in the middle of 2027, with a goal of opening for the 2030 season.
Kansas City architecture firm Populous will design the stadium.
“It's authentic to Kansas City,” said Earl Santee, senior principal and founder of Populous. “And we want it to be immersive, transparent, connected.”
The stadium will be designed to hold 34,000 seats, with standing-room-only space for 3,000 spectators. The Royals’ current facility, Kauffman Stadium, currently holds 37,903 seats.
“This is something that is a game changer, not just for the city but for an entire region,” Lucas said.
Santee said constructing the stadium will require digging a 90-foot-deep hole, and then carving the structure out of limestone bluffs.
Two 360-degree concourses planned inside the stadium would allow visitors to take a full lap around the building. The stadium will also include a social club and entertainment pavilion.
Santee said the stadium’s design will allow visitors a sprawling view of downtown, and a rendering from the east side of the stadium shows Liberty Memorial and Union Station in the background. Like Kauffman Stadium, the new ballpark will be designed to prominently feature fountains.
“They're the center feature of the ballpark as we celebrate Kansas City and the great history of its fountains,” Santee said.
The downtown stadium will also have a three-dimensional, crown-topped scoreboard, similar to the one at Kauffman Stadium. A canopy will also provide shade for up to 65% of fans during an afternoon game, Santee said.
The stadium will comprise four decks that Santee said is meant to bring fans closer to the action, adding that the upper deck and club deck will be 20 feet closer to the field than at Kauffman Stadium.
“We're trying to create the most intimate ballpark in baseball,” he said.
Santee said the stadium will have enough parking for visitors, and that two existing, above-ground parking garages will be preserved for the project.
Thursday’s presentation did not include more details on the ballpark district that will surround the stadium. Brooks Sherman, president of real estate and development with the Royals, said the team is in the process of hiring a master planner for the rest of the development outside the stadium. Those plans include improving Washington Square Park, just north of Crown Center, which Sherman said will remain a public green space.
The new designs come a week after the Kansas City Council approved several key ordinances to move the stadium project forward. They included a rezoning of the Crown Center area, paving the way for construction to begin.
Another ordinance authorized $615.2 million in bonds to pay for stadium construction, and a third approved a plan that would redirect certain future tax revenue increases from the stadium and from neighborhoods around the stadium — including the Crossroads, the Westside, and Union Hill — to pay off the city’s share of construction debt.
Documents from the city manager’s office show that debt could balloon to $1.3 billion over the 30-year life of the loan.
