More than 300 people showed up Tuesday night to question Kansas City Royals Chairman and CEO John Sherman about his plans to build a new baseball stadium in or near downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Drawing the loudest response was Sherman’s response to a question late in the evening.
“Can you go on record tonight making a solemn promise that the Royals will remain in Kansas City, Missouri?” asked broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre.
“We can do that,” Sherman said after a cheer subsided. “We can do that.”
Lefebvre served as emcee of the town-hall style meeting at Midtown’s Plexpod, reading a handful of 150 questions submitted by the audience to Sherman, other team officials and two of the city’s most prominent sports architecture figures, Earl Santee and Sarah Dempster of Populous.
Sherman and others addressed several complex issues during the session, including opposition to a downtown stadium expressed by the renters’ organization KC Tenants.
“As landlords raise rents across the city and as our people struggle to find decent homes, the proposed downtown stadium would usher in a new wave of gentrification, like it has in so many other cities with similar recent projects,” the organization said in a statement before the event.
The Royals directly addressed the potential of displacement of residences and businesses often through the night by saying that it’s not their intention to do so.
“They said ‘affordable housing’ 22 times when I was counting,” Ashley Johnson of KC Tenants said at an informal meeting outside Plexpod afterward. Johnson said she wanted the Royals to be more clear on how they defined “affordable.”
Royals Chief Operating Officer Brooks Sherman (no relation to the Royals’ chairman), said there are 14 sites under consideration, but didn’t disclose a timetable on narrowing it down to a final site.
“There’s evaluations that are continuing on land that we believe might be the best location for the stadium,” said Brooks Sherman.
The Royals are also hoping to develop a “ballpark district” that will surround the stadium.
John Sherman ruled out some sort of a bi-state tax to fund the construction of a downtown baseball complex because “it’s too complicated.”
He reiterated his original message that the funding will be a public-private partnership and Jackson County residents will not pay any more in taxes than they are now for Kauffman Stadium, and said the team is serious about transparency.
"We are asking that we do this together and we ask you to hold us accountable to deliver benefits on your behalf as a result of making an investment in us," Sherman said.
Though this was billed as the team’s first community listening event, no dates for future sessions have been announced.
The 2023 baseball season will mark the 50-year anniversary of the first game played at Kauffman Stadium.
