The Kansas City Royals are reportedly evaluating a potential new site for a baseball stadium: Washington Square Park, between Union Station and Crown Center.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and other city officials have remained in talks with the Royals to keep the team in town, after Jackson County voters in April rejected a proposal to extend a 3/8th-cent stadium sales tax. That funding would have helped pay for a new Royals ballpark in the Crossroads and renovations to Arrowhead Stadium.
Since then, Kansas lawmakers expanded a state tax incentive program in the hopes of luring one or both teams to relocate to the Sunflower State, which has some officials on the Missouri side considering different ways to pay for the projects.
Lucas told KCUR's Up To Date on Friday he hopes future stadium negotiations don't include a countywide sales tax vote.
“If there are ways that you can look for a project that funds itself in many ways or in large part, that is better,” Lucas said. "Why should every person in Jackson County pay a sales tax to support something that they may never use?”
However, Lucas said that doesn't mean Kansas City residents won't have input on the new stadium.
“I don't think however, that means that there is no public engagement, that there aren't public meetings, that there isn't a truly public process," Lucas said.
