The plan to get 21st Century state-of-the-art facilities is on hold.
It is 2024 but a story from 2023 is ongoing as the stadium game continues in Kansas City, Missouri. When we last left Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals’ owner John Sherman, he was still mulling over a potential site for a new baseball park somewhere in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Sherman promised to have a site selection done by the end of the 2023 baseball season. For whatever reason, Sherman is still seeking that perfect spot for his business. Meanwhile Sherman’s neighbor in the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex, the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs’ owner Clark Hunt is also playing the stadium game. Both Sherman and Hunt want a 21st Century state-of-the-art venue. Another player in the stadium game is the Jackson County, Missouri Legislature. In its final meeting of the 2023 session on December 29th, the legislators decided to punt on whether Jackson County, Missouri voters should have a say if hundreds of millions of dollars is spent on building a new baseball park or renovating the existing Chiefs’ stadium. There is some pressure on the Jackson County Legislature as it has to decide by January 23rd as to whether Jackson County residents can vote in April to extend an existing sales tax that covered the baseball park and the football stadium renovations in the past.
The money collected from the tax, if the legislators give the go ahead to an April referendum and voters say yes, would help fund stadium projects for Hunt’s Chiefs and Sherman’s Royals. Sherman would like to move into a downtown Kansas City site and build a stadium-village. That stadium-village would be covered under the proposed sales tax extension. Sherman is also kicking the tires at a North Kansas City site outside of Jackson County. There have been reports that the state of Kansas may also want to get into the stadium game.
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