The stadium game continues in Kansas City.
The outgoing, term-limited Governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, is not happy with Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals franchise owner John Sherman who seems to be dithering about what to do in the stadium game. Sherman and the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs franchise owner Clark Hunt were big losers in the stadium game’s playoff contest on April 2nd of this year when Jackson County, Missouri voters said no to continuing a sales tax that went into maintaining the teams’ present stadiums that would have been converted to fund a Chiefs’ venue reconstruction and a new Royals’ ballpark in downtown Kansas City. Since then there have been rumblings that Kansas might find money to help build a Major League Baseball stadium and a National Football League facility around Kansas City, Kansas. Parson is getting impatient.
“Some decisions have to be made. I don’t know how to sugarcoat this, but the Royals have got to make a decision,” Parson said on KCMO Talk Radio. “They’ve either got to say we’re going to go, we’re going to build a stadium, what that’s going to look like and what we’re going to need or what is their ask. There’s nothing I can help with. I don’t even know that at this point. I don’t know if anybody up there does. If the Royals don’t have a plan in place by January 1st, 2025, it’s going to be too late. You can’t make a plan in November, December and expect the state to come in and help you.” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said John Sherman is considering other downtown stadium sites including one site that would sit on top of a public park. But there would be a stadium funding problem as there is no Kansas City, Jackson County or Missouri financial package available. The Kansas City stadium game continues.
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