The NFL and MLB owners are watching.
Its election day in Jackson County, Missouri and it is the day when Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals’ franchise owner John Sherman and the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs’ owner Clark Hunt find out if the stadium game has been successful or will the pair have to regroup and play the stadium game again looking for public money. Jackson County voters will decide if they want a stadium sales tax to continue. Jackson County voters said yes to a sales tax hike in 2006 to renovate the Royals’ stadium and the Chiefs’ venue. This time the voters will decide if spending at least one billion dollars from continuing the stadium sales tax to build a new baseball park and renovate the football facility is worth it.
Sherman has said his ballpark project will cost $2 billion. Sherman is of the opinion that his project will create more than 20,000 jobs and will generate $1.4 billion in labor income and $2.8 billion in total economic output from construction. Sherman believes it will take about three years to complete the project. He went on to write in a letter to Kansas City Royals supporters that the inaugural year of the new ballpark is expected to generate some $185 million more in regional economic output than the existing Royals ballpark or The K presently does. Why does Sherman want a new stadium while Hunt can live with a stadium renovation? It is a matter of concrete. According to Sherman’s architecture partner, the Kansas City-based Populous, the Royals stadium is suffering from ASR or cancer of the concrete. The stadium has thirty years to live if it does not get treated. The football stadium was built with good concrete while the baseball stadium was built with bad concrete. The voters will have their say today.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
