KANSAS CITY -- The Royals’ new stadium saga has taken twists and turns, jumped state lines, suffered failures and gained momentum again.
But in the end, the prospect of downtown baseball prevailed.
The Royals announced Wednesday their intentions to move and build a new stadium and ballpark district at Crown Center near downtown Kansas City as part of a joint partnership with Hallmark Cards, two Kansas City institutions anchoring in the heart of the city.
“It would be real easy for me to say, ‘This is how we drew it up,’ but they’re never how you drew it up,” Royals CEO/chairman John Sherman said. “There’s lots of ways to say it: There’s no straight line between Point A and Point B.
“Patience has given us an outcome that we could never have imagined.”
Renderings put a new ballpark where the Hallmark corporate headquarters currently sit, with executive chairman of Hallmark Cards Don Hall Jr. saying Wednesday that the Hallmark building will be moving to a new location still around Crown Center.
That means the ballpark would go where Pershing Road meets Gilham Road and 25th Street. While the renderings were “conceptual” in design with still “a lot of work to do,” Sherman said, the photos did feature plenty of fountains and a Crown Vision scoreboard.
The new stadium will take advantage of the existing Crown Center infrastructure, including 9,000 parking spaces and the Kansas City streetcar stops along Main Street. The 85-acre development would connect nearby Union Station and the Crossroads district -- all with a picturesque skyline of downtown Kansas City.
All told, the team is estimating the project as a $3 billion public-private partnership that would create 20,000 jobs in the construction phase alone, according to the team. At least two-thirds of that would come from private investment, including the Royals and their partners.
One-third of it would come from the state of Missouri and the city of Kansas City. The Royals will have access to funding packages from the city and the state, although how much exactly is not yet known, and officials were noncommittal on the amounts Wednesday. Whether Jackson County will contribute is not certain.
“We’re really proud of the investment that has realized,” Missouri governor Mike Kehoe said. “This has got to be a good return on investment for taxpayers. If the Royals left, you get nothing. So using the Show Me State Investment Act, we think helps keep the team here -- or as I say, a business with thousands of employees -- and ensure Kansas City’s future in a downtown.”
Keeping the Royals in Missouri was a key part of this partnership, especially after the Kansas City Chiefs announced their future move across the state line to Kansas earlier this year.
“I’m grateful on behalf of our city and region -- John Sherman and our team ownership are staying home,” Lucas said. “... With our redirection model, the revenues stay in our community, with a project for baseball and ancillary development that is funded by baseball and ancillary development. With no new taxes and adherence to conservative and physically prudent fiscal management, checked and rechecked by city manager Mario Vasquez and his team of watchdogs.”
The Kansas City Council last week passed an ordinance for a deal worth up to $600 million for a new stadium in the Washington Square Park/Crown Center area.
The Royals expect to break ground in 2027 with a target date of opening for the 2030 season, although their lease at the Truman Sports Complex isn’t up until after the ‘30 season. There are still plenty of details to be ironed out, including a lease agreement and development plan with the city and City Council finalizing that plan.
However, Wednesday was a major step forward for an organization that first announced its intentions to search for a new ballpark four years ago, claiming it was time to move away from Kauffman Stadium -- the fifth-oldest Major League stadium -- and usher in a new era of Royals baseball.
Downtown baseball always seemed like the intent, although the saga soon entered different chapters that took the Royals across the metro.
In 2023, the Royals announced two finalist sites that included North Kansas City. Then they pivoted entirely to a different site in the East Crossroads in February 2024. But that plan was overwhelmingly rejected by Jackson County voters, who said no to extending a 3/8th-cent sales tax that would have helped fund the team’s stadium and renovate the Kansas City Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.
The Royals reassessed their options after that. Their intentions to move downtown became “in or around downtown,” and negotiations continued with North Kansas City and in Kansas.
“A couple of years ago, I think we misfired,” Sherman said. “Some things could have happened differently there. But, look, this was a much different situation. It really got, to me, very exciting when Don Hall -- in fact, I’ve told him this, but to make sure I heard him right, I had to stand up … because he said, ‘John, I’d like to think about talking to you about reimagining Crown Center.’
“We have a shared vision of what we can build here beyond the baseball.”
Hall’s family owns Hallmark, the greeting card company founded in 1910 by Hall’s grandfather, J.C. Hall. The business has expanded worldwide but still remains headquartered in Kansas City.
“I cannot help but reflect on the fact that my grandfather hopped off that train when he was 18 years old to build a business here, only because he had heard people talk about the Kansas City spirit,” Hall said. “… He believed that when you invest in people and place, the return is measured by what you do to make the Kansas City spirit more vibrant for everyone in the community. That same belief is demonstrated by John Sherman’s leadership today.”
When the Royals began as a franchise in 1969, Kauffman turned to Hallmark artists to create a logo for the club. Artist Shannon Manning won the competition among his colleagues, what’s now known as the traditional Royals logo with the gold crown on top.
With this new plan, the Royals are making sure the crown stays in Kansas City.
“When a new Royals stadium opens here at Crown Center,” Hall said, “the crown will return to the very neighborhood that it was created.”