Royals announce plans for new stadium just south of downtown Kansas City
The Kansas City Royals officially have a site for a new stadium.
The team announced Wednesday that it will be building a nearly $2 billion stadium in Crown Center, just south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The announcement comes after a years-long search for Kauffman Stadium’s replacement and after Jackson County, Missouri, voters rejected a sales tax that would have funded a new Royals stadium at a different site.
Crown Center — the site of Hallmark’s headquarters — is just blocks from downtown Kansas City and has been a popular retail and entertainment space in Kansas City for decades. A week ago, the Kansas City Council approved a $600 million funding package for the stadium at a park adjacent to Crown Center.
“Our founder Ewing Kauffman wanted the Royals to be Kansas City’s forever, and he wanted the team to benefit his hometown as much as possible,” Royals owner John Sherman said in a statement. “Joining Hallmark with this project achieves both and extends the Hall family’s critical legacy of helping Kansas City grow.”
The Royals’ move comes months after the Kansas City Chiefs announced they will be moving from Arrowhead Stadium to a $3 billion domed stadium in Kansas City, Kansas, ahead of the 2031 season.
The initial price tag for the Royals’ new stadium and the mixed-use developments surrounding the ballpark is also roughly $3 billion. Roughly two-thirds of that funding will come from the Royals and other private money. The rest will be via public funds from the city and state.
Arrowhead and Kauffman are located side-by-side in the Truman Sports Complex, a Jackson County-owned site on the east side of Kansas City, Missouri. Arrowhead opened in 1972, and Kauffman opened a year later in 1973. The teams’ leases at their respective stadiums run through the 2030 seasons.
Before moving to Kauffman Stadium, the Royals played their first four seasons at Municipal Stadium just southeast of downtown.
The April 2024 vote for the sales tax would have also funded renovations to Arrowhead Stadium to keep the Chiefs at their current home. Jackson County voters voted 58% to 42% against the sales tax.
That put the Chiefs on the path to negotiating with the state of Kansas for their new stadium and left the Royals without an immediately obvious site for a new stadium. The team looked at options in North Kansas City, a separate municipality just north of downtown, and in Kansas at a different site than the Chiefs’ new stadium before it became clear that the most viable site was the Crown Center area.
Kauffman Stadium is currently the fifth-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball behind Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium. The next-oldest stadium in MLB is Toronto’s Rogers Centre, which opened in 1989.
