Why I’ll Vote No on a Downtown Ballpark

Let’s start here: I love baseball, have been and will continue to be a Kansas City Royals and Chiefs fan, but I’m still going to vote no on the downtown ballpark proposal for a variety of reasons, starting with their poorly thought-out campaign to convince me to vote yes.

It’s hard to keep track of the number of mistakes the teams have made while presenting their proposal, but having nothing better to do this morning and way too much caffeine in my system, I’ll give it a shot.

Bad Concrete

When the Royals suggested that Kauffman Stadium was falling down because it had “cancer of the concrete” a number of people (including me and probably you) asked how is that possibly possible because Arrowhead was built at the same time and the Chiefs seem to be happy to keep renovating and playing there.

And while we’re on the subject of stadium longevity, how do they keep playing games in Fenway Park and Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium, all of which were built about the same time they discovered fire.

Fenway opened the same year the Titanic sank – 1912 – yet somehow they’re still playing ballgames there and it’s one the most popular ballparks in the major leagues so it seems possible to keep renovating and upgrading a ballpark if you really want to.

In a quote he may be regretting, a Chiefs executive explained the difference in stadiums by saying: “One team got a good batch of concrete, and one team didn’t.”

Apparently the hole he was digging wasn’t quite deep enough, so he added: “There are some real issues with their concrete. We know that because we’ve seen both studies.”

If someone says there’s a study that proves Bigfoot actually exists and is running for governor of Idaho on the Republican ticket and is currently six points ahead in the polls, you might get inquisitive and say you wouldn’t mind taking a gander at that study, but according to the following article, county officials haven’t seen the study and the Royals declined to release the study when the Kansas City Star requested it last year.

So proponents say they’ve got lots of proof, but last I heard, seem reluctant to show it to anybody.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politicsgovernment/article286240450.html#storylink=cpy

The Sunday Star laid out all the issues and bad concrete wasn’t even mentioned. The teams have pretty much quit making that “cancer of the concrete” argument, so if that was bullshit – and the original reason they needed to move – now why are we talking about building a new ballpark?

Because the team owner wants one?

Displacing Businesses

When reporters identify sources with terms like “team official” or “industry spokesperson” that’s because the source didn’t want his or her name attached to what they were about to say and early in the process a Kansas City Star story used this quote:

“A team official said: “We are not wanting to be in the business of displacing businesses and residents and we don’t envision that to be part of this project.”

Look for the weasel words in that sentence and they’re not hard to identify.

The Royals might not “want” to displace businesses and residents or “envision” that to be part of their project, neither of which rules out it happening. When I read that quote I wondered how they could build a downtown ballpark and not displace what’s already there and as you might suspect, they can’t.

Now here’s a story about the businesses and residents that will be displaced:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article285440352.html

To build the downtown stadium, they need to flatten about six square blocks which might be more damage than Godzilla did in Tokyo. (Clearly Godzilla should have claimed he was knocking down all those buildings so they could build a new ballpark for the Tokyo Giants and then asked for some tax breaks.)

Just in case you’re still hoping this wasn’t decided by throwing darts at a map: let’s not forget that last year the Royals announced that after a lot of consideration they were down to two sites and then didn’t pick either one. (And I’d like to thank the Star’s Vahe Gregorian for reminding me of that.)

According to yet another Kansas City Star article, building the downtown ballpark would take properties valued at $33 million off the tax rolls and the Royals have made some vague promises to help those businesses out, but last I heard haven’t explained exactly what that means.

And speaking of vague promises…

The Community Benefits Agreement

According to yet another Kansas City Star article (I’m really getting my money’s worth out of my subscription) the Royals and Chiefs announced a set of agreements they said would contribute a combined $226 million over the next 40 years toward what the article calls “vaguely defined social and economic causes” if Jackson County voters approve their proposal.

The teams shared “broad outlines” but not the actual documents and didn’t respond to the Star’s request to see them. 

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article286925405.html

The teams called the CBA “historic” which might in fact be accurate, but keep in mind so was The Great Train Robbery.

New Lease Agreements

One of the major criticisms of the proposal was that the Royals and Chiefs hadn’t signed new lease agreements, which meant the taxpayers would be committed for the next 40 years and the teams wouldn’t.

In what looks like a last-minute PR Hail Mary, the teams signed brand new lease agreements last week, but once again failed to provide key details and here’s a story about that:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article287138635.html#campaignName=kansascity_fromthenewsroom_newsletter

Also…

At the last minute the Royals changed the ballpark district design to keep Oak Street open and while I think they think all this last-minute scrambling around will reassure voters, for me it does the opposite because it really seems like they should have dealt with all these issues long before now.

After two years of talking about this, way too many things have not been spelled out and the vote’s tomorrow so it’s like signing a blank contract and letting somebody else fill in the details later.

No New Taxes

The teams are also claiming that there will be “no new taxes” which is another set of weasel words because in reality Question 1 would repeal an existing tax and replace it with another tax that would extend until approximately the 12^th of Never or the Second Coming of Jesus, whichever happens first. (I’m betting on the 12^th of Never, but if it’s Jesus, don’t tell him I said that.)

Here’s a question:

If you thought you were making the last payments on the loan that financed your house or your car or that new set of boobs you bought for your second wife before she ran off with her tennis instructor, but the bank said even though you’ve paid off your existing loan, we’d like to replace it with another loan, so just keep sending us money every month because it would be “no new payment” would you accept that logic?

The fact that they’re making a misleading claim based on a flimsy technicality doesn’t make me trust their other vague promises.

Downtown Parking

According to an article on the Kansas City Star website: the Royals have also claimed there are 40,000 parking spots in the “Greater Downtown Area” within a 20-minute walk of the new proposed ballpark, but — even if true — a 20-minute walk at 11 PM through a sketchy neighborhood doesn’t sound all that enticing.

And according to the same article, there are only 9,000 existing multi-use parking spots within a 10-minute walk of the new ballpark, compared to 26,000 parking spots at Kauffman Stadium, but the Royals claim they only need 9,000 parking spots for a 35,000 seat ballpark.

Having visited a number of downtown stadiums I can tell you they tend to be really cool places to watch ballgames, but parking and traffic are often a nightmare.

That’s because there’s not enough parking and the people who own downtown parking lots don’t mind gouging the crap out of fans and downtown street layouts aren’t designed to move 35,000 people all trying to leave the same place at once and it’s hard enough to negotiate downtown Kansas City now.

Despite assurances that there’s enough parking to accommodate Patton’s Third Army within an easy hike of the new ballpark’s proposed location, I trust those assurances about as much as I do the estimates on how much money and how many jobs a new ballpark will generate. (More on that before we’re through.)

But first…

While We’re On the Subject of Parking

We’ve got a brand new stadium for the women’s KC Current soccer team and the new stadium has 11,500 seats, but parking for just 2,000 cars, which won’t be a problem as long as you jam 5.75 people into each vehicle and have previous experience as a circus clown. 

The assumption behind the optimistic parking math is that a significant number of fans will arrive for games by public buses, shuttles from distant parking lots, ride-share services, bikes, wagon trains, camel caravans, skateboards, jet packs, hot air balloons, hang gliders, sky diving, pogo sticks and whatever that thing was on the Starship Enterprise.

A spokesperson for the people in charge of riverfront development described the trip from the Town of Kansas Bridge to the new soccer stadium as “a gorgeous walk” which, as I understand it, is the same thing Moses told the Israelites right before they set out for the Promised Land. 

When I explained all this to my son who lives 1,618 miles away in LA, he asked a good question: “What about tailgating?”

And added that half the reason any of his friends attend a sporting event is the chance to get shitfaced in the parking lot before the game which is highly recommended if your team’s going to keep setting franchise records for losses.

On so many levels you get the feeling that the kind of people who own teams don’t know jack shit about the kind of people who buy tickets to watch those teams and I’ve recently reached the conclusion that once a week team owners should be required by the U.S. Constitution to buy a ticket and sit with the fans while drinking $20 beers and see what they think of the experience.

Ultimatums: The Key to A Shitty Relationship

So we’ve seemingly got two choices:

1. Cave in to team owner demands and vote yes.

2. Risk losing the team and vote no.

In the excellent Daniel Woodrell novel Tomato Red, a white trash ex-convict gets in a fight at a country club and punches out a wealthy, plaid-pants, martini-swilling golfer, but then the country club janitor whips the ex-convict’s ass which leads to Woodrell’s all-too-accurate conclusion that poor people can’t beat rich people because rich people will just hire other desperate poor people to beat the crap out of the poor people they’re having problems with.

Despite all claims to the contrary, that’s how America actually works and if you don’t believe me, stage a sit-in and see who shows up to spray you with tear gas.

Which I bring up now because if Kansas City refuses to bend over forwards (which if you think about it, is a lot more accurate than the alternative) for the Kansas City Royals and build them a new ballpark, some other city might.

Once again, it’s rich people getting poor people to fight each other.

And Now Some Updates

Pretty much all the above was written before I went to Phoenix for spring training and since they stopped paying me to pay attention, I do it a lot less often. So upon returning to KC, I wondered if maybe the Royals and Chiefs got their shit together in my absence.

Turns out, not so much.

Here’s a recent story from the KC Star about the 26 thousand jobs the Royals claim the downtown ballpark project would generate, but the Star did its job and talked to two independent economists who called the claim “a bunch of hot air” using “completely made-up, concocted numbers” and pointed out that the Royals hired the consultant who supplied the imaginary numbers which is par for the sports franchise course.

Teams hire consultants to give them the numbers they’d like to quote and one of the Star’s independent economists called the consultants who provide those numbers: “Economic prostitutes.”

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article287074670.html#campaignName=kansascity_morning_newsletter

To be fair, I’m under the distinct impression that all prostitutes are economic prostitutes because they sure don’t do that shit for free, but that’s a different column so let’s move on (as quickly as possible) to the next article that says the Royals provided renderings of the new ballpark that shows five acres of park that the Royals don’t plan to pay for:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/development/article287147735.html

So it’s kinda like an architect showing you a drawing of the new house you’re building and there’s a roller coaster in the back yard and you say, “There’s enough money in our budget to build a backyard roller coaster?”

And the architect says, “No, but there’s nothing stopping you from building one and we thought adding one really spiffed up our drawings.”

And finally…

While I pay attention when the mood hits me (and apparently it doesn’t hit me nearly often enough)  former Star colleague Dave Helling keeps his eye on the local political ball and here’s what he recently had to say about the downtown ballpark proposal:

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article287002830.html

Just in case you didn’t read the article and odds are you didn’t: Dave called the proposal “half-baked” and “slipshod” and “amateurish” and a “disaster” and criticized the lack of planning and discussion that should have taken place long before the Royals ever proposed this thing publicly.

Dave also said the Royals and Chiefs have been arrogant, thinking they could throw this half-baked proposal out there and the rest of us would get in line and vote for it and made a big mistake by vaguely threatening to move the teams if we don’t give them what they want.

Dave also points out (and I’d totally forgotten this) that when the Bistate II stadium tax failed, Lamar Hunt and David Glass didn’t threaten to move their teams, they worked for another solution and got it two years later.

So a no vote doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker unless the teams want it to be; the teams could get their shit together and actually plan this stuff out and come up with a better proposal down the road and you’d think Kansas City sports fans have earned that second chance.

Conclusion

If the half-assed way the Royals and Chiefs have presented this proposal to the public is any indication, I wouldn’t feel confident about the teams’ execution of their half-assed proposal.

Bottom line: on far too many issues the teams are saying trust us and then giving us reason after reason not to.

Tomorrow, I’ll vote no.