John Sherman still has 10 years left on his present stadium lease.
Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman has confirmed he is looking into moving his franchise to downtown Kansas City. This story started a couple years ago. In 2019, a national real estate company had the location picked out for Sherman’s business, Kansas City’s East Village district. The Kansas City Royals stadium opened in 1973 and underwent a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of extensive renovations between 2006 and 2010. There was some push to move the baseball business downtown in 2004 and 2005 when it was decided that the then three-decades old facility was too ancient to be useful. Eventually Jackson County, Missouri did put together a deal with Royals ownership and the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs ownership group to fix up the baseball and football stadiums which are side by side in the Truman Sports Complex and presented it to voters.
On April 4th, 2006, Jackson County, Missouri voters approved a 0.375% sales tax increase to fund plans to renovate the Truman Sports Complex. Voters said no to an old idea proposed by Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt in the 1960s to build a rolling roof that could be used in bad weather at the baseball park or the football field. It was easily defeated at the polls. The sales tax hike that allowed for the renovations ends in 2031. There are ten years that remain on the Royals-Jackson County lease. That might seem like a long time but there is one thing that keeps reoccurring in the stadium and/or arena game. Owners try to get ahead and pitch the idea of getting a new stadium long before a lease is done. Sherman is doing that. In Sherman’s world 2032 is not too far away. Finding money to build a stadium takes a long time.
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