How will Royals manage parking for 38,000 fans in KC Crossroads? Architects detail plan

How will fans find parking if the Royals move to a stadium in the East Crossroads? It will start by downloading an app.

That’s according to parking and traffic plans the team promoted last week as part of their push to get voters to approve a 40-year, 3/8th-cent sales tax to help pay for a new ballpark and Arrowhead renovations.

The Royals hosted a press conference with Populous and Kimley-Horn, two developers with the proposed stadium, who say parking would mostly rely on what is already there: parking garages and surface lots.

The press conference comes after the Royals and Chiefs shared broad outlines of a community benefits agreement earlier in the week, which economists told the Star more closely resembled a press release than a legal document.

How would parking work at a new Royals stadium?

While parking spaces are privately owned in the area of the proposed stadium, the developers say they are working on a plan that would include using some of these spaces as prepaid parking zones, similar to how parking is at Kauffman Stadium.

Jeff McKerrow, a senior transportation engineer with Kimley-Horn, said an app similar to Park KC app could be developed so that fans could pre-purchase parking spots in a zone ahead of Royals games.

The Royals would be looking to negotiate rates with private lot owners, said Sarah Dempster, Populous senior architect. She said that they would also be working with the city to establish how many spots they are willing to sell for event days.

“Certain lot owners may prefer to say ‘No we are going to keep all of our spots, this is my private lot,’ and that is certainly one approach they could take,” Dempster said. “But I know the Royals are interested in having those conversations so their patrons are taken care of and we are able to guarantee a certain number of spots.”

They are also looking into creating an integrated operations center to monitor downtown traffic during game days, McKerrow said. The center would address traffic and parking needs when there are multiple events happening downtown and in the Crossroads, like a concert at the T-Mobile Center or the First Fridays every month.

An integrated operations center is used at other developments Kimley-Horn helped plan, like U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, where the Minnesota Vikings play.

“We’ve worked in other communities where we’ve developed a playbook,” McKerrow said. “If we have these different activities going on, we’re going to shift our traffic or parking management to adjust for those and plan for those moving forward.”

The plan would include the prepaid parking zones and protecting street parking and small parking lots for local businesses.

How many parking spots will fans need on gamedays?

McKerrow said the Royals will build 1,500 parking spots with the stadium for fans. He expects a typical ballgame to generate an additional 7,500 cars, which would park in one of the 40,000 parking spots within a 20-minute walk of the proposed ballpark location.

They plan for about 70% of fans to drive, 10% to take the streetcar or bus, 10% to use rideshare, and the other 10% to walk, bike or scooter to the stadium.

Depending on the day of the game, a slideshow shared at the conference showed how many spots would be needed for the planned 38,000-capacity stadium.

A weekday game would require at least 8,900 spaces, while a weekend game would require 8,300 spaces. Based on the developer’s study, they anticipate three fans per car attending weekday games, and 3.2 fans per car coming to a weekend game.

So, on a given night, the Royals could use anywhere between 6,800 and 7,400 parking spaces that are already built in the area, according to the presentation.

Do you have any more questions about the stadium vote?

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The Star’s Mike Hendricks contributed to this report