The Royals pledged a robust stadium community benefits agreement. But where is it?

The Royals first advertised a vision of downtown baseball 15 months ago. On that night, majority owner John Sherman introduced the project with an 11-minute speech that frequently hung on one word.

Community.

He used the term 21 times in the 11 minutes, and even when the speaker changed to another Royals employee on stage, the message remained.

A community benefits agreement (CBA), they promised, would be robust in nature, with an intention to “uplift our community and its needs.”

Some 15 months have passed, and, well, where is it?

We’re inside of four weeks before an April 2 vote in Jackson County on a 40-year sales tax to fund stadium projects for the Chiefs and Royals. And while a revved-up campaign has concentrated on a message to keep the teams in Jackson County, it also continues to reference a “fair” CBA in social media posts.

What CBA?

Is it too much to ask that if a CBA is part of the method of persuasion, we get to see it?

The Royals, and Chiefs too here, have talked plenty about those agreements, but they’ve yet to produce them, and some say they’re not all that close to finalizing them. Several involved with the ongoing CBA talks, in fact, are wondering — nay, worried — there won’t be anything to present to voters by April 2.

Wouldn’t that be something?

The two teams say they’re still committed to a strong CBA — but voters deserve to know the full scope of the community benefit before committing hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. And that timeline, for what should be a prerequisite, is running short. It is called a community benefits package, after all, because it’s the part of the project that most evidently, you know, benefits the community. Even those who do not care to attend games or cannot afford to attend games.

That’s not just a pillar of what I believe voters deserve, but also a consistent pillar of the Royals’ own messaging for 15 months (and counting). In the initial stop of the listening tour, Sherman remarked, “We are asking you to hold us accountable to deliver benefits on your behalf as a result of making an investment in us.”

Well, let’s.

This column, in that case, is just a reminder that Sherman had a pretty good point that day. It’s the essence of building a new downtown ballpark — the broader benefit to the community — and that essence should be reliant on specifics, not just trust. The next three-plus weeks need to be driven by urgency to supply the former.

The Chiefs say they are intent on providing a better deal than their “fair share” agreement baked into the 2006 lease. Great.

And the Royals are still making the same point Sherman made in December 2022. In a statement, they said, in part, “We have consistently and publicly stated that workforce housing, diverse workforce, and helping lift Kansas City’s underserved communities are important parts of our project, and align with demonstrated community efforts of our team and ownership group.”

That sounds great, too. Like many other aspects of the proposal, though, it comes down to the details. And also like many other aspects of the proposal, the details remain unsettled and tied up in talks, leaving those involved with a degree of healthy skepticism and the rest of us locked in a mystery about the particulars.

The Royals and Chiefs are not out of time to hammer out details before the vote. They could still make this happen. Here’s hoping they do, because a recent study supported that taxpayer-funded stadiums with entertainment districts, like the Royals plan, can have a positive impact on workers — if there’s a strong CBA that is “transparent and enforceable.”

The past 451 days — since the opening night of the Royals tour — haven’t been enough to produce anything substantive, and they have just 23 days remaining to reform a process that’s been defined more by its delays than its progress.

It’s a time crunch of their own making. Labor, housing and advocacy groups have, for more than a year now, focused acutely on a separate CBA with the Royals, and while they have expressed gratitude for a seat at the table, noting they don’t always receive one, they are frustrated by a slow pace.

The Royals’ proposal, unlike the Chiefs, includes a new stadium in a new location placed in the heart of the city and surrounded by a new entertainment district that could include a new residential build. It requires displacing current businesses in the East Crossroads. The proposed entertainment district, on which team ownership plans to spend $1 billion, would bring new jobs.

The potential for a strong CBA package, therefore, pivots on the Royals’ project — on the hiring process for jobs in the stadium and the district, on the wages for those jobs, on the affordable housing mechanisms, and on a lot more.

I spoke to several people involved or familiar with the ongoing CBA negotiations — some of them concentrated solely on the talks with the Royals — and their observations carry a striking consistency.

They perceive a lack of urgency and, in turn, a lack of notable progress.

“Their effort at the table has been telling,” said Terrence Wise, leader of Stand Up KC, of talks with the Royals. “The negotiations aren’t going at their best. I’ll just be honest. And I think that’s totally on the Royals.”

“If we’re going by history here, there’s no reason to be confident (the conversations) are going to actually result in anything, because we haven’t gotten anything from them,” said Gina Chiala, an attorney and the executive director for Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom. “The ball is in their court, and they’ve been moving slowly and not in a serious manner.”

Wise and Chiala are part of The Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition, comprised of labor and housing groups across the city. They approached the Royals more than a year ago to ignite the conversation, with a list of demands that included affordable housing, living wage floors and the guarantee of union jobs after the completion of the stadium and surrounding entertainment district, not strictly during its construction. (Some construction unions have voiced their support of the new builds.)

If you’ve seen that coalition’s demands, you already know they’re not cheap. They’ve sought a combined $100 million up front for an affordable housing fund from the two teams, and $5 million each over the lifetime of the proposed 40-year sales. That’s a lot. But they’ve also sought securities the Milwaukee Bucks provided in a 2016 CBA, signed assurances that include hiring from zip codes most adversely affected by unemployment and higher minimum wages. (It is $15 per hour in the Bucks’ district as of last year.)

The coalition sent the Royals their demands in a full proposal, and they said the Royals promised to deliver a counterproposal by Feb. 27. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Royals missed that self-imposed deadline. They’ve still yet to send back a counter specific to the labor and housing coalition, Chiala said.

But — and I’ll warn in advance this is where the process gets confusing — the Royals are basically running on multiple treadmills at once. They are engaging in a number of conversations on parallel tracks, taking part in meetings with separate committees that included the Crossroads District, along with another larger group (the Community Benefits Coalition) that includes the Chiefs, that previously-mentioned housing and labor group, other interest groups and three members of the Jackson County legislature.

The Chiefs are taking part in the broader Community Benefits Coalition, which has received one counterproposal from each team, though they invoked a similar response.

“I would say what they’ve offered has not been catalytic or dramatic or bold,” said Manny Abarca, a Jackson County legislator seated at the table. “Their proposal is basically what they’re doing now, which I really can’t even quantify.”

Look, I understand how negotiations work. The best offers do not arrive out of the gate. The coalitions are shooting high. There is a back-and-forth nature to negotiations.

But that’s part of the point here. There’s been a lot put forth. Not much coming back.

The ballot awaits in 23 days.

Abarca is one of three county legislators, along with DaRon McGee and Donna Peyton, taking part in the Community Benefit Coalition that includes talks with both the Chiefs and Royals.

That coalition, coordinated by Gwendolyn Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, sent back another proposal on Thursday, I’m told. Grant did not reply to a message seeking comment on the negotiations but previously expressed frustration to The Star’s Mike Hendricks that anyone would leak aspects of the proposals before an agreement is reached.

“It makes it difficult when everybody’s got these agendas, and playing all these different angles,” she said then, a week ago.

There are several different interest groups seated on the same side. In the end, yes, it will be difficult to find an agreement that pleases everyone equally.

But what was once an ally to the teams, particularly the Royals, as they attempt to figure that out is now an opponent.

Time.

The Good Jobs Coalition had been practically begging the Royals to negotiate more than a year ago, but were told it was premature to exchange proposals because the team had not yet picked a site. Ahem.

It was over a year ago, for example, that they supplied the Royals a sample framework of a CBA, that example from the Milwaukee Bucks’ project in 2016. And yet as recently as last month, they said, a member on the Royals team said she was not familiar with that agreement.

“We see the delay strategy,” Wise said. “We’ve been sharing information at the table. We’re less than a month from going to the ballot box. Folks can look at that easily from the outside and be like, ‘What’s going on here?’ Me, being in the bargaining committee, I see the same thing at the table.”

In the statement provided, the Royals did mention both the Bucks agreement and the CBA that accompanied Kansas City’s new airport terminal as guiding posts.

“We have appreciated the opportunity to work with a wide range of leaders in our community toward a common goal, which is to create a strong Community Benefits Agreement. We have been consistent and genuine in saying a strong CBA is good for our community and the project and see previous CBAs locally (like the new airport terminal) and nationally (like the Milwaukee Bucks) as templates to build upon,” the team’s statement read.

Those deals are not simple. They each entail complexities. It’s why some believe reaching an agreement before April 2 is a particularly tall task.

The labor and housing coalition has actually requested something in place earlier, by March 19, when they plan to hold “a day of action.” It’s intentionally vague, for now, because they don’t know what kind of action it will be — a day to “celebrate the community benefits agreement that we’ve got in place that’s ready to be signed, or a day to voice our displeasure,” Wise said.

Could that displeasure be enough to sway a vote? Those inside the coalition are insistent they can make things difficult.

“We’re willing to rise up to meet them where they are and get something negotiated if they want to get something negotiated — even though we don’t like this timeline,” Chiala said. “We are people who push to win. We’ll stay up all night long if they want to try to negotiate something.”