As stadium tax vote looms for Royals, Chiefs, answers are in eye of the beholders

On the campaign trail with Election Day looming Tuesday, April 2, Royals owner John Sherman in the last few days attended an event at 18th and Vine and met with union labor. He spoke with people in the Crossroads Arts District, visited churches on Kansas City’s East Side and canvassed door to door in south Kansas City.

Sherman primarily has been in perpetual motion to galvanize support for a 3/8th-cent sales tax extension of 40 years. The tax would help fund a new stadium for the Royals in the East Crossroads and upgrades at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs.

But Sherman said he also wanted to keep gaining perspective on how people feel about the initiative. And he got a dose of what he suggested is a microcosm of the conflicting sentiments — and a sampling of why the outcome of this momentous vote is hard to predict — at one house in particular.

The man who answered the door wearing a Fenway Park T-shirt recognized Sherman and promptly thanked him for signing emerging star Bobby Witt Jr. to a lucrative long-term contract.

“‘This guy’s a yes,’” Sherman supposed.

Then the man’s wife entered the room. And while she was a “yes,” too, it came with a “begrudging” caveat.

Since that could easily be, or become, a no, Sherman asked her to elaborate on her misgivings.

Some of it, he recalled her saying, was about parking. Some was worrying about people she knew in the Crossroads and displacement of small businesses.

In her case, Sherman said, the mixed feelings were eclipsed by an abiding sense of “I want the teams to be here.”

So even as Sherman said in an interview with The Star on Wednesday that he is overwhelmed by the support he has heard for the stadium and surrounding district, he also is keenly aware of resistance.

He’s heard it all, he figures.

About the parking anxiety and potential disjointing of the Crossroads. That he and his ownership group don’t need the money, and that East Village would have been a better site. That this feels rushed.

The resentment of the inherent threat in the very name of The Committee to Keep the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County.

Sherman responded to questions about these matters, some more expansively than others, and we’ll come back to those answers.

But all of that and more — including the ongoing mystery of what the city and state’s contributions would be and questions about how to measure and enforce pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars in community benefits — makes handicapping the prospects of Jackson County Question 1 a confounding matter.

A Rorschach Test

That makes this a Rorschach Test of sorts over what is most real and relevant when it comes to the most likely benefits and consequences of this endeavor: an initiative that’s been touted as transformative but also one that has been protested by, among others, activists on behalf of the underserved and musicians looking out for the Crossroads.

And what to believe or not has been made all the more hazy by a process featuring notable glitches, including the Royals last year announcing two site finalists and then months later deciding on neither.

It’s also been marked by the curious sideshow squabbling with Jackson County executive Frank White, who was part of the construction crew that built what became known as Kauffman Stadium before he went on to be one of just two players whose numbers were retired by the Royals.

White, still a dissenting voice, said he vetoed the ballot initiative because he was looking out for taxpayers. The “YesOn1JacksonCo” X (Twitter) account has portrayed him as “an unpopular and desperate politician,” and the Royals have considered him an obstructionist in negotiations.

Small wonder, then, if you’re still trying to figure out how to vote with so much to parse and reconcile.

That starts with the most obvious dilemma for any voter:

The Chiefs want to stay put for an estimated $800 million makeover, to which they’ve said they’ll contribute $300 million; the Royals want to leave their longtime home — still beloved by many who don’t buy that it’s not viable going forward — for a new site.

(That’s why we’re focused here on the proposed revolutionary change for the Royals, with the Chiefs staying in place).

Voting on entirely different concepts in one ballot, gridlock is a given if you favor one idea but not the other … and what’s the tiebreaker?

Then there’s the broader implications of who this project should be helping most.

It’s easy to embrace the objectionability of public money being applied that could be better spent on profound community needs than what might be considered luxuries. Especially when such concerns are further raised by The Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition as recently as Monday, when it called the Royals’ new community benefits agreement a “sham.”

Meanwhile, the Chiefs and Royals want you to think of it their way: You just keep spending the same amount you have for years to effectively sponsor them — and you should trust them to make good on their stated intentions to invest back through CBAs and concessions and commitments made in the leases signed on Wednesday.

And, bonus, you can put to rest the strong-arming posturing that one or both might move from Jackson County if they don’t get their way.

If you’re undecided like me, it’s tempting to vote against it just because of that intimidation approach alone.

But much as you might hate to cave to that crass theme — and who wants to give these teams carte blanche? — is it better to just hold your nose and do it … or perhaps be cutting off your nose to spite your face and not?

Both can be true

While some see Sherman as a polarizing figure, he might be better understood as standing for two things at once: a shrewd businessman with an admirable civic and philanthropic record that has demonstrated his dedication to Kansas City.

So it might most logically be surmised that he seeks a win-win that also would enhance revenue for the small-market Royals to better compete within baseball’s absurdly skewed competitive financial structure.

But even if you accept this as Sherman’s mindset, that intent hasn’t always equated to execution so far in this Royals operation.

So you could as easily interpret their adjustment Wednesday to a design change that would keep Oak Street open rather than closed (as it was originally described) as a promising willingness to compromise. Or you could see it as a reflection of a process still in flux.

And when it comes to the proposed site, it’s hard not to worry that this could ruin the Crossroads’ distinct cultural and arts vibe — a fear shared by more than a dozen constituents during a public hearing with Jackson County legislators on March 11.

But over the longer haul, after what would surely be a perilous period for many adjacent businesses through years of construction, this venture could catalyze everything around it and dynamically connect with the Power & Light District and T-Mobile Center.

Especially via a proposed pedestrian bridge over Interstate 670.

In the Royals’ renderings, the bridge runs over a three-block extension of the in-the-works four-block south loop freeway. That’s an intriguing flourish.

But it’s also one that the Royals haven’t committed to paying for — a point that gets to the crux of the matter in another way.

Do you believe in believe?

With a number of such details remaining to be accounted for, it’s hard to dispute the reasons to vote no ... and a leap of faith may be required if inclined to vote yes.

Or as Ted Lasso, also known as Kansas City’s Jason Sudeikis, might put it: Do you believe in believe?

No doubt that’s how it’s seen by Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick, whose institution Sherman has long supported and says he intends to engage with more through this project.

“This is bold. But in that boldness comes transformation,” Kendrick told me after the Royals released their renderings of the site last month. “And I know that sometimes people are reluctant because they get a little afraid. You can’t be.

“If you’re afraid, you stay stagnant. And this city’s on the move.”

Over the generations, when it comes to voting to support sports stadiums or arenas, per the research of The Star’s Blair Kerkhoff, Jackson County taxpayers largely have seen it as Kendrick does.

And sports fan or not, for or against subsidizing their operations, there’s no denying that Lamar Hunt moving his football franchise here from Dallas in 1963 and Ewing Kauffman launching the Royals in the late 1960s were imperative in the growth and modern identity of Kansas City — now more than ever, with the advent of Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs winning three of the last five Super Bowls.

“I think about all the things that we wouldn’t have today” without the franchises here, Sherman said.

Beyond the fact Sherman’s first date with his future wife, Marny, was at The K, he noted the Royals’ four World Series appearances and the five straight AFC Championship games the Chiefs recently hosted and major concerts at Arrowhead — because of which KC is preparing for one of the most significant events in its history, as a host for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

All of that, Sherman said, “has transformed our city. I think sometimes we don’t think about that.”

‘This is my hometown’

Entering the final days of this campaign, Sherman and his top administrators and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt and president Mark Donovan aren’t thinking about much else than the stretch run.

That was amplified Wednesday by the signing of leases that the teams say ultimately will make for concessions to Jackson County of more than $200 million: $80 million to $100 million in insurance costs and $140 million from the tax levy.

Just the same, Sherman well knows that this race is tight as he considered some of the questions he hears most.

When it comes to the Crossroads, where the Royals say they are in the process of negotiating, working to be good neighbors and offering various forms of support, he regrets they weren’t “out ahead further” on the timing of the site selection and announcement, which he believes came off as “abrupt and disruptive” to the Crossroads constituents.

While the implication is that the timing got bogged down by negotiations, or lack thereof, with White, it bears mention that the Royals imposed their own deadline on all of this.

Asked to clarify why the Crossroads site ultimately superseded the East Village site, Sherman said the key was that the area would take better advantage of existing assets (including proximity to the streetcar) to energize the area, and that it would displace far fewer residents.

He’d always found the Crossroads site appealing, he added, but as the process “took longer than we initially had hoped … some creative people in political leadership and real estate helped us kind of see the things we can do.”

When I asked about the switch in emphasis from revitalizing downtown to the current “you better or else” tone, his answer suggested that was attributable to the political strategists the Royals and Chiefs have hired.

“Somebody smarter than me finds that is a message that resonates,” he said. “But I answer that question with, ‘This is my hometown.’ …

“So I’m not thinking … about going anywhere. I’m thinking about, ‘Let’s get this thing done next Tuesday,’ so we can go to the next step and that both these teams will stay here.”

If the vote should fail, Donovan has said the Chiefs will entertain all options in or out of Jackson County — the inference being that the state of Kansas waits in the wings.

The Royals’ stance is that they will not play at Kauffman Stadium after 2031.

When they began their listening tour in December 2022, Sherman was asked at the Plexpod Westport Commons if he could “go on record tonight making a solemn promise that the Royals will remain in Kansas City, Missouri.”

“We can do that,” he replied.

When I asked him Wednesday if he could still say the same thing now, he said, “I’m working 24/7 right now to try to make that happen.”

Another point left open to interpretation in a movement conspicuous with them — at least until Tuesday.