Vote in this poll if you actually live in Jackson county.
We've all shared our opinions in the other thread. But who gives a shit what somebody in Platte County or Johnson County or Phoenix or NYC thinks. We're all just noise. [Reply]
About 12 hours before the polls opened, Royals chairman and CEO John Sherman made one final pitch for a Jackson County sales tax that would have sparked the team’s move to the East Crossroads and the Chiefs’ renovation of Arrowhead Stadium. “I would tell you, from my perspective,” Sherman said to a small audience, “this election is about hope.” It was. At one time. But a city big on hope rejected Tuesday a campaign built not on a grand future, but one that more recently embraced fear. In a landslide, Jackson County voters said no to Question 1, a proposal to extend a 3/8th-cent sales tax to help fund the stadiums. The final tally: 58% no, 42% yes. In the coming days, weeks and perhaps even months, you’ll hear that Jackson County rebuffed downtown baseball, or rebuffed the Chiefs’ and Royals’ respective futures within the county’s boundaries. Don’t buy it. The voters of Jackson County did not reject simply the concept of sending taxes to billionaires to fund shiny new objects. This is not a cozy fit into a national narrative. They rejected a haphazard, moving target of a campaign that asked voters to trust what would come after the vote rather than what had come before it.
In fact, this mess of a campaign, the Royals’ 16-month crusade for a sweeping change in particular, could be defined in two words: Trust us. In the absence of transparency, however, comes the absence of trust. The rebuke is not about something the majority of those in Jackson County don’t want. They’ve been quite comfortable with public money invested in stadiums for a half-century. This is about what they do want. About what they deserve. About what’s missing. The fine print. The full scope of the project. And you bet they’re entitled to it. That refers to one of the projects especially. The Royals initially promoted their proposal for a move downtown as a transformative change. But they offered only vague assurances about what that transformation might entail, whom it might affect or how it might affect them. Details, they said as recently as last week, were to be determined after Election Day. How could that be? That’s the root of the public repudiation. Kansas City, a town full of civic pride intertwined with these two teams, a town that defines the phrase fear of missing out — and a town that brags about its growth — is the town that just turned up its collective nose at a sales tax. And that’s even after it was told that would be the only way to keep its hometown teams. There are jokes about how willing Jackson County voters are to support new taxes. They just shook their heads at the things they hold most dear, consequences be damned.
That should be a message. When you don’t show your hand, people are rightfully inclined to question the cards you’re holding. That is not the fault of Jackson County, but rather mostly a Royals project whose plot became more difficult to follow than “Inception.” The Royals spent considerable energy telling us they were flirting with a new relationship in North Kansas City and Clay County, only to turn around and request renewal of their current relationship with Jackson County for another four decades — and then they, along with the Chiefs, threatened to leave for good if they weren’t accepted back with open arms. Quite presumptuous. They narrowed the location of their ballpark to two finalists, only to six months later announce another selection altogether, one that put them under a time crunch for details they could not deliver. And unlike the many self-imposed deadlines that came and went, they could not push this one back. They then tweaked that final location, the one in the East Crossroads at the site of the former Kansas City Star press pavilion. That happened all of six days ago, when they agreed to keep Oak Street open and meet a request that Mayor Quinton Lucas had made several weeks earlier. Some within the campaign complained about what they termed misinformation, a hot-button term befitting the conservative group that became heavily involved in the teams’ campaign. But this is an unequivocal fact: Among the many 11th-hour aspects of this ballot initiative, the teams were able to secure a public endorsement from Lucas only 72 hours before the polls opened.
The Royals’ and Chiefs’ proposals were set to affect more than 700,000 people in some form, and they would have affected some in a larger way. Yet, had Tuesday’s measure passed, a contingent of business owners in the Crossroads District would have woken up Wednesday morning uncertain of their future — both inside what the project is calling its “demolition zone” and on its perimeter. The Royals had promised to be “good neighbors,” another catchphrase that came without an answer to a key question: How? Or, rather: How exactly? Less than week ago, even after agreeing to keep Oak Street open, Sherman acknowledged he didn’t know what that meant for a surrounding entertainment district that he said the team isn’t really calling an entertainment district anymore. We still don’t have those details. Even those inclined to be trusting — I’ve maintained this was more about strategical errors than bad faith — were left without a consistent message or reasoning to latch onto. And they faced a vocal opposition, rooted in community groups consistent in messaging for years. That’s another lesson. In the end, voters were asked to chew on mystery meat. And instead they spit it back where it came from and said, Try that again.
Will they? I know you’re wondering about the full weight of the consequences that await now, the futures of the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County — or whether they’ll ever again attempt a joint ballot measure. I have some thoughts that will be more fully developed over the coming days, weeks and months. It will be an absorbing chain of events to follow, with more moving parts than a Royals proposal for a downtown ballpark. There are more than a few who believe an offer from Kansas is waiting, that Gov. Laura Kelly wouldn’t exactly be starting from scratch a plan to lure the Chiefs. We’ll see. There is less certainty with a Royals organization that just tried to sell the public on moving into the city, not another suburb away from it. They were asked that question late Tuesday. As Sherman and Chiefs team president Mark Donovan departed the stage at a muted J. Rieger & Co., at the hour in which they’d hoped to be celebrating in the East Bottoms, they ignored a question about the future of their teams in Jackson County as though they didn’t hear it. What we cannot ignore, however, are the reverberations of what Jackson County voters delivered in the present.
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
Austin is about 2 hours away from Houston and 3 hours away from Dallas.
A team in Austin would be awfully parasitic from an overall league health perspective. They're not likely adding new fans - they're just shuffling them around a bit (if at all - Dallas fans in Austin aren't going to become Austin fans over any sort of reasonable timeline).
Moreover, I have some family down there and Austin's really busting at the seems a bit. Their growth will almost have to plateau shortly or they're going to implode from a pure livability standpoint.
I don't think Austin's as obvious a candidate as you would think.
That's why I added "New Braunfels"....basically half way between San Antonio and Austin [Reply]
Originally Posted by Red Dawg:
How do you know this? You act like nobody ever moved a team due to money. Happened 3 times in the last 10 years. Our teams are now out there for business. No protection.
If they thought that halfassed proposal that didn't answer any questions would pass, that speaks to their incompetence or that they think the voting populace is rubes. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Chris Meck:
You guys are losing your minds for no reason.
Nobody is going anywhere.
Both teams will come back with probably separate proposals - and they should, and they should be separated. If it's not going to be one complex anymore, why should The Chiefs be tied to the boat anchor Royals?
The Chiefs renovation will almost surely pass. Nobody cares about a less than half a cent tax.
The Royals sunk this vote by being very, very stupid. Get a better plan that doesn't suck shit and it'll probably pass, too. East Village site probably would have passed easily. It was monumentally stupid to assume that The Chiefs would provide enough cover for them to do this.
Both of these teams did a terrible job of messaging through this thing, but I also think they both were clear in what they were going to do. If you wanted to keep Arrowhead this was the plan, this was the best they're going to do. Donovan pretty much said it again last night. I don't think they're coming back with another Arrowhead plan after all the toxic back and forth with Frank White. They have one the biggest sports brands in the world right now thanks to Mahomes and Taylor Swift. Clark can do pretty much anything he wants with this team and the NFL is basically a license to print money no matter what. You have no leverage. What's the reason to stay? They'll make more money with a new stadium in Kansas and have even more amenities for rich fans than they were going to have in the renovated Arrowhead.
I don't think either team is moving out of the region but last night was probably the end of the Truman Sports Complex.The Royals are not just Sherman it's an entire ownership group full of people who are all movers and shakers in KC. The Chiefs are the ones who have no real ties to Kansas City, and they have all the leverage though so I can see them both ending up in Kansas, or the Chiefs move first and then the Royals use that leverage to end up downtown or in Clay County or something. I do think the teams bungled this super hard but there's also quite a bit of overconfidence from some of the voters that they have more leverage than they do. [Reply]
Yeehaw boys. Them Jackson county residents get to save a buck fitty on an average grocery bill starting in 7 years. Thatll show those billionaires something.
About 12 hours before the polls opened, Royals chairman and CEO John Sherman made one final pitch for a Jackson County sales tax that would have sparked the team’s move to the East Crossroads and the Chiefs’ renovation of Arrowhead Stadium. “I would tell you, from my perspective,” Sherman said to a small audience, “this election is about hope.” It was. At one time. But a city big on hope rejected Tuesday a campaign built not on a grand future, but one that more recently embraced fear. In a landslide, Jackson County voters said no to Question 1, a proposal to extend a 3/8th-cent sales tax to help fund the stadiums. The final tally: 58% no, 42% yes. In the coming days, weeks and perhaps even months, you’ll hear that Jackson County rebuffed downtown baseball, or rebuffed the Chiefs’ and Royals’ respective futures within the county’s boundaries. Don’t buy it. The voters of Jackson County did not reject simply the concept of sending taxes to billionaires to fund shiny new objects. This is not a cozy fit into a national narrative. They rejected a haphazard, moving target of a campaign that asked voters to trust what would come after the vote rather than what had come before it.
In fact, this mess of a campaign, the Royals’ 16-month crusade for a sweeping change in particular, could be defined in two words: Trust us. In the absence of transparency, however, comes the absence of trust. The rebuke is not about something the majority of those in Jackson County don’t want. They’ve been quite comfortable with public money invested in stadiums for a half-century. This is about what they do want. About what they deserve. About what’s missing. The fine print. The full scope of the project. And you bet they’re entitled to it. That refers to one of the projects especially. The Royals initially promoted their proposal for a move downtown as a transformative change. But they offered only vague assurances about what that transformation might entail, whom it might affect or how it might affect them. Details, they said as recently as last week, were to be determined after Election Day. How could that be? That’s the root of the public repudiation. Kansas City, a town full of civic pride intertwined with these two teams, a town that defines the phrase fear of missing out — and a town that brags about its growth — is the town that just turned up its collective nose at a sales tax. And that’s even after it was told that would be the only way to keep its hometown teams. There are jokes about how willing Jackson County voters are to support new taxes. They just shook their heads at the things they hold most dear, consequences be damned.
That should be a message. When you don’t show your hand, people are rightfully inclined to question the cards you’re holding. That is not the fault of Jackson County, but rather mostly a Royals project whose plot became more difficult to follow than “Inception.” The Royals spent considerable energy telling us they were flirting with a new relationship in North Kansas City and Clay County, only to turn around and request renewal of their current relationship with Jackson County for another four decades — and then they, along with the Chiefs, threatened to leave for good if they weren’t accepted back with open arms. Quite presumptuous. They narrowed the location of their ballpark to two finalists, only to six months later announce another selection altogether, one that put them under a time crunch for details they could not deliver. And unlike the many self-imposed deadlines that came and went, they could not push this one back. They then tweaked that final location, the one in the East Crossroads at the site of the former Kansas City Star press pavilion. That happened all of six days ago, when they agreed to keep Oak Street open and meet a request that Mayor Quinton Lucas had made several weeks earlier. Some within the campaign complained about what they termed misinformation, a hot-button term befitting the conservative group that became heavily involved in the teams’ campaign. But this is an unequivocal fact: Among the many 11th-hour aspects of this ballot initiative, the teams were able to secure a public endorsement from Lucas only 72 hours before the polls opened.
The Royals’ and Chiefs’ proposals were set to affect more than 700,000 people in some form, and they would have affected some in a larger way. Yet, had Tuesday’s measure passed, a contingent of business owners in the Crossroads District would have woken up Wednesday morning uncertain of their future — both inside what the project is calling its “demolition zone” and on its perimeter. The Royals had promised to be “good neighbors,” another catchphrase that came without an answer to a key question: How? Or, rather: How exactly? Less than week ago, even after agreeing to keep Oak Street open, Sherman acknowledged he didn’t know what that meant for a surrounding entertainment district that he said the team isn’t really calling an entertainment district anymore. We still don’t have those details. Even those inclined to be trusting — I’ve maintained this was more about strategical errors than bad faith — were left without a consistent message or reasoning to latch onto. And they faced a vocal opposition, rooted in community groups consistent in messaging for years. That’s another lesson. In the end, voters were asked to chew on mystery meat. And instead they spit it back where it came from and said, Try that again.
Will they? I know you’re wondering about the full weight of the consequences that await now, the futures of the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County — or whether they’ll ever again attempt a joint ballot measure. I have some thoughts that will be more fully developed over the coming days, weeks and months. It will be an absorbing chain of events to follow, with more moving parts than a Royals proposal for a downtown ballpark. There are more than a few who believe an offer from Kansas is waiting, that Gov. Laura Kelly wouldn’t exactly be starting from scratch a plan to lure the Chiefs. We’ll see. There is less certainty with a Royals organization that just tried to sell the public on moving into the city, not another suburb away from it. They were asked that question late Tuesday. As Sherman and Chiefs team president Mark Donovan departed the stage at a muted J. Rieger & Co., at the hour in which they’d hoped to be celebrating in the East Bottoms, they ignored a question about the future of their teams in Jackson County as though they didn’t hear it. What we cannot ignore, however, are the reverberations of what Jackson County voters delivered in the present.
Does he get it? The more and more this is analyzed, including his article, it looks like the Chiefs wanted a divorce from the Royals and potentially the county. They Chiefs position gained a bunch of leverage last night... [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaFace:
Yeah, this wasn't a "close, but not quite" vote - it was a "hell no" vote. It takes time and effort (and money) to even put together the half-assed designs they came up with this time. If it seems like Arrowhead isn't the future, it's hard for me to imagine they'll be thrilled to come back to the table with Jackson County unless there really isn't any fire behind the smoke of Kansas being interested.
Ever contact a busy contractor and ask him to bid a small job?
I wanted my deck refurbished (not even rebuilt; swapping out rails and deck boards - shit I can do but don't want to) and got a bid from a guy for $50K. My wife asked if we should call him to negotiate.
I said "Nope - that's a 'fuck you bid'. That's him saying "I don't want this job, I have plenty of options around it with better margins. But if you'll pay me this absurd amount then I'll gladly take my crew of a bigger gig to do your piddly ass job with a 500% profit margin..."
It was by no means designed to elicit a counteroffer.
That's what this 'offer' from Clark was. And the voters recognized it. Clark made a 'fuck you bid' to the voters and the voters wisely gave him the bird right back... [Reply]
Originally Posted by IowaHawkeyeChief:
Does he get it? The more and more this is analyzed, including his article, it looks like the Chiefs wanted a divorce from the Royals and potentially the county. They Chiefs position gained a bunch of leverage last night...
It honestly feels to me like the Chiefs were reluctant to stay in the first place, but they felt like it would be horrible PR to just come out and say that. Now they can say, "We tried to stay at Arrowhead, but the public just didn't want it." [Reply]
The whole thing to me made no sense, the Chiefs are going to want a new stadium in 15-20 years so why are you wanting to do a reno now? The only way it makes sense is so they can say they didn't willingly abandon Arrowhead.
The Royals proposal just looked like they rushed everything together to the point that they couldn't even give you details. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaFace:
It honestly feels to me like the Chiefs were reluctant to stay in the first place, but they felt like it would be horrible PR to just come out and say that. Now they can say, "We tried to stay at Arrowhead, but the public just didn't want it."
Yep, anyone is foolish to think they, the Chiefs, didn't know where this vote was headed weeks ago. The feeble attempts and "plan" was half ass for a reason. [Reply]
Originally Posted by RunKC:
It will be hard for any city outside of KC to provide an opportunity that Legends KCK can.
And we know the Kansas side will pony up the money to bring the Chiefs over
Some see it, but others seem to be ignorant to it. KS has way more money than most realize. And they have been preparing for this moment. I posted earlier, but they have ~80M a year going directly to bringing a team to KS.
I think Clark has made up his mind. And it’s been made up for a while. The bread crumbs have been there.
Missouri will still have a chance to put up a fight, but I’m becoming more and more confident it will be a move to ks.
We will hear rumors about moving cities, but they will all be bluffs to get the $$ they want. For the chiefs specifically, I mean. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca:
The whole thing to me made no sense, the Chiefs are going to want a new stadium in 15-20 years so why are you wanting to do a reno now? The only way it makes sense is so they can say they didn't willingly abandon Arrowhead.
The Royals proposal just looked like they rushed everything together to the point that they couldn't even give you details.
If Arrowhead was in a good location for development now it could easily last another 50 years, but it's not. I still hope they manage to continue to play there. [Reply]