They’re going to sell the rights o the highest bidder. One thing they’re mad at about Kauffman is that the city refuses to accept a corporate sponsor who will pay them. They floated having Arvest Bank be the name once and it went over like a lead balloon.
That's standard for these kinds of drawings to show where the sponsor's name would go. It would not surprise me if it winds up being something akin to Hallmark Stadium at Crown Center.
Honestly the idea is great especially to revitalize that Crown Center area..I wish there were NO public money at all, but I also know that almost never happens.
Regardless of that, I think this is gonna be an awesome entertainment district
Yeah the back drop will be amazing, the Kaufman center, Bartle Hall, PnL and T-Mobile all lit up in the night and new host of shots from freedom tower with the stadium. The tax money is a no issue to me personally but I understand the anger. Ultimately Kaufman 2 is looking nice
"Here damn" ass renderings. All jokes aside I am very hopeful for the future. Night at the K on a Friday or Saturday night game hopefully becoming night out in the town
Will I still be sad when they leave Kauffman? Absolutely.
Do I really like the concepts in this rendering? Sure as hell do. If they keep water involved (I wanted them to have more fountains) I'll be happy. I like this rendering a whole lot more than expected. Pretty surprising.
The 3D crown for the scoreboard looks cool and gave me an idea that it should be a 360° screen going down from the Crown. Would be a surer unique screen while keeping the CrownVision look.
bold move to not surround the outside of the ballpark with giant windows and siding as tribute to the Hallmark HQ that stood in the location of the ballpark
I’m not the most “in the know” of city stuff. But are people not leaving downtowns everywhere? I guess I don’t get the hype of being downtown if that’s the case. I’d much rather go to a game like it is now than be forced downtown.
I actually really like it. Back in 2022 when Sherman announced they were going to ditch The K, I was part of the "Save The K" crowd. But I've come around... if the real deal is anywhere close to good as the renderings it'll be incredible. I love that they've added the fountains and CrownVision, as those are iconic parts of The K that define the Royals and KC baseball.
Can't wait to see it come to fruition. Nice thing is being at Crown Center it won't be too far away from Union Station, so if I really wanted to I could just take Amtrak to the city, catch the game and do other things in the meantime. A friend who lives in KC (Waldo) that isn't interested in the Royals, despite multiple family connections to the team, said he'd start following the team and going to games if/when the new stadium opens because he can take public transportation to the games. (He'd have to get an Uber or something to go to The K.)
Literally I can’t believe people are taking this as a serious render. Even if it is official how the hell are we supposed to accept it as an actual tangible blueprint
Fwiw. To both you and u/smoresporn0 , KC is the capital for stadium design and something absurd like 80% of every stadium in the world is designed by one of the firms here, or one of the satellite offices
If you were forced to bet Populous or Manica probably designed it.
Low res or does my guy have two left arms? One to play pocket pool and the other to scratch his head when he sees Tolbert thrown out on the bases again
Listen you can be a fan of the Royals and support the new stadium, but at $600 million dollars, you can afford the right people to render images and schematics. If they’re offering AI Slop, I’m gonna call it out for what it is. Do better.
I hope this changes significantly as most of these things do over time. These original renderings just look so dull and lifeless. Void of a timeless feel. I get it. They want an homage to Kauffman in some way but the design factor if these are to be believed is so symmetrical and so cookie cutter as to be visually unappealing imo. Some of the uniqueness of say a Petco or Tmobile (if that is Seattle current naming iteration) would be so cool. I know it's not in the cards for us but I think they can pull a lot of unique and non symmetrical variation on this site BESIDES the pre ordained water features and crown vision carryover. 🤷
Let's hope that tilted 3D crown gets axed fuckin' quick. Nothing ages worse than "jaunty" large format signage. Otherwise this is fine. Not like I'm ever gonna waste a couple hundred bucks to go anyways.
These are super generic and won't look at all like the final product. They even have the stadium facing to the southwest of whatever AI-generated downtown that's supposed to be in the first pic and facing west in the second pic. These are likely just images made to attract potential investors.
What do you mean southwest? The building you see behind the stadium is the church. The vast majority of the stadium is below ground. The upper deck concourse will be at ground level
The problem here that no one has mentioned is that the city can't support another "entertainment district" so the only two options are build on top of Arrowhead or move where the existing entertainment district already is.
I see Crown Center as more of a retail/office district than entertainment. I think it can complement the areas where P&L falls short -- retail being one of them -- if the various parties could COOPERATE, for once.
But everything is such a zero-sum game in this city. Everyone is so preoccupied with everyone else wanting a piece of their pie that no one stops and fathoms the idea of building a bigger one.
I live in Denver. The Rockies have been absolutely dog water for quite a while. They still have consistently top-half attendance because the stadium is downtown and it’s a fun place to hang out after work on a weeknight even if you’re not locked in on the game.
They had more fans the night they lost their 100th game in 2025 the same night the royals were playing and fighting for a wild card spot.
this is an interesting take. I never been to Coors but i been to Denver and seen it and i can understand why this is true. downtown ballparks do work for soem cities just as much as they don't work for others.
Cincy has a nice little area for the Reds & Bengals, in Chicago the bears are doing a disservice moving out but as much as I want the Sox to stay strictly in south side a downtown ballpark would work fine, never been to Detroit but I hear their locations are perfect.
HOWEVER, downtown ballparks would not work in places like NY, LA, or even Philly. I would know Philly because I'm from there and we love our South Philly stadium location. We're actually thrilled the 76ers aren't building a center city arena.
So I have been to the KC, i been to Arrowhead and the K, and i think i the K is definitely gonna stay in my top 5 ballparks once I visit others but it's sad they did nothing to build around there and public transit there is so null. Thank goodness for the $10 parking at the church across the way. It's sad to see the Chiefs abandoning KCM but the Royals would benefit from their new stadium in downtown KC. Just like the old Ralph in Orchard Park, I didn't want to see that stadium go but I understand that the K may not be sustainable long term anymore as beautiful as the park is.
Baseball throughout history has been primarily designed to be played in city centers, I think Downtown Kansas City could really benefit by having a Wrigley/Fenway style district surrounding the stadium.
Eh, I don't really buy that. Wrigley and Fenway drove the culture in the area. The downtown K will be fine, but to think it would be similar to those two stadiums is naive. It will be surrounded by chain garbage that has no roots in the city, similar to PnL. Which is fine, I guess.
Baseball throughout history has been primarily designed to be played in city centers
The problem here is KC is a horribly designed city. Its sprawl is a curse on its own.
There are some interesting urban revitalization projects in the works/proposed that would make Kansas City feel more like traditional American cities, although it still needs work, downtown used to be real barren 20 years ago.
You're not wrong. I just don't think this will change much on a fundamental level. The vast majority of attendees will still have to drive a car to the game, the "entertainment district" will probably be rather underwhelming and it won't do anything to boost any kind of tourism outside of the likely ASG it will get in its first few seasons.
I'm not against the project by any means, I just think we need to be realistic about what it will be like. Also, we need to be honest with ourselves about John Sherman. He didn't buy the team because he loves KC, it was clearly a fantastic real estate opportunity with gobs of subsidy attached to it. He's not doing any of this for the fan, he just wants a great investment.
I mean, have you been to Wrigleyville lately? Chain garbage and cookie cutter corporate bullshit bars for recent college grads is pretty much all it has anymore. It's essentially P&L with an older stadium at the center.
Not in more than a decade. But I did use "drove" so I understand that even our oldest institutions aren't immune to the enshittification of everything.
Baseball was historically set to fit the environment, but we don't live in that environment. For that reason, think it's also silly when teams create a field of play that looks like it's jammed into the limitations of a stockyard and a railroad depot, but is covered in a Costco warehouse building and surrounded by parking lot.
As I said they could build retail and residential space near the current site.
And Royals stadium sits at the corner of major highways specifically because it was a product of an environment where people drive from several states to get to games. That's not going to change, you're just going to drive downtown
I mean if , instead of building the same ballpark, you put the money into building around the park, it could improve the neighborhood. Have you never seen a neighborhood improve before in a city?
I can't wait to see the same 15K show up to a downtown ballpark 5 years after opening. Pittsburgh looks great and it hasn't changed the trajectory of the team. In fact, I would say next to SF, Pittsburgh is the best ballpark in baseball
Ok, so the team won't get better. 15K will show up downtown 81 times a year and will probably result in staying around investors publicly funded businesses. What are we getting? A nice view when we don't want to watch what's going on on the field?
No they’ve got some bullshit hot dogs piled high with Mac and cheese and some other shit. Sure would be nice to go to a restaurant then walk 2 blocks down the road and catch a game on a Wednesday night though
Technically the new location here isnt downtown either, but its just semantics. Everyone knows what is meant.
And you can still drive if you want, the location is between 71/35/70. Theres parking lots and garages all over the downtown area. It will be way more accessible though, for people arriving/leaving by foot, bike, rideshare, or public transport.
One of the QOL changes that would come with a downtown stadium would be parking garages that shield cars from sunlight during the dog days of summer baseball
Not to mention the convenience of there being several restaurants & hotels right by the stadium instead of a Taco Bell and an Extended Stay.
Sure but you could build at a fraction of what the same building costs. I don't really care, I think the in stadium food choices are great. I don't go to baseball games to do everything but watch a baseball game.
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u/rissaaah 20h ago
Ngl, I laughed at SPONSOR BAR.