Vote Will Determine Fates of Kansas City Pro Sports Stadiums | Columbus Ohio Dump Trucks

Voters in Jackson County, Mo. will go to the polls April 2 on a proposal to extend a current 3/8^th-cent sales tax to help pay for demolishing and replacing 51-year-old Kauffman Stadium, home to the Kansas City Royals, and to fund the renovation of its neighbor, Arrowhead Stadium, where the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs play. 

Major League Baseball's Royals want to create a new $2billion park district in Kansas City’s Crossroads District. A new stadium would occupy the site of the former Kansas City Star building and would seat 34,000. It would feature an adjacent development with office, retail, apartments and a hotel. 

The Chiefs' plan, however, is for an $800-million renovation of Arrowhead Stadium including a turf-covered zone with tailgate areas and a covered entertainment center built on the current site of Kauffman Stadium, a new upper concourse connection bridge, new stadium amenities designed with VIP experiences in mind, retail spaces and restrooms, an access tunnel, three new pedestrian bridges, a new parking deck and expanded parking, also on the current site of Kauffman Stadium. The current stadium area is known for fans arriving hours before games and tailgating extensively on game days for both teams, including smoking Kansas City barbecue in both stadiums' parking lots.

Both teams support the sales tax extension. Mark Donovan, president of the Chiefs, said in a team-distributed interview the sales tax extension "is better for everybody and keeps the two teams in the region."

The Royals, who’ve played at Kauffman since 1973, assert that a new stadium is needed because Kauffman's concrete is deteriorating and can't be rehabilitated.

Earl Santee, senior principal at Populous, the Kansas City-based architecture/engineering firm hired to design both new stadiums known for its pro sports venue designs, said in a press conference that it belives it is no longer feasible to maintain Kauffman Stadium.

“I’ve been working at the K since the 1990s,” he said. “We’ve renovated it. We’ve maintained it. We’ve sustained it. But renovating the K going forward is just not feasible. It’s not realistic."

Populous is not, however, known for its foreniscengineering expertise and Santee said that Populous consulted with an independent structural engineer to evaluate the stadium but did not name the firm involved.

“[The forensic firm] came in and identified the first phase of what we call ASR… it causes the concrete to fail at some point. All that means is that in 40 years it may fail, but it is going to fail at some point so the ability to maintain the current structure is not really feasible,” Santee said. 

Sarah Dempster, principal with Populous, said her firm contracted with the Kansas City Royals, and hired New York-based structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti for a review of the structural assessment portion of the most recent report, which was done in 2022, and which did not include concrete testing. A separate assessment in 2007 provided concrete materials testing by a different consulting group. 

"That report indicated Alkali–silica reactin (ASR) in 57 out of 59 cores examined, with the majority of the structure characterized as having moderate ASR distress," Dempster said. "Mitigation was attempted and unsuccessful." 

ASR is a chemical reaction occurring between the reactive siliceous aggregate particles and hydroxyl ions of the pore solution in hardened concret. She added that the 2007 report estimated that the concrete would last 10 to 20 years before distress on it accelerates to a point where replacement becomes necessary. 

Noting that the stadiums, which are both part of the Truman Sports Complex, were built in the same approximately 50-year-old time frame, Jackson County Executive Frank White, sent a letter to the Jackson County Sports Authority, which leases the stadiums to the teams, questioning why Kauffman has what he called "concrete cancer" when Arrowhead does not. He also asked for further assessment of the conditions at both stadiums. 

“This assertion [of concrete cancer] raises significant questions, particularly as the Jackson County Sports Authority’s annual facility report has made no mention of ASR or similar related construction concerns,” White wrote. 

While the Royals maintain that ASR is an issue, the sports authority contracted with Burns & McDonnell between 2014 and 2022 to annually assess conditions at both stadiums. The most recent report in 2022 found that Kauffman was in “satisfactory condition” consistent with a first-class MLB baseball stadium. 

Burns & McDonnell declined to comment on the report. 

In a letter responding to White’s concerns, Shawn Foster, chairman of the sports authority, noted that the “The Kansas City Royals made a cost/value business decision that it would cost the same amount of monies to maintain and renovate Kauffman Stadium for the next 25-40 years as it would cost to build a new stadium. This is a business decision, which the team believes will provide a better game day experience, be more operationally efficient and allow them different streams of revenue.” 

Annemarie Mannion is editor of ENR Midwest, which covers 11 states. She joined ENR in 2022 and reports from Chicago.