KC adds another big project to the scoreboard, backing Current’s $1.4B riverfront expansion

A supercharged vision for CPKC Stadium and the surrounding riverfront area gained the city’s financial backing Thursday — enhancing game day settings and beyond for a rapidly emerging district that many leaders see as a gold standard for transformational public-private investment.

The just-passed Ordinance No. 260748 approves up to $185 million in public financing for a massive expansion project at the stadium. It also drops the anchor for new infrastructure, a mixed-use district, new transit, pedestrian and parking accessibility, and other improvements at the nearby riverfront — continuing a half-decade of dramatic change along the Missouri River.

“For too many years, our riverfront was a landfill in the heart of our city. Today, our riverfront is a leading destination in our region and the Midwest that’s poised to grow even more,” said Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sponsored the successful legislation. “With the city’s approvals, the riverfront will continue to transform into a place where people can watch a match, walk an extended trail, and be part of a vibrant neighborhood.”

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The overall $1.4 billion project is expected to expand CPKC Stadium to more than 18,000 seats, increase nearby trail spaces eastward, add 1,500 parking spaces, and upgrade stormwater and drainage systems in the area.

The agreement approved Thursday also includes debt shortfall guarantees by the KC Current ownership group, Lucas said, avoiding harms to the taxpayers. (CPKC Stadium shares ownership with the Current, which includes co-founders Angie Long and Chris Long, along with co-owners Brittany Mahomes and Patrick Mahomes. The adjacent Current Landing development is spearheaded through the Longs’ Palmer Square Real Estate Management.)

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“With the debt shortfall guarantee from the Current to protect Kansas City taxpayers, the project is also the most innovative public-private sports and entertainment project in the Midwest,” Lucas continued.

With the ordinance passed on a 9-3 vote, the proposed funding plan is likely headed to the city’s TIF Financing Commission where full financing details are expected to be hammered out.

Council member Wes Rogers, 2nd District, likened the riverfront transformation to how downtown Kansas City itself saw a renaissance thanks to city intervention and leaders willing to work with developers to remove blight.

“There was just nothing there,” Rogers said during Thursday’s legislative session, recalling his first drive downtown after getting his driver’s license in 1998. “There were no businesses; there were no people living down there. And what we’ve done the past 25 years is pretty spectacular, and it has grown our economy.”

“It has made us a bigger, better city; a more vibrant city; a city with a bigger tax base,” he continued. “And when we do big projects like this the right way — and I believe this one is, particularly because of the Current backing — I am happy to vote yes and celebrate.”

‘This isn’t free money’

Vocal critics of the city’s recent funding plans for high-profile, neighborhood-reshaping projects — like the Royals’ new stadium at Crown Center, the Country Club Plaza, and Roy Blunt Luminary Park — are questioning at what point such efforts tip the balance between want and need, as well as where the city’s financial resources are best spent.

Council member Jonathan Duncan, 6th District, speaks Sept. 10 during the KCMO City Council’s legislative session; image courtesy of the City Clerk’s Video on Demand web page

“We are making a decision to essentially take a gamble and bet on these projects, when I don’t think we need to do all the time,” said council member Jonathan Duncan, 6th District, during Thursday’s session.

Approving the CPKC Stadium funding ordinance would be fiscally irresponsible, he told fellow city leaders before the vote, regardless of Current ownership’s assurances — especially in light of other recent funding decisions, as well as the developer’s apparent ability to complete the project even without city assistance, albeit more slowly, he said.

“It’s incumbent upon this body to consider that even if these bonds are backed by another entity, this isn’t free money,” Duncan said. “We are retracting revenue that would be going to our general fund and back into projects. We are doing it again and again and again.”

“At some point, we’re going to have to ask: ‘When are we going to start prioritizing our general fund?’” he continued. “I really feel like we are not taking a full accounting of how much revenue we are redirecting into projects that we won’t see a return on in 30 years.”

Council members Nathan Willett, 1st District, and Melissa Patterson Hazley, 3rd District at large, also voted no Thursday.

A closer look at CPKC Stadiums rendering of the expanded riverfront project at Current Landing; courtesy image

All three dissenting voices indicated the ordinance lacked too many key details to earn their votes. Duncan and Willet said they weren’t against development — or the Current — but needed to see a full development plan before they could support the ordinance.

“It felt tantamount to a blank check,” Patterson Hazley told Startland News. “I look forward to seeing more specific development plans in the future and I hope to feel comfortable lending my support on bond scheduling. Overall, it’s a worthy project but in my opinion lacked specificity at this stage. I’m ready to learn more.”

‘Everybody seems to be in on it’

Duncan and Patterson Hazley expressed some of the same concerns — and a few more — Sept. 3 when the council approved a funding plan that would authorize the start of construction for the $164.3 million first phase of Luminary Park, which is expected to eventually stretch over four city blocks of the south loop of I-670.

A rendering shows the 40-foot grade connecting Wyandotte Street to Baltimore Avenue as part of the initial “Block One” phase of Roy Blunt Luminary Park; image courtesy of OJB Landscape Architecture

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“We are concentrating wealth in one part of the city, and everybody seems to be in on it,” Patterson Hazley said during the council’s previous discussion of the roughly $50 million in proposed Luminary Park funding.

She and Duncan noted the city’s park investment — like the Royals stadium funding before it — would benefit an isolated urban footprint within the midtown-to-downtown corridor, without impacting Kansas Citians in their districts who face greater unmet infrastructure and resource needs.

“Everybody seems to be OK with concentrating millions and millions and millions of dollars in one area of the city to the neglect of the rest of us,” said Patterson Hazley, who along with Duncan cited closed pools and roadways, as well as abandoned and blighted homes in their districts. “We have some neighborhoods that look like slums, like you’re in a whole different country. … There’s no all-hands-on-deck for those problems, but when it comes to something like this, everybody can tap in, and we can figure out a way to overleverage ourselves.”

“I’m not opposed to this project,” she said later, shortly before the council voted on the Luminary Park issue. “I’m just opposed to the city funding it.”

Mayor Lucas agreed during the Sept. 3 council session that the hardest part of their jobs as leaders is saying no, adding that scarcity of dollars is a real concern that council members must weigh for each individual development project as it arises.