Kehoe told the AP there’s no talk of building an ultra-expensive completely domed stadium, but there might be another way to enclose the present Arrowhead Stadium. The leases the Royals and Chiefs have on the Jackson County Sports Complex expire in about five years, a pretty short time in stadium-building scenarios.
His concept has assumed immediate importance with a report by Pete Mundo of KCMO radio that the Chiefs have put out a request for proposals to design a new stadium near the Kansas Speedway. Mundo says the move does not mean the Chiefs have decided to move to the Kansas side. In fact he says his “gut” tells him they’ll stay on our side.
Kansas officials are not commenting and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says the team is still negotiating with both sides.
But the story raises the stakes in the discussions.
Missouri officials well remember the failure of the legislature in the late 1990s to react favorably to a proposal to put a major automobile race track near Kansas City International Airport. The Kansas Speedway opened just across the state line in Wyandotte County Kansas and opened in 2001, triggering considerable development in the area.
World Sports Network estimated seven years later that the track already had generated $243 million a year in economic benefits to the area.
The idea of a covering for Arrowhead is not new. The original designs for the complex in the 1960s included a covering for both stadiums.
The rolling roof system would be on tracks that could move a covering over the playing fields for inclement weather. The stadiums would not be heated or air conditioned under that system but rain and snow would not be a factor.
The idea came from architect Charles U. Deaton, an innovative thinker born in New Mexico who never got a college degree. He became a certified architectural engineer after personal studies of industrial design, structural engineering, and architecture. He designed board games in addition to structures and held several patents for furniture and interior lighting designs—and for designing board games. He worked in St. Louis for a time before moving to Denver, where practiced until his death in 1996.
The original plans were for a facility much like Busch Stadium II in St. Louis, where both baseball and football games could be played. But Deaton convinced Chiefs GM Jack Steadman the dual stadium concept would be better.
If you want a more detailed description of the philosophy behind his designs, go to the KC Yesterday web page.
Deaton’s idea of the rolling roof was scrapped during the construction process—practicality time, and cost were factors. The Chiefs played their first game in Arrowhead in 1972. The Royals played their first game in their new home on April 10, 1973. Twenty years later it was renamed for Royals’ owner Ewing Kauffman.
Kehoe is not recommending a return to Deaton’s original but now outdated design. He cites more modern stadium architecture that he think would work at far less cost—-and the incredible costs of new stadiums is a huge factor. Jackson County voters rejected the extension of a local sales tax to finance an $800 million overhaul of Arrowhead and construction of a two-billion dollar ballpark and ballpark village (as it’s called in St. Louis) downtown.
Missouri and Kansas now are in a heated competition for the two teams and legislatures in both states have authorized millions of dollars in one form or another to provide the new facilities.
What Kehoe is suggesting is something similar to what he saw in Frankfurt, Germany when he attended a Chiefs-Dolphis game in 2023 at Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Park, a 100-year old soccer stadium that has been overhauled many times and now sports a cable-supported flexible, translucent fabric covering that can be opened or closed.
The Governor plans to meet today with the new Jackson County Executive, Phil LeVota, who also is talking to the Chiefs. The Chiefs aren’t reacting yet to the Kehoe suggestion but they have said they’d invest $1.l5 billion into the project if they decide to stay on our side of the state line. Another Kansas City (Missouri) election could be held next year.
For what it is worth, the view of the situation from the height of our hill is that this entire decades-long war for economic development in the Kansas City area has gone on too long. Somebody needs to develop a solution to it.
And we are as qualified as anyone to do that….and we will, on Monday.
(Photo credit: KC Yesterday/Jackson County Historical Society, Stadiowelt, Trip Advisor)