Voters Reject Tax to Fund Stadiums for Chiefs, Royals

The funds would have been used to renovate Kansas City’s NFL stadium and build a new downtown ballpark for the city’s MLB team.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Voters in Jackson County , Mo., overwhelmingly rejected a proposed sales tax measure on Tuesday that would have been used to help fund stadiums for the Chiefs and Royals.

The ballot measure would have repealed the three-eighths of a cent sales tax in the county that had initially been approved by voters in 2006 to fund renovations to both stadiums and replaced it with an identical tax that would have been in place for the next 40 years. (The tax is currently set to expire in 2031.) If approved, the funds would have been used to fund a renovation of Arrowhead Stadium and build a new ballpark for the Royals in Downtown Kansas City’s Crossroads district, near the city’s 19,000-seat T-Mobile Center.

Jackson County residents voted decisively to reject the tax, with 58% of voters rejecting the plan.

The Chiefs announced plans in February for an $800 million renovation to the 52-year-old stadium, with the team pledging $300 million to the effort. The remaining $500 million was intended to be funded by taxpayers.

“We would not be willing to sign a lease for another 25 years without the financing to properly renovate and reimagine the stadium,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said at the time. “So the financing puzzle is very important to us to make sure we have enough funds to do everything we've outlined.”

The Royals’, whose current home, Kauffman Stadium, is located adjacent to Arrowhead in the Truman Sports Complex about seven miles east of downtown, announced their plans for a new stadium two weeks before the Chiefs revealed their proposed renovation. The new baseball stadium would be the center of a $2 billion ballpark district, with Royals ownership pledging to contribute about $1 billion to the effort.

With the tax having been rejected, the status of both projects is in question. In an interview last month with Kansas City NBC affiliate KSHB, Chiefs president Mark Donovan said the team “would just have to look at all our options” if voters rejected the plan and that those options “would have to include leaving Kansas City.”