With a Unified Voice, the KC Skyline Lights Up Blue in Support of a Royals Ballpark Downtown
2026 will be a defining year for Kansas City.
We will decide where the Royals’ new stadium will be built. But more importantly, we will decide whether we strengthen our connected, revitalized Downtown – or we once again allow a generational asset to become a misplaced opportunity.
In the Royals’ open letter to the community in November of 2022, the organization laid out three guiding criteria for their future home –
1) Real and measurable community impact, 2) Economic growth, 3) Enhance the quality of life for the citizens of our region, with an emphasis on historically underrepresented communities. If these remain the top decision-making priorities, then the center of the region – Downtown Kansas City – is the clear and best choice.
Downtown offers an unrivaled opportunity to improve the ballpark’s accessibility and connection to the entire region as well as surrounding neighborhoods. Downtown is the economic, cultural, and entertainment center of our region. It provides a thriving, sustainable environment for Major League Baseball to evolve and prosper.
Accessibility is key to removing barriers to participation for many of our citizens. Downtown’s existing infrastructure provides seamless connectivity and accessibility to neighborhoods throughout the region. Downtown sits at the geographic center of the Royals’ fan base, with five major interstates and more than 20 ingress and egress routes converging on the area from every direction. This provides fans unsurpassed flexibility to create their own routes, traditions, and game-day experiences – whether that’s coming in early for dinner, meeting up with friends after work, or staying late to grab a drink or food at a local bar or restaurant, all in a walkable, streetcar-supported collection of neighborhoods.
A Downtown ballpark is uniquely positioned to leverage the region’s most transformative transportation investment in the KC Streetcar. Now extending nearly six miles from the riverfront through Downtown, Midtown, and the Plaza to UMKC, KC Streetcar fundamentally changes how fans can access a game – creating options that simply didn’t exist in the past. This expanded system means fewer cars on game day, improving the overall experience. And for those who drive, Downtown offers more than 40,000 existing parking spaces conveniently located to accommodate different routes. The result is flexibility, choice, and a modern urban game-day experience that works for the entire region.
Proof of concept. Downtown is the most concentrated hub of history, culture, tourism, hotels, restaurants, and arts – already functioning, loved, and authentic to who we are as a collective region. A Downtown ballpark would exist within a constellation of major civic and cultural anchors, including the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Crossroads Arts District, Union Station, Historic 18th and Vine Jazz District, River Market, Power and Light District, Current Landing, CPKC Stadium, and the forthcoming Luminary Park. A Downtown ballpark does not compete with these districts, but amplifies them.
Unique assets like a Downtown ballpark have synergy with these key amenities. They mutually benefit each other and exponentially add to the economic impact of the region. New office, residential, and retail components within a new ballpark district would have the support of these activity generators to keep the district vibrant and successful throughout the year. However, that relationship is mutually supportive, as millions of Royals fans will have the opportunity to experience all the amazing offerings Downtown provides, supporting and experiencing our neighborhoods, rich with diverse entertainment venues, restaurants, and retail.
As our Imagine Downtown KC 2030 strategic plan notes, “Cities that have developed Downtown ballparks have experienced substantial secondary economic development. These assets have a multiplier effect in an urban context.” The plan also reminds us that “Baseball grew up in America’s cities, and early parks were embedded into urban neighborhoods and districts.” Kansas City has the opportunity to bring baseball back to where it originally started – woven into the daily life of our city.
Downtown KC is where our region’s rich history and incredible future converge – where our story, culture, commerce, and community come together. It is where we take our families to celebrate special occasions or holidays, where visitors form their first impressions, and where we show authentic Kansas City to the nation, and soon the world.
Downtown is also where corporate headquarters have started and successfully grown, and where numerous historical and cultural landmarks that tell the story of our city and remain thriving destinations for the region today. As a result, one thing is clear – legacies and memories are built in Downtown.
We invite the Royals to join the incredible renaissance already underway and build their future legacy and memories in Downtown Kansas City.
