We are one month away from Kansas City Royals pitchers and catchers reporting to Surprise, Arizona for Spring Training. I am fairly certain that John Sherman did not expect to enter Spring Training 2026 still talking about where the Royals new stadium might be located. After all, the Royals owner had hoped to have a decision ready to present to the public about the new stadium by mid-2025. We are a full six months past that benchmark and we still don’t know where the Royals are going to be playing. In fact, the overall situation, at least as far as the public can see, appears as murky and confusing as it ever has.
More media attention has been directed towards this story after the Kansas City Chiefs announced they were moving from Missouri to Kansas to move into a new domed stadium (along with a new practice facility in Olathe) for the cool price of somewhere between $3-4 billion of public revenue once the dust on the move fully settles. The media attention on the Royals has come from public officials saying that they are done negotiating with the Kansas City Royals.
Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins spoke to Cody Holyoke of KMBC 9, and told the news anchor that the window for the state to use STAR bonds had expired on December 31, and the state would stick to it. Hawkins confirmed that the Royals had reached out to him about still using the STAR bonds, telling Holyoke:
“They had their lobbyists reach out and ask if there was any wiggle room, and I reemphasized Dec. 31 was the date and you didn’t make it, so we’re moving on.”
This doesn’t technically mean that the possibility of the Royals moving to the Aspiria Campus at 119th and Nall in Johnson County is completely dead. First, the bonds can be used until the end of June. The Legislative Coordinating Council could technically still choose to meet between now and then. Speaker Hawkins now chairs the LCC, so if he doesn’t want to hear a presentation, then there will not be one. If something were to change his mind, however, that path could become viable for the Royals once again. Hawkins would be far from the first politician to change his stance on an issue.
John Holt of Fox4 reported that the Royals and Kansas are still talking, so the Royals joining the Chiefs in the Sunflower State is still a possibility. A Royals affiliate still owns the mortgage to the Aspiria campus, and Speaker Hawkins acknowledged to Holt that there are other mechanisms the state could use to help finance a stadium, but also stated, “I think it would be pretty difficult to do that.” So while a Kansas location is not dead, it looks less likely now than it did one month ago.
Kansas Speaker Hawkins was not the only government official to publicly declare this week that they are done negotiating with the Royals. Clay County Commissioner Jason Withington announced on social media that the Royals had missed deadlines to get on the ballot in Clay County and that he considers the North Kansas City location a “closed chapter.”
All the caveats about politicians changing their minds apply to Commissioner Withington as well as Speaker Hawkins, but it’s not a great look for the Royals to have two local politicians on both sides of state line call you out for missing deadlines and announce publicly that the window for negotiations has passed. There is more of this story that we don’t know than what we do (this saga deserves its own book someday), but what is visible to the public paints a caricature of the team as either crippingly indecisive or as bad-faith negotiators trying to play all sides at once.
That leaves Kansas City and Jackson County as the government entities that are still publicly talking about wanting to continue working with the Royals. New Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota seems more open to working with the team than former executive Frank White ever was, and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told Eric Graves of KMBC9:
“We are not losing the Kansas City Royals. They will be here. I hope they play in Kansas City, Missouri. I hope they play in downtown Kansas City. But the Royals will be here, and we will make sure that work gets done.”
Lucas also previously said that the Chiefs would be playing in Kansas City, Missouri for a “generation to come,” so it’s far from a done deal that the Royals will stay in KCMO. Still, you would think that Jackson County and Kansas City would be motivated to keep the Royals now that the Chiefs are heading out the door, and you would think the Royals would get their best deal from local officials who are publicly stating they want to work with them instead of the opposite.
Washington Square Park presumably remains an option for a downtown ballpark, although Wichita developer Crain Co. bought the old Blue Cross Blue Shield building, making that space more complicated than it was before. It is apparently May of 2022 again, as some of the ideas that have been batted around publicly this week were the original front-runner spots: the East Village location and the 18th and Vine location.
Mayor Lucas told Thomas Friestad of the Kansas City Business Journal that the city would work with the Royals if they decide to circle back around to the East Village location. It has been previously reported that the city is concerned about the Royals developing their ballpark village so close to the Kansas City Power and Light District and that the expense of building highway access was cost-prohibitive. Mayor Lucas did encourage the Royals to select East Crossroads as their site back in 2024 instead of the East Village. The East Village is still unlikely to be Lucas’ favorite choice on where this all ends up, but the motivation of not wanting to lose another professional sports team may have softened his stance in the past two years.
Jackson County Executive LeVota confirmed to KMBC 9 that Ollie Gates personal favorite site of the old KC ATA building remains under consideration. This site doesn’t seem to have been as seriously considered as Washington Square Park or the East Village ever where, at least from what we know as the public, but you can count me as one of the people who think it would be great for the Royals to end up so close to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
Mayor Lucas has stated that he hopes this will all be resolved in Q1 of 2026, which I think would be great news for everyone involved. The Royals haven’t reached “The Rays Zone” of their stadium saga yet, but another year of this might officially push them into that category. The longer that this has dragged out, the worse the Royals are coming across in the public eye. Let’s hope that this is the darkness before the dawn and not the start of another year-long quest to figure out the future of the Kansas City Royals.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com ’
