- [Narrator] Flatland in Focus is brought to you in part through the generous support of AARP, the Health Forward Foundation, and RSM.

- Here in the Heart of America, baseball mirrors life's highs and lows, wins and losses.

And tonight's conversation ponders whether The Crossroads location selected for the new baseball stadium could be a grand slam for the Royals or a strikeout for Kansas City.

(light music) Good evening, Kansas City.

This is Flatland in Focus, and I'm your host D. Rashaan Gilmore.

Tonight, we're taking a big swing at a topic that's more than just a game.

It's about the future of our city.

So brace yourselves for more than a few baseball metaphors.

The proposed baseball park for the Kansas City Royals is where baseball dreams and community concerns collide.

On April 2nd, Jackson County voters will be asked to decide whether to approve a sales tax to subsidize the new ballpark in addition to renovations at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs.

But this is far from the first time that taxpayers here or across the country have been asked to help pay for a stadium.

But how can we ensure this investment on behalf of the public really benefits the broader community?

So from developers to workers, elected officials to entrepreneurs, we've got play-by-play coverage of the impacts facing our community.

So let's play ball and explore what lies beyond the outfield of this monumental decision.

- [Speaker] Private developers are constantly coming with proposals for development, demanding money from cities, and really offering no accountability, no transparency, and no transformation of jobs.

This is symbolic and representative of the way we run this economy to business interest with no attention to community interest.

- Come on in.

I'd like to show you what we've got going on here.

That area over there in the corner will be a retail area.

We'll feature local small batch foods.

And back in there is Oscar.

He's our executive chef and the director of all our culinary operations and- - And lunch.

(Sarah laughs) - So up here is our dining area where we're gonna group tables so people have a more intimate sense.

You can actually look into our aging rooms and our packaging rooms and see the people at work in there.

We found this space, loved it because it was wide open and ready for us to bring not only a restaurant here, but also our cheese production.

Any day now, we're gonna open the doors.

We were quite blindsided and upset when we heard the Royals had chosen this site.

And when we saw the renderings, basically, first base is right out our door.

- [Reporter] It is your first look at the Royals' final plans for the future.

The team's setting its sight on The Crossroads now as its new home, but there are some big hurdles to clear first.

- Today, we are at a crossroads.

In fact, we're here to talk about The Crossroads, and our intention to make it the new home of the Kansas City Royals.

- [Reporter] That new home would span the course of several blocks from Locust to Grand and from Truman Road to 17th, about 17 acres in all, and would extend the proposed cap over the south part of the downtown loop, another three blocks to the east.

Team President John Sherman said they chose this side over the other downtown location in the East Village after continued talks with local leaders.

- I was kind of in disbelief, shocked, a little bit angry.

It's not a bunch of national corporations down here.

It's a bunch of people who are working at the business they started, like me and like Jill.

- There are 27 small, locally-owned businesses in the demolition footprint.

There are up to 40 more in the neg, what we would consider to be the negative impact zone.

This is one of them.

They talk about us moving.

It's not that easy.

We succeed because of the fabric that's been created here.

Even though they tell us that they value small businesses as being a very critical part of the community, we're not feeling that right now.

(light music) - Late '80s, early '90s that sports team owners realized, "Oh, huh, we can not only make money by selling tickets at the new place.

We can make money by having somebody else build the new place for us with public money."

The costs are going up and up and up.

30 years ago, you could build a stadium for $200 million.

Now, we're talking a billion, a billion and a half, two billion.

We now have several decades of economic studies of how it's gone when cities and states have spent public money on building stadiums and arenas.

And the overwhelming, if not unanimous conclusion, is that the benefit is somewhere between zero and not very much.

Economists have looked at, is there an increase in per capita income?

No.

Is there an increase in sales tax receipts?

No.

Really, all the benefits are accruing to the team owners.

- People sometimes wanna draw everything down to a dollars and cents.

These teams bring us a lot more than money.

They are part of the pride that we have in this community or part of the visibility that we have in this community.

They're part of the draw that we have for tourism.

Those things don't necessarily have dollar values, but they have value.

We've been talking about the CBAs for months now.

There's the county CBA, which is the one that matters.

There's Crossroads CBA, and there'll be a CBA that we're talking to, Arch KC and something with the school district.

But not everything needs to be done today.

- We know they have the resources to get stuff done.

They just gave Bobby Witt 300 million.

That took one night.

I looked at him the next day like, "Dang, that guy's paid."

- The Royals don't understand that they didn't give us something we wanna fight for, or they can give us something we wanna fight against, 'cause we'll do either one.

(people cheering) - The clock is ticking, 'cause once the stadium's built, if don't have something enforceable signed, that's ballgame.

And it's for the Royals.

(light music) Specifically, we've shared with the Royals Milwaukee Bucks CBA and their agreement and what they have there in what is called the Iron District.

- The structure of the Community Benefits Agreement matters.

And the structure in Milwaukee really mattered to say there will be labor standards, there will be labor peace, there will be a chance for workers to organize.

A lot of things get called community benefits agreements.

A lot of them are unenforceable or untransparent.

So success number one is change the jobs at the stadium.

Success number two is build an organization that then is attending to this consistently and builds power across the service sector, so you get one answer to the question instead of a CBA on everything that is a different community coalition running a different set of standards.

- Hey, hey, ho, ho.

(indistinct chanting) - The union workers had to fight for other Royals to provide them with clean water to drink.

So we're expected to trust the negotiations of billionaires who just are threatening to bulldoze our neighborhood and don't have a history of acting in good faith.

We have been actively trying through the Community Crossroads Association to get information now for a couple of months.

City manager, city planning, the county, the Royals, and it's just hot potato.

No, it's not us.

Talk to these people.

You know, nothing.

- These deals are not good deals for cities.

There's a lot of evidence for that.

A sales tax is a gift to the people who already have a lot of money.

- A lot of people talk about this stuff when they demonize John Sherman, but John Sherman does a hell of a lot in this city.

Sherman Foundation spends over $50 million a year in public contributions to various charities.

They've sent hundreds of kids to college on Sherman Scholars.

Urban Youth Academy is Royals' Major League baseball.

And so as we talk about greedy billionaire owners, which seems to be the catch word, remember those greedy billionaire owners are doing a whole hell of a lot that you just don't know about.

This vote is about keeping both teams in Jackson County.

That's a fact.

The Royals aren't gonna play in that stadium after the 2031 when this lease expires.

This isn't like building a backyard shed.

These things take time.

So you either know now and you can plan, or you make other plans.

One thing that I know, people don't like the way things are, but they absolutely hate change.

- The number of threats that are levied is massive compared to the number of team actually move.

Every team owner pretty much threatens it.

So the trick is to figure out when it's serious or not.

- So then the next question is, did you just feed the East Crossroads a poison pill to taint the neighborhood so that you could basically stop from wanting to rent here?

And your plan is really just to wait out the leases of all these properties so that you can get that land grab that you want, where the truth lies and what those negotiations are is all behind a shroud right now.

- I don't have anything against the Royals, and my husband is a big fan.

If it were a great deal and it we're going to be a revenue driver for the city, I would be all for it.

Voters need to take a very close look at whether or not we want to spend our tax dollars on baseball, or do we wanna spend our tax dollars on community development in a real way, like funding schools, funding housing.

There is a limited pool of tax dollars for us to spend, and we need to understand what will the city get from this deal.

And it's not clear to me that this is a good deal for the city.

- Back for the roundtable discussion portion of this program, and with me in studio today is Sarah Hoffman, the founder and owner of Green Dirt Farms.

Gina Chiala.

Did I get that right, Gina?

Gina Chiala.

Close enough.

- Very good.

With the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom.

Jeff Owens, who is managing partner at The Bauer, and DaRon McGee, 4th District Jackson County legislator.

One of the things that I'd like to know right off the bat ism do the voters know what they're actually voting on?

- People are starting to make up their minds as we get closer to the election.

And I think more information is coming out since I introduced it and since the legislature passed it.

To put it on the ballot, which was in January, more information is coming out.

So for example, we now know the site of where the Royals would like to go downtown, which you did not know prior to.

We now know the upgrades at the Arrowhead, what they like to have at Arrowhead.

And I think voters are intelligent enough to make their minds.

- Do you think Kansas City residents should help pay for this?

I mean, this is for a sports team.

Maybe that money should be applied to other things and not a stadium.

What do you say to people who have that point of view?

- No one, I think, in government likes to see stadiums publicly subsidized.

But unfortunately, the reality is that is the world we live in, because you have communities that are essentially bidding against each other to keep professional teams.

We are, I think, we are lucky and unique in the realm that we have not only have the Chiefs, we have the Royals as well.

To be a first class city, I think it's important to have major league teams in your communities.

And I think, again, that's the right of the voters.

And I understand that people say that you have other needs, but this is not a tax that is shared for by the citizens of Kansas City.

It is shared across the county, and it's a sales tax across Jackson County.

- In 2023, the Royals were valued at about $1.2 billion, sitting among the five lowest major league baseball teams.

According to Forbes, that is anyway.

And also, according to baseball reference in 2021, attendance for Royals games was the lowest it had been in 20 years.

Since then, attendance has remained lower than it's been since 2000.

I think some of the that are being shaped, and I know Jeff, you have hosted a number of events, the Crossroads Community Association has and invited folks to come out and share their thoughts and feelings.

What are you hearing from residents, and are they raising any of these concerns or the ones that DaRon just spoke to.

- So a lot of the people that we're talking to is the small business owners that are gonna be affected by this and some of the residents and people that work and live in The Crossroads.

We never thought we'd be picked for that spot.

And it happened very quickly.

So we've been scrambling to try to keep up with what's going on.

- Here it is.

The location that's been identified would effectively, Sarah, I mean, displace you.

- Yes.

Right on top of our new building that we're about to open.

- I was just gonna say, exactly.

- Construction facility, yep.

- So what does that mean for your own plans?

Do you not do it?

Do you go ahead and open?

What are you intending at this point?

- Well, as my husband has said, we're nine and a half months pregnant with this project.

We're not stopping now.

This baby is gonna be born.

And our goal really is to open up and open strong and show Kansas City the value that we're bringing to the community, because not that we can compete with the Royals, but we do think that small business owners as a collective, as a whole are bringing a tremendous amount of value in terms of tax collection dollars for the city and the county.

But also, in terms of the value that we bring to our customers, of independent, small local business that is unique and really special to Kansas City.

- What sort of concessions or, frankly, compensation are you expecting as a result of your business that you're just opening up being effectively displaced?

- Right, well, I have no idea.

I have not had any communication with anyone on the Royals side about what that could be, what could be involved in their taking our business.

At this point, they could take our business and not compensate us anywhere near the investment that we've made, not just in terms of the actual monetary investment, but also in terms of the time and the energy and the creative ideas that me and my team have brought to building this project.

- So I'm interested to know, Jeff, has that been your experience too?

Or if you heard that from other business owners or residents, businesses, or individuals who are living in Crossroads that they've not really been engaged with either the ownership group or others about this plan?

- So some of the businesses have been approached and talked to them.

We don't know what the conversations have been, but some of them have been approached.

The other part that I might say about Green Dirt Farms is, I mean, you've been working on this for two years.

You're exhausted.

And it's not just buying your business or helping you out.

How about giving you the energy back to try to do it again?

I mean, it's really complicated.

- Yes.

We're thrilled to open, we're excited about opening, but it's colored by the fact that we just don't know what's happening.

There's so much uncertainty.

- And it's probably very premature to ask this, but I can't help but imagine that it's probably floated through your minds at some point, where will we go?

- Yes, no idea.

There isn't a place that we could relocate to that would offer us the same neighborhood and community that we found in The Crossroads.

This is Brewer's Alley.

It's beer and distilled products.

It's a perfect marriage with cheese.

There are lots of small businesses down there that are bringing customers down to that part of the city and on First Fridays and other days of the week.

And I think it's just a really, it's something that's very synergistic for the rest of the community.

- Gina, you're working with the folks from the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing Coalition on effectively a set of community benefits agreements.

And these are often used to ensure that developers and others really do the good things that they say that their projects will do.

Where does that factor into these community benefits agreements?

- We are an organization that focuses on the rights of low wage workers.

We are born out of a movement of the lowest paid people in the Kansas City area.

And so we support their movements, and we also represent tenants who are in eviction court, hundreds of tenants who are in eviction court every year.

And so we are on the ground with people who make very little in terms of wages, are in a constant crosshairs of eviction and housing instability and the like.

And so our focus here tends to be more on, how is this stadium going to impact them?

And what we know is that without a strong community benefits agreement that ensures the existence of living wage union jobs and truly affordable housing, this project, we think, is going to harm not just Crossroads businesses, but low wage workers, poor people, tenants all across the city and all across the county.

86% of economists don't think we should be publicly financing projects like this, because they do divert money away from other types of programs.

So public schools, affordable housing projects, infrastructure projects end up suffering because of this type of funding.

And so we wanna make sure there's a strong community benefits agreement in place that lifts Kansas City up instead of subjecting Kansas City to further harm.

- And this is according to the Royals.

The new development would net 2,200 jobs, mostly in the service and retail sectors.

Presumably a good deal of that is during the construction phase, is there any aspect of the work that you're doing right now that is concerned with or focused on what happens after the project is complete and what jobs remain that are permanent, full-time living wage positions?

- Yes, 100%.

We know that projects like this often provide good jobs in the construction phase.

And that those jobs are oftentimes union jobs, and we support that.

If a stadium is built, if the voters decide to go forward with this, great that the construction happens with union labor.

However, we also know that these type of projects typically leave in their wake low wage service and hospitality jobs that don't have unions, don't have benefits, don't have just scheduling.

And so our focus is on those jobs, the workers who are gonna be running the stadium and running the entertainment districts surrounding the stadium for the whole duration of the sales tax.

- Hearing what Gina just said, I wonder what you think are the measures that can and should be taken to ensure that any of the aspects of these community benefits agreements are actually enforced and effective long term?

- Generally, holistically about the CBAs is one, that you have to have an independent monitoring of the CBAs to make sure it's enforced and making sure that the agreement is being wholly implemented, because the county doesn't have the personnel to enforce the CBA, right?

So you need compliance folks.

You need people to make sure that people on these job sites when they start the construction and all of that to make sure that they're- - And who would those people work for?

Who would hire those people and ensure those compliance monitors?

- The county would hire them.

So typically, the teams pay for it, but the county hires those people and they outsource it and the county hires outside evaluators to monitor and enforce the agreements.

I think if the sales tax does not go through, I think that it's gonna be very problematic.

Just so people have a base of understanding the funding mechanism, the sales tax is not the holistic funding for these teams.

It's sort of the base, right?

And if you take that away and if it doesn't pass and they don't have a base of funding to maintaining the maintenance of those stadiums, I think that there is a strong likelihood that teams would leave.

It's a business decision.

The point though is it's a county asset, and so you don't have to look far for three hours and you look to St. Louis.

If the teams leave, what do you do with two massive stadiums, right?

You have to either pay to tear them down, or you have to find renewed uses for them.

- So Gina, I saw you trying to jump in there.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that subject.

Does it feel like an ultimatum?

- Absolutely, it does.

And and I would say that this is an unprecedented ask of taxpayers.

I cannot find another stadium project across the country that is seeking over $2 billion in taxpayer funding.

Plus the Royals right now are seeking another 700 million, assuming that passes in city and state funding.

It's unprecedented.

It's the most expensive use of taxpayer funds toward a stadium than what we've seen before.

It makes me sad when I see how loyal our fans are here in Kansas City, how much we give to the teams, whether it's out of pocket through ticket sales or through the taxes we pay now.

And to see that that loyalty is not a two-way street as it should be.

And so I think if we're going to hand these teams this huge amount, this huge amount of taxpayer funds, then we should expect those teams to give something back to the community.

They promised that they would agree to a community benefits agreement, and they use the word transformative.

And so those jobs that exist in the stadium and in the entertainment district on the outside, those service and hospitality jobs that are typically low wage, we need a wage floor to ensure living wages for those workers.

We need a path for those workers to unionize.

We also need a hiring hall that would ensure that these good jobs go in significant portion to the east side, that they uplift the east side.

And what this would do is it would put Kansas City on a path toward uplifting low wage workers generally while challenging our terrible history of racial discrimination and racial segregation in this city.

- Should the tax pass, businesses should be compensated and given help relocating.

I think that that's a very basic thing that should be offered to the businesses, rather than just raising their businesses and paying the minimum amount that they can get away with.

- What single thing is most important in your mind for voters to have in their minds as they go to the polls to vote on this ballot measure in just a few weeks?

- Oh, well, I think the points that Gina raised about the economic impact of the stadium on the city itself and on the workers in the city itself is something that needs to be really understood better.

Do we get affordable housing?

Do we get a wage floor?

Our company is a mission-driven company.

We have never paid minimum wage.

We have always paid a living wage to all of our employees, and we make that part of our mission, vision, and values as part of what we are bringing to the community.

- I think voters should be asking themselves, have the Royals, have these teams earned my vote?

Do we have guarantees?

Enforceable community benefits agreement that guarantees good jobs, union living wage jobs, and affordable housing?

Is this a two-way street when it comes to being a fan, or is it just a one-way street?

- To tell you the truth, the problem with this whole thing is there's not enough time to figure out a lot of things we need to figure out before the vote.

So I personally don't wanna lose the teams.

I want them to be in Jackson County.

Having said that, picking Crossroads is a complex issue, and it needs to be thought out really well to make it work.

- What is missing from the conversation that has not been said here today or that needs to be reemphasized so that voters know when they go to the polls on April 2nd, this is what DaRon McGee wants them to have in mind about this ballot issue?

- The Jackson County legislature did not pick the site.

The teams did.

John Sherman didn't ask me my opinion about when he picked the site, right?

But obviously, I want every small business in Jackson County to thrive and have an opportunity.

And I'm very sympathetic to the work that you and your husband have put into your business.

And so, and of course, I believe that you and your husband should be treated fairly if this vote passes.

But let me just say this.

I think it's important to note, for voters to understand really two main things.

One is that this is not a tax increase, and that this is what we've been paying since 1972.

And it's also important to note that the question really is is that I agree with my friend here that there is not a lot of time to go through a lot of the details that we were talking about, that have been brought up specifically to The Crossroads.

But I think that it's important to note, the real question is, is do you want to try to retain two professional teams here?

And I think the answer is, for me, yes.

I think it's very important to me as an elected official that we have a strong community benefits agreement and that we're making sure that the teams are doing their part to benefit our community.

And I think that with the working with the legislators, not only in Jackson County but working with the city council people, I ensure that that will happen.

- Alright, well, that's the game.

You've been hearing from Sarah Hoffman, founder and owner of Green Dirt Farms, Gina Chiala, executive director and staff attorney at the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom.

Jeff Owens, vice President of the Crossroads Community Association and the managing partner at The Bauer, and DaRon McGee, 4th District Jackson County legislator.

Be sure to catch the rest of our reporting on the April 2nd vote to fund a new stadium at flatlandkc.org.

You can also watch a special Kansas City Weekend Review Town Hall on the stadium tax airing on Kansas City PBS.

I'm D. Rashaan Gilmore.

This has been Flatland in Focus.

Thank you for the pleasure of your time.

- [Narrator] Flatland in Focus is brought to you in part through the generous support of AARP, the Health Forward Foundation, and RSM.

(light music)