The Kansas City Royals now have someone sitting on their side of the table for a $3 billion downtown build. The team named Legends Global owner’s representative for its new ballpark and the 85-acre district around it at Crown Center, according to a Legends release dated Oct. 22.
Legends will handle budgeting, schedule, quality and risk control for the Royals, and it’ll be the team’s point of contact with the builders and designers. “There is no precedent for a sports-anchored project of this size in any city’s downtown,” said Brooks Sherman, the Royals’ president of real estate and development.
The Royals ballpark construction team is now set
The rest of the team was already in place. In September the Royals picked a Mortenson and McCownGordon Construction joint venture as construction manager at risk for the roughly 34,000-seat, 1.25-million-square-foot open-air stadium, and JE Dunn to work on the surrounding neighborhood. Populous, the Kansas City firm, is designing the ballpark. Hallmark Cards, which owns Crown Center, is the Royals’ development partner.
That’s a lot of heavyweights on one site, and the owner’s rep hire is a sign the Royals know it. McCownGordon, JE Dunn and Populous are all Kansas City firms, so the team wants an outside voice watching the budget. Legends brings stadium owner’s rep experience that isn’t tied to any of them.
Carving a stadium out of limestone
The site is the hard part. Building at Crown Center means digging a hole about 90 feet deep and cutting the structure into limestone bluffs, KCUR reported after the Oct. 14 design reveal. Two existing above-ground garages will be kept.
The design has four decks, with the upper and club decks 20 feet closer to the field than at Kauffman Stadium, two 360-degree concourses, a canopy meant to shade up to 65% of fans at afternoon games and a crown-topped scoreboard. Capacity drops by about 3,900 seats from Kauffman’s 37,903, plus room for 3,000 standing.
Rock excavation at that depth, in a dense urban block, is where schedules and budgets usually move first. Expect the early bid packages to be excavation, rock removal and earth retention well before any steel shows up.
Kansas City ballpark schedule and public money
Groundbreaking could come around the middle of 2027, with opening targeted for the 2030 season. Construction Dive put the ballpark itself at $1.9 billion. The project is majority privately funded, but Kansas City’s council approved tax increment financing and bonds backing the city’s $600 million commitment. An ordinance authorized $615.2 million in construction bonds, and city documents show the debt could reach $1.3 billion over 30 years.
Big downtown arenas are moving fast in the region. Oklahoma City’s Flintco-Mortenson arena has already pushed past $1 billion. Kansas City’s job is bigger and sits on harder ground, which is why the owner’s rep came on before the first shovel.