A Formula One style race track around Arrowhead.

It's one of two ambitious new proposals unveiled this week for the Truman Sports Complex, once the Chiefs and royals have gone.

Plus, could the wrecking ball hit the hallmark headquarters by December?

New details emerge on the Royals Crown Center Bowl park plan, including an economic study projecting a 20% jump in attendance of games.

Is that realistic?

And what the data centers and school closings now have in common can both be stopped simply by collecting enough signatures.

Plus, could President Trump be in Kansas City as early as next week?

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of Bob and Marley's family.

The Francis Family Foundation through the discretionary fund of David and Janice Francis, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Nick Haines, and glad to have you with us again on our weekly journey through the Metro's most impactful, confusing, and downright head scratching local news stories.

Hopping on board the Weekend Review bus this week from the prime time anchor desk at KMBC nine News Chris Ketz at the helm of our Metro's newest newspaper.

Next page KC Eric Wesson from KCUR news, local government reporter Savannah Bates and former star staffer, now Mr.

Kansas City.

Stack on Substack Dave Helling.

Now, after months of waiting, we finally got more definitive details this week on the new Royals downtown ballpark, including when construction will get underway and a new economic study that predicts a 20% jump in attendance at Royals games.

We'll get into that in just a moment.

But first, the wrecking ball.

Royals owner John Sherman says he hopes to start demolishing Hallmark's corporate headquarters as early as December, clearing one of the biggest pieces of the stadium footprint.

But wait a minute, didn't the city Council just agree to let voters weigh in on stadium funding in April?

Is the idea to get so much work underway, Savannah, that by the time voters have their say, well, there's no turning back.

Well, there's already a disagreement about what the April ballot measure will do.

The group that put it on the ballot, Sam Casey, the Missouri Worker Center, they say that, you know, if voters approve it and and say that they want to, you know, have a say in these stadiums, that part of the royals progress will have to be halted and will have to go to a vote to every step of the way.

So they say that, you know, they should take caution on their whatever construction they do before the vote.

City Hall Mayor Clint Lucas says that, because the city council has already voted on part of the royals measure that, this isn't going to be affected by this ballot measure.

That would only affect, you know, future projects.

So there's it's already probably bound for the courts.

How exactly?

I mean, how could you have such wildly different interpretations?

And is it just going to be like the Missouri map?

This is going to be now a legal fight?

That's for a while.

Just for you.

Just it really you just read my mind, the wrecking ball, by the way, probably isn't going to happen in December.

Look for it to happen probably before the April vote.

I think it's going to be next year before that happens.

But yes, this has this has court fight written all over it.

And in this case, Mayor Quinton Lucas is playing the Denny Hoskins rule by hoping he can delay and stretch things out enough and make the election in April superfluous.

Whether that turns out to be the case or not is not clear at this point.

One other thing I'd just quickly note as well, if they're going to destroy Hallmark's headquarters now, before we have any idea where hallmark is going to go, they haven't their Tiff plan.

Their reconstruction remains very much up in the air.

That tells you how empty that building is, because they don't really feel it's essential to running their company.

That is a an underreported part of the entire Royal Stadium deal, which is the hallmark.

People are really getting a bailout.

Absolutely.

And actually, I have a neighbor who works there, and I got to go there for lunch, and it is a ghost town.

I don't think that the voters are being respected, because I think the intent in collecting the signatures was to stop everything, let the taxpayers have a voice in it.

And, a Duncan councilman Duncan brought a whole lot of really good information and nobody's really paid attention to until he went on social media talking about this project.

Might be in the billions of dollars on the taxpayers.

Well, let's let's talk about then the putting that financial dollars together.

Following the money this week, the city releases an economic impact report on the new ballpark.

An outside consultancy firm projects it will generate $1.4 billion in revenue from the city for 81 game days to concerts and an All-Star game.

The city also reveals the boundaries of the taxing district that will be used to help pay back the stadium's construction cost.

It's a four mile radius around the stadium.

That means even if you bought a glass of wine before a symphony concert at the Kauffman Center, you'll be helping pay for the new ballpark.

Now, Matt Lucas calls it a great deal, noting the tax district is 52 times smaller than the one supporting the Chiefs new stadium in Kansas.

And so what I see today is actually fairly positive third party assessment of what we've been saying all along.

I think what you saw was a model that pays off, certainly all of our debt and we would say looks to help fund and rebuild downtown long term.

All righty then, Dave.

So this makes it a better deal than what Kansas taxpayers are getting with the new Chief Stadium.

Very similar to what Kansas is doing.

It's just a little cheaper to build a baseball stadium than a football stadium.

That's why the districts may be a little bit different.

But let's be very clear, Nick, about what the city is facing.

The city is on the hook for $50 million a year for the next 30 years, more or less to pay for the stadium.

And they will have to pay that.

No matter how attendance is registered.

It's really a fiction to believe that it's coming from the district or the ballpark.

It's just accounting.

The reality is we're on the hook for 50 million.

It's very easy to get.

It's very easy to get overwhelmed by all of the different numbers.

You see an economic impact reports like this and glaze over in this economic impact study.

We learn that actually be 20% more fans going to games than we currently have at the Truman Sports Complex.

The Economic Impact Report says an average of 26,000 fans attending, Royals games downtown.

That's going to be about 4000 more people wanting to watch the Royals than where they are now.

Is that, hopeful?

And that's probably a charitable way of putting it.

Listen, forgive your average Kansas City and who looks at an economic impact study like this and says to themselves, no way, this is B.S.

and you don't have to look very far to see other illustrations of where these kinds of reports are.

Way off the dime.

And, you know, if your tooth comes out, you can put it under your pillow and a little fairy will come in and give you a quarter when you wake up.

Well, it's a dollar now, but when we were growing up, it was a quarter.

And and one of the interesting things about these maps that they have is the 18th and Vine Jazz District was included in there.

But there is some pushback from people in that community because, hey, we weren't good enough for you to build a stadium here.

Why are we good enough for you to take our tax revenue or include our tax revenue that we're going to need to develop the district and put it into a stadium that none of that you said you didn't want to put in our area.

They are talking about more than 4000 more fans going to games than we currently have today.

If that doesn't work out, how much of this financial deal starts to unravel?

Well, again, it doesn't unravel at all because we've got to come up with the money, okay?

No one shows up.

I mean, it's all just, a show for the cameras to suggest that.

Well, we're taking money from the stadium and from the nearby restaurants.

By the way, I did a little research there.

The Royals have played for 58 years.

In those 58 years, 14 years, they've drawn more than the projection is, for for the new stadium.

So in their good years, they can actually draw a pretty good crowd.

In their bad years, they do not.

One other quick thing to, throw out.

Eric just mentioned Jonathan Duncan, concerned about the interest costs now for this proposal.

We've talked about that on this show for a year for anyone to say, oh, I just figured out we have to pay interest on this.

Along with writing about this, I've been writing about it for, you know, back when I was with the star, I mean, it.

So it's.

And by the way, it's the same for the Chiefs Stadium in Wyandotte County.

You have to pay interest when you borrow money.

That's anyone who's ever bought a house knows how that works.

I have never seen in my career a project of this magnitude with so little important scrutiny from the City Council, and we will continue to scrutinize on this program.

In other news, this week, the public finally got a chance to weigh in on what is likely to be the most disruptive local news story of 2027.

The extraordinary 11 month closure of I-70 is going to slow us down tremendously.

I've have to have a lot of patience and everyone's patience is going to be challenged 1,000%.

Starting in January, MoDOT plans to close I-70 in both directions.

You heard me right.

For four miles between downtown and the Truman Sports Complex, and it's expected to stay closed for the rest of the year.

The public finally got that chance to hear the details this week about what this will mean for drivers, including how it all supposed to get to work.

We used to construction crews closing a lane or two.

Chris, why shut down an entire interstate?

Because this part of I-70 is just an absolute mess.

And that's not breaking news.

Everybody knows that anybody who's traveled on that highway knows that, I don't know if there's a better way to do this, though, because you're talking about attention on what is it, 23 bridges essentially between Prospect and Van Brunt.

They're adding a fourth eastbound lane.

I don't know how you can do that over time, as opposed to just biting the bullet and doing it all at once.

I thought there was.

The MoDOT project manager was at one of the hearings this week, and he's worried about safety.

He said this the modeling we did showed 15 minute delays that if there are no accidents, and that's for two years instead of 11 months.

So two years, 50 minutes delays with no accidents.

So, but would the drivers have preferred to have that option to be able to say what they wanted?

I mean, would some people prefer delays for 50, 50 minutes for two years versus closing it entirely for 11 months?

I go that way every day to and fro work.

I would rather just close that you want it over with because you're in probably a 30 minute delay anyway, as it is now, when you come through there at rush hour, where it goes from three lanes to two lanes to one lane, back to three lanes.

So I think people just want to get it over with.

Okay, 40 highway now will be a mess for people that go on.

Exactly what I we just shifting the misery from I-70 to neighborhood streets.

Absolutely.

And I think it's misery either way.

I mean, when you're facing the necessity to, to do a project so that you have to close down a highway, I mean, we see construction cones all the time.

I'm sure they came to this decision very slowly.

Thankfully, there's a lot of east west routes.

435, 23 Truman 24.

But they will all be challenged, next year doing this.

And I will certainly have to redo my commute.

And guess what?

This is not only going to be the only disruption on that route.

Kansas City has just greenlighted construction to start on the Roy Blunt Luminary Park.

That means putting a concrete lid over at least one full block of ice, 670 between Bartle Hall and T-Mobile center, and that work is going to last for two years.

Dave.

Well, there are, significant safety concerns.

Not only in how the park will operate, but how you build it.

I mean, when you go over an interstate that is as busy as that section, you have to be pretty careful for the workers and others involved.

So it's going to take some time.

And, you know, the engineering for a park over a highway is different than just putting another bridge or some other, you know, a statue or something over the, over the overpass.

So it's it's a complicated deal.

So should we be, asking our bosses to just let us work from home for the entirety of 2027?

Reckon you might have to, with those two projects?

Well, coming up next, a Formula One style race track around Arrowhead Stadium, one of two ambitious proposals revealed this week for the future of the Truman Sports Complex after the teams officially leave.

The second concept is a massive new entertainment district where you can live, eat, shop and play, and in both versions, Arrowhead survives.

Coffman Stadium does not.

The plans were unveiled this week by County Executive Phil, a voter.

This can happen.

This is the first stage of planning.

This is about private and public partnership moving forward and keeping Arrowhead as the anchor.

And we can do such great things with Arrowhead Stadium and move it around that with residences, with entertainment, with a transit hub right there and 400 acres of Jackson County, the prime location of the county.

So this is the start.

And the future legislature, future executive can build on that.

And when the teams leave in three or 4 or 5 years, we'll have something even bigger.

Better.

Now, the Jackson County Executive is clearly all in, but isn't he going to be out of office in about two months?

So how seriously should we take these sketches and plans or their ideas and I mean ideas with a capital I. I think we're all about to find out just how expensive it's going to be, not necessarily to walk away from the Truman Sports Complex, but to reimagine it.

We don't even know how much money it's going to cost to tear down Kauffman Stadium, much less maintain Arrowhead Stadium into the future, or whatever these other projects are going to cost.

Nobody knows how much and who's going to pay for it.

While again, I think there's probably value in beginning the discussion, we're a long way away from formula one, even expressed an interest in being in Kansas.

I'm not a formula one guy.

Maybe there has been a phone call or two, I don't know, but that's these are the kinds of things where I think people look at them and, and come up with way more reasons why it won't work than it would.

I find it also interesting if, you know, Jackson County couldn't build a thriving entertainment district in 50 years, that we had the Royals and the Chiefs there, why do they feel somehow that we can do it now with the teams gone?

Well, I think that's exactly the question.

This development has not happened before.

The Jackson County plan, which is a very generous word for what this is, is doesn't include any development goals, timelines, and it relies a lot on private funding and private development, which hasn't wanted to be in the area for decades.

And so how they're going to spin this into something when there's not a football team to anchor it?

I'm not sure, but I don't think they're going to have an easy time just creating another legend that has an F1 track.

I did some work on this for my Substack about a year ago.

The auditor Missouri auditor, put out a report on the what we all know is the TWA dome or the Edward Jones Dome.

The dome in Saint Louis.

And when the Rams left in 2016, that was basically empty.

But the city decided, let's keep it open if we can, which they have, it needs a $150 million worth of repairs, and no one knows where the money's going to come from.

They did get some money when the Rams and the city settled their lawsuit.

But beyond that, how do we pay for the upkeep at Arrowhead, let alone all the other things that are proposed in the Livonia scheme?

As I put it, it's a very complicated.

Well, you surprised Eric in both of the options here, though, that it's Kauffman Stadium disappears completely, but Arrowhead is going to remain there.

I wasn't surprised about Kauffman because Kauffman really.

Well, they got concrete canceled that we learned as to why they need to move downtown to begin with.

Right.

But I think that they can do it in that complex.

I'm not a Formula One person, but I think if they did the entertainment district around Arrowhead and not have to include independence, Raytown and Kansas City and and development of that area, I think they would be good.

That's one of the biggest problems they had with development, because you had all those municipalities that wanted different things and no history here whatsoever in terms of development.

None.

Right.

And it's a it's like they said, it's a tricky area to develop because it's sort of in between all of these municipalities.

We're all talking about an F1 racetrack because that's the most, you know out there idea that they have.

But every idea on this list, including it being a transit hub, is far fetched because it hasn't been able to work the transit needs way more funding than the counties have are provided.

We're not going to be able to get busses there, much less F1 race cars that kind of throw in just one other thing.

One of the linchpins of the Livonia scheme is to use Arrowhead for concerts and other events.

Once the football team leaves, Arrowhead will be in competition with the new Chiefs Stadium in Wyandotte County.

And if you were to, as I wrote, Taylor Swift and you were coming to Kansas City for a concert, would you do it in the new stadium in Wyandotte County or Old Arrowhead?

And I think asking that question answers itself.

I just pictures are pretty, but this does not appear to have been thought, oh, are we just a delaying the inevitable here that really ultimately, we're just waiting for the ribbon cutting on a mega data center on that now.

And I've thought that all along.

And I know that's not a popular thing to talk about, anywhere, much less the site of the Truman Sports Complex.

But again, seeing what the future of this complex is going to be is is difficult.

And as I as I said before, I think it's going to be incredibly expensive.

Could President Trump be in the Kansas City area as early as next week?

The Washington news site Politico is reporting that Trump is planning an aggressive final month campaign blitz, with stops in at least ten states, including Kansas.

The president hasn't visited the Kansas City area since 2018.

Is a presidential visit to Kansas the political equivalent of pulling the fire alarm?

Dave.

Well, it is, and it will be a controversial, decision if indeed he does come here because there are people who will tell you in the Republican Party that the last thing they want to do is remind voters of Donald Trump and his policies, which have been a problem, particularly in western Kansas.

Tariffs, beef prices, fuel, fertilizer, all of it.

But I you know, I think there is a theory that he can energize the base, which is un energized as we sit here today.

And maybe that would have some marginal benefit for Roger Marshall.

One other quick thing, but opinions and votes are locking in now.

So if he's going to come he needs to do it relatively quickly.

If he waits until the last week, maybe.

But isn't it really about trying to get more people to the polls who already support Republicans?

They still outnumber Democrats in the state.

You know, at the end of the day, maybe the Marshall campaign doesn't have a whole lot to say on this.

If Donald Trump wants to come to Kansas, Donald Trump is going to come to Kansas.

And it may not necessarily be all about trying to save Roger Marshall, but maybe improving his own, brand.

But but we've all seen the polling.

We all know how unpopular he is.

This the safe answer to that is no.

And today's point that might generate, generate interest within their, their base until they go to the gas pump and get some have to buy some diesel fuel for their tractors and then remind them why and how they got to this point.

The other thing to keep in mind is Roger Marshall's biggest problem is Johnson County.

Johnson County, which was once very reliably Republican, is now very much purple or even, slightly blue.

He comes to this era, he will remind every Johnson County voter of his crudity, his, his, megalomania, all the other things involved in his presidency that might be controversial, which is why if he's going to come here, probably Wichita is a better option at Johnson County.

Democrats are sort of salivating over this race, but what indicators are there for Republicans to be optimistic about keeping this seat?

Well, they've won it for 94 years in a row, and they're the muscle memory in Kansas of supporting Republicans for the Senate is very strong.

And he does.

Roger Marshall maintains some support in western Kansas, where a Johnson County preacher might not be as well known.

So I would, sitting here today think Marshall is still a slight favorite, but but and the New York Times poll that people are now hanging their hats on.

I mean, they've had a margin of error, almost 5%.

Yeah, 6% of voters still said that either refused to say who were they going to vote for or said they still didn't know.

All thought Greg Orman was going to do a nip.

Pat Roberts at the end.

Orman lost by 11 points.

So that muscle memory is the last time I looked at Still Kansas.

Yeah, already.

What do giant data centers and closing neighborhoods schools certainly have in common?

Apparently, if you don't like the decision, you start collecting signatures.

Just days after the Atlanta School board unanimously voted to close six schools, angry parents have launched a petition drive to force a state review.

They need roughly 6100 valid signatures to make it happen.

There's a lot of, frustration, a lot of anger.

I would be lying if I didn't say, I feel terrible that we're in this position.

I wish we weren't.

Ultimately, we just want our voices heard.

You're displacing a lot of kids, and we just want to make sure before you do that, that this really is the only option that's left available.

Are petition drives becoming the new veto battle for unpopular local decisions?

I mean, I think where they can be.

Yes.

And when they can't be, like with data centers, in the case of independents, people are just getting voted out or recalled.

I think the shock with the school closures is, you know, they have been successful push back in some cases before the Kansas City public school District ultimately reconsidered its plan for closures.

But there were ten schools who were going to be closing.

I don't remember the big petition drives on that, though, but there was a lot of pushback.

They it came before the need for a petition drive.

But I think the example here with the is that, you know, these the, the need, whatever it may be for closures is not just in urban school districts.

It's also in affluent suburban school districts as well.

There is a population decline, especially with elementary schools.

Maybe you can't have one in your backyard anymore.

You might have to drive a little bit further.

It's really jarring because it wasn't and I don't know what the numbers are right now, but Olathe was the biggest school district in the entire city, in the entire area, and now we're in this situation.

They need 6100 valid signatures by the middle of next month.

They have a group of about 50 volunteers working hard to get that.

I think it's a pretty tall order.

Even if opponents collect those signatures, even if they it's just delaying this decision.

Even if they get the state Board of Education to be interested in this particular story, there's nothing binding about what the state board of Ed, would do at the end.

What was fascinating to me about the story, by the way, is that the reasons behind it, compared to what we've seen in other school district closings, fewer people having babies, they pointed out, are not enough affordable housing for families.

Right.

And as Savannah points out, this is an issue all over the metro area.

And really nationwide.

You know, schools build buildings and spend lots of money to educate kids.

And then the attendance patterns and fewer children and older neighborhoods, it becomes a very, a very challenging environment.

Let me also just say you hit on something very important about the use of petitions in the current environment, distrust of government organizations top to bottom is rampant.

People don't think that their elected representatives are representing their views and they are turning to petition drives.

And that is a sea change in the way we conduct.

And the word they used.

The parents felt blindsided.

It was a very quick decision.

They didn't feel their voices were heard.

Now, when you put a program like this together every week, you can't get to every story grabbing the headlines.

What was the big local story we missed while school closings in or later are topping the headlines, a growing number of area districts feeling the pinch.

North Kansas City schools now dealing with a $16 million deficit.

The Casey K fire chief abruptly resigns amid reports of mounting tensions with the firefighters union over staffing the Kcpd investigating fraud and embezzlement allegations at the Kansas City Hispanic Chamber.

Its longtime leader has resigned.

And remembering a local legend.

Take me out to the ball game.

Take me out to the crowd.

20 years ago this week, Kansas City fans were mourning the death of Buck O'Neil.

His legacy lives on at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and in the Buck O'Neil seat to every Royals home game.

No word on whether his special seat will be included in the new stadium at Crown Center.

Three strikes you out at the old ball game.

All righty, Chris Katz, did he pick one of those stories or something completely different?

How did it get to be 20 years after the pass?

That's an amazing.

Wow.

Getting back to the Hamilton, Marshall race for just a moment.

The widely read, widely respected Cook Political Report sees this race now as a toss up from lean Republican.

We know what the race looks like to us.

I think it's interesting that the national media sees it as very tight.

Eric, I want to use that to only I want to switch it to the charts that are the camp that used the, they used their camp in the commercial that they had nothing to do with, and they sent out a cease and desist.

This week.

I got a, email from some of the members.

They got 250 members that signed a petition asking them to stop using the commercial after the news story broke when they went to commercial.

That was the commercial break.

Okay, Savannah, but a little bit of mischief.

The Sternberg Natural History Museum at Fort Hays State University was going to have to close because of a lack of state funding to the university.

But after, community fundraising and support, they're able to stay open at least another year.

So it has a bit of a future ahead of it.

And they did that without a petition drive.

Okay.

Well, that day I looked for a story I wrote on my Substack this week.

I looked at, a report from the city on the sales tax collections during the World Cup in Kansas City.

To see if they went dramatically up because of all our visitors.

And, the figures show that sales tax collections went up about $2.1 million from this June, when the World Cup was here, to June of 2025.

That's a lot of money.

It's not nearly enough to cover the investment that the city made in the World Cup.

Convention and tourism taxes were flat.

So we're going to have to get our enjoyment of the Cup somewhere other than at the cash register.

It looks like I know that we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of KCUR's Savannah Bates and Chann nine anchor Chris Ketz from next page KC, Eric Wesson and news icon and Mister Kansas City stack on Substack Dave Helling next week, we shift into election mode.

While so many of us seem to have already made up our minds in the big political races on both sides of state line, there are more than half a dozen major ballot questions that we will also be deciding.

We debate the non-citizen voting amendment in Kansas with its supporters and opponents, and we dissect Missouri's seismic amendments on abortion, gender transition surgeries, initiative petitions and the referendum on Missouri's congressional map.

It's an hour long on the ballot special next week.

Would you join us?

Until then, I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City PBS.

Be well, keep calm.

Carry on.