What Comes Next For Arrowhead Stadium?

Decisions, decisions.

The owner of the National Football League Kansas City Chiefs franchise, Clark Hunt, is locked into a lease to use the Jackson County, Missouri stadium his team calls home through the end of the 2030-31 season. Hunt is planning to build a stadium-village in Kansas about 23 miles from the Jackson County stadium starting with the 2031 NFL season. If all goes according to plan, Jackson County and Missouri will have an old football stadium and no tenant. Sure the building could hold concerts or other events but if the past is an example, the building will become a money draining relic as all the events will head over to the new stadium. The next question. What is to be done with the stadium?

In an interview with KCMO radio, Missouri House majority leader Jonathan Patterson claimed that it will cost $150 million to demolish the stadium, or $20 million a year to maintain it in its current form. There is also another problem, if county and state leaders want to demolish the facility, there is the adjacent stadium that hosts Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals franchise.  The Royals business owner John Sherman wants to leave the complex but has not made a decision on what he plans to do. In Pontiac, Michigan, it took many years and many plans but the Silverdome was eventually demolished 17 years after the NFL’s Detroit Lions business moved back to Detroit in 2001. The property now houses an Amazon distribution facility and delivery center. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who is working to keep Sherman’s baseball business in his city, said Hunt had a lucrative offer to stay. There was a $1.5 billion stadium renovation package on the table. Hunt is going to Kansas and will leave behind a massive real estate problem in Missouri.

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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com