The Royals and Chiefs are asking for trust they haven’t earned

“Concrete cancer” sounds like something you’d yell at a passerby for an easy jump scare, but it is unfortunately a very real term and the latest subject in a long saga of stadium discourse. I am tired of this discourse, but it continues regardless. I am particularly tired with the official positions of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals, and I can’t help but feel like I’m being talked down to like a child who can’t think critically.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with some stuff we know for sure.

The whole impetus for the new stadium discourse at all is because the current leases on Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead end in 2031. Both the Chiefs and Royals would like to do some very expensive work to these big pieces of city infrastructure, and in some ways they feel like they need to in order to compete with their peers. The Royals want to build a new stadium downtown. The Chiefs want to demolish Kauffman Stadium and renovate Arrowhead. To do so, they are seeking an extension of the existing 3/8 cent sales tax that funneled money towards the teams.

Still with me? Good. Unfortunately, it rapidly gets more dodgy from here. See, the core arguments between the two teams for why Jackson County voters should assent to such a tax are very, very different.

The Royals had to do more legwork. People enjoy and even love Kauffman Stadium; it’s the sixth-oldest existing MLB park and is itself an iconic venue that’s hosted multiple World Series and multiple All-Star Games. It is very difficult to express to suburbanites that a downtown ballpark would be plenty convenient, actually, and besides it’s often hard to sell something so incredibly new whatever the context. So, the Royals had to do two things here: they had to sell a downtown ballpark and sell that they couldn’t renovate Kauffman.

To do that, the Royals talked about how bad the bones of the stadium had gotten. They’ve been doing so for over a year, and the Kansas City Star published an excellent write-up of the issue last January. The upshot is that the Royals are claiming that it would not be financially viable to renovate Kauffman Stadium:

But the Royals and their consultants also say The K would need too much work to serve as the team’s long-time home. They say it would cost as much or more to make the repairs the stadium will need in the future to remain viable.

“It’s becoming challenging to maintain the K,” team owner John Sherman said in a letter to the community last fall explaining why he would like the team to play future games at a new downtown address. “A new home would be a far better investment, both for the local taxpayer dollars already supporting our facility and the Kansas City community.”

...According to experts at the Kansas City-based sports architecture firm Populous, the structure suffers from something called alkali silica reaction, or ASR. Moisture absorbed by the concrete causes the material to swell, crack and crumble, which is called spalling. “This is typically known as cancer of the concrete,” Sarah Dempster, a principal at Populous, said at a public meeting last month.

Put a pin in that for just a second. Pivoting to the Chiefs: their argument is really simple. The back-to-back champions of the NFL want to renovate Arrowhead, a stadium so beloved that it is a one-word place despite the ubiquitous “GEHA Field” signs everywhere. They’re not asking for a whole new building—they want to make the current one better, alongside improving the tailgating experience and the game day experience as a whole. It’s easier to get fans to buy into the vision.

On its face, both arguments make sense, regardless of whether or not they’re worth the public money the teams are asking for. But combine them and the math stops adding up. See, both stadiums were constructed simultaneously in the same sports complex and opened within six months of each other. Their bones were built at the same time, primarily out of concrete.

This is also a “well, duh” moment. But consider: the Royals want to move because in part the concrete isn’t viable for the long haul. Their neighbors, on the other hand, are somehow fine where they are with staying for the next 40 years.

Chiefs President Mark Donovan was asked about that at a press conference at the end of February. Donovan did not respond along the lines of, “Yeah, we’ll be addressing foundational work in our renovation” or “you’ll have to ask the Royals, that’s not my problem.” He responded with something far, far more ridiculous:

Donovan chalked the contrast up to construction differences.

“Believe it or not,” Donovan said, “one team got a good batch of concrete, one team didn’t.”

One team god a good batch of concrete and one team didn’t? So, the Chiefs and Royals expect the public to believe that two stadiums constructed out of the same material and built by the same contractors on the same plot of land at the same time have completely different foundational issues? I don’t eat much seafood, but I sure do know something that’s fishy when I see it.

Remember when I said to put a pin in our concrete cancer discussion—let’s take it out now. The Royals’ initial report claiming Populous Back when the first discussions of concrete cancer were happening, there was plenty of skepticism even then because a stadium assessment report by Burns & McDonnell does not mention it as an issue. This directly contradicted what the Royals claimed their Populous report said. At the time, the Royals insisted that the two reports were different things and they have consistently done so since the aforementioned Star article was written. Here’s what the Royals explicitly said in January 2023.

“The shortest and simplest answer is that these are two very different reports aimed at very different objectives. One is an annual repair plan and the other is about long-term viability,” the Royals said. “The study referenced in the public meeting came from a leading structural engineer of sports facilities. This firm knows our building well after working on the 2008 renovation. We asked them to evaluate long-term structural issues and the feasibility of extending the existing structure for 40 more years.”

At the core of this specific issue is that the Burns & McDonnell assessment report that does not mention concrete cancer is publicly available and that the Populous report that the Royals keep referring to is decidedly unavailable. Both The Kansas City Star and county officials have requested to see the Populous report and were denied.

Now, the Royals are a private entity. They don’t have to reveal anything they don’t want to. And if they were building their shiny new stadium on their own, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, they are not building it on their own. They are building it with a hell of a lot of public money, the kind of money that could go towards things like, you know, schools and roads and libraries and programs to help the homeless and whatnot. And so the calculus must change.

Frank White, Jackson County Executive and seemingly the only politician in the city to attempt to hold anybody accountable, wrote a letter to the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority to ask they look into this whole concrete cancer debacle:

Mr. Donovan has publicly stated that Arrowhead Stadium does not suffer from “concrete cancer’ or Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR), whereas Kauffman Stadium, constructed in the same period and ostensibly with the same materials does due to a purportedly “bad batch” of concrete. This assertion raises significant questions, particularly as the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority’s annual facility report has made no mention of ASR or similar structural concerns.

...We formally request that the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority initiate an immediate and thorough investigation into the veracity of Mr. Donovan’s statements. It is crucial that this investigation: 1. Assess the current structural condition of both Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums, with a specific focus on the presence of ASR or any other forms of concrete degradation; 2. Review the maintenance and repair records of both stadiums to evaluate whether appropriate measures have been taken to ensure their “first class condition,” as required by our agreements with both teams; 3. Make the findings of this investigation public at the earliest possible convenience.

It’s that last quoted point that’s really important: make the findings of this investigation public. The Royals keep on insisting until their tongues fall out that the studies are different, and if it’s really true that Kauffman Stadium can’t be renovated because of foundational issues, then an independent study would support that.

All Frank White and myself and lots of others want here is for this to make sense. It does not, not without a big missing piece. And until someone can independently verify what the Royals are saying here or the Royals reveal some of their proprietary information, that trust the team is asking for just isn’t there.