For the Royals downtown stadium to clear a key financing hurdle last week, Kansas City officials had to determine that the longtime, popular tourist destination Crown Center is blighted enough to warrant public investment.
And, by an 11-2 City Council vote on Thursday, they did. A third-party study commissioned by the Council found evidence of crumbling sidewalks, asbestos in buildings and aging infrastructure that was enough to fulfill the blight designation.
But Kansas City resident and activist Terrence Wise isn't buying it.
"For the city government just to take our tax dollars and give them away to billionaire John Sherman and the Royals to build a ballpark is just not right," Wise said.
The Council's argument, central to many tax increment financing deals in the metro, boils down to this: A tax incentive is necessary here because the blight keeps development from occurring on its own.
Wise disputes the findings that Crown Center is so deteriorated that it warrants public investment. He said a better use of the money would be to address the blight he sees in historically underserved neighborhoods like his, around 41st Street and Cleveland Avenue.
"There's food deserts all throughout our community. The infrastructure is bad, from the sidewalks to the roads," he said. "Those are the communities where I live, and (the issues) that are in our communities, that are truly blighted and live up to that definition."
"Those are communities that are truly in need of development," Wise said.
Wise is a member of Missouri Workers Power, the advocacy group behind efforts to put big-ticket stadium deals like the Royals ballpark before voters in an April 2027 ballot measure.
In a letter to City Manager Mario Vasquez and City Council earlier this month, the group wrote the Royals deal would consume capacity the city needs for all its other services.
"Thirty years of pledged revenue and a standing appropriation commit borrowing room and budget flexibility that water, transit, and housing all require," the letter states. "And they do it in a year when the city faces a budget shortfall, underfunded schools, a transit system in crisis, and a housing shortage working families cannot afford."
For Wise, the decision is simple.
"When we think about the things that tax dollars could do to benefit our community and improve Kansas Citians' lives, I don't think a ballpark downtown tops the list."
Is Crown Center blighted?
The TIF area for the new Royals stadium covers about 90.8 acres around Crown Center. For 30 years, revenue collected in that area from the capital improvement tax, parks tax, public safety tax, convention and tourism tax, food and beverage tax, utilities tax and earnings tax will be redirected from the city's budget to pay off the stadium. These so-called "economic activity taxes" are estimated to contribute $310.2 million to paying down Kansas City's stadium debt.
(This is different from a larger stadium impact area, where future increases in certain tax revenues will also help pay down the city's stadium debt.)
Kansas City's TIF program is governed by Missouri law, which defines blight as the "predominance of insanitary or unsafe conditions, deterioration of site improvements, or the existence of conditions which endanger life or property by fire and other causes." The existence of these conditions are then considered an "economic or social liability or a menace to the public health, safety, or welfare."
The commercial real estate firm in Chicago that did the blight study, Partner Valuation Advisors, cited a bevy of issues in and around the stadium footprint that meets the state's requirements.
One example points to uneven and crumbling sidewalks near Our Lady of Sorrows Church and the entrance to Hallmark's corporate offices. Another, the East Pershing and Gilham roads intersection, which the report says is unsafe for cars, pedestrians and cyclists — "a danger to life and property," it says.
Partner Valuation Advisors also found that asbestos in older buildings was a sign of unsanitary and unsafe conditions, and uneven floors and malfunctioning doors were safety risks.
Because 50% or more of the existing buildings in the stadium area are at least 35 years old, Partner Valuation Advisors found the Crown Center development also qualifies as a "conservation area."
"The capacity of this use to meet its intended goals is diminishing significantly, and there is certainly danger to the long term prosperity and consequences for Crown Center," Kenneth Jaggers, managing director with Partner Valuation Advisors, told Council members last week. "This area does not remotely live up to its potential."
The city's approval adds another TIF district to a downtown already teeming with them. More than a dozen TIFs are concentrated downtown, and city data from 2025 shows
71 active TIF districts across Kansas City.
Other popular parts of Kansas City are supported by a TIF too, like in the West Bottoms. The Country Club Plaza's new owners are seeking a second TIF for the shopping district (a previous one ended in 2025) that could net $210 million for public and private infrastructure improvements.
Are Kansas City's TIFs in the right places?
The preponderance of TIF districts isn't unique to Kansas City — the Federal Highway Administration notes thousands of them have been established around the U.S. in cities of all sizes — but critics of the mechanism say they're too often misused.
"The developers are coming in and asking city council or asking the mayor or asking the economic development agency to create a TIF district, and then they're seeking the justification after the fact," said Kristan Wong Karinen, an analyst who researches subsidies at the policy group Good Jobs First.
In Kansas City's case, Wong Karinen said the definition of blight is too broad.
"There's so many TIF districts in downtown Kansas City," she said, "which is a very happening place."
The result is TIF districts that crowd Kansas City's busy commercial areas, while historically disinvested parts of the city are left out of the development boom.
"So a lot of the areas of Kansas City that for most residents would meet the definition of blight, because there's no developer interested in developing the area, it doesn't get a TIF district."
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has maintained that the deal is an overall benefit to the city.
"For somebody who was born and raised in Kansas City, like I am and like many people who are watching on, seeing the transformational impact on our revered Crown Plaza district, on the core of our city — millions more visitors during summertime months," he said last week following the council vote. "I think it's an historic moment for Kansas City."
Only 1st District Council members Nathan Willett and Johnathan Duncan, from the 6th District, voted "no" on the TIF ordinance.
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