KC worker and tenant groups pushing Royals to promise jobs, housing in new stadium deal

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Since moving to Kansas City from South Carolina two decades ago, Terrence Wise has struggled to make ends meet. He’s worked two jobs at once. Done gig work. Been evicted. Slung fast food. Gone without health insurance.

He worries that he and others who struggle to buy groceries and pay rent will be afterthoughts in the ongoing discussions about a new $1 billion Royals ballpark. Particularly if the team waits until a deal is struck with the politicians before engaging with him and other local advocates about promises to provide jobs and other perks for the surrounding community.

“Regardless of whether it’s north of the river, or south of the river, wherever it is, they don’t have to wait to come to the table and negotiate this community benefits agreement,” said Wise, a leader of Stand Up KC, which fights for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and is part of the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing For All Coalition.

The coalition includes groups that advocate for workers rights and racial justice. They want the Royals to promise that the team will pay stadium workers fair wages and provide affordable housing in neighborhoods surrounding the proposed stadium and $1 billion commercial real estate development that the Royals say will surround the ballpark.

And they want it legally binding in the form of a community benefits agreement. These contracts have become commonplace in the past couple of decades for big projects like stadiums and entertainments districts. In exchange for public subsidies, professional sports teams and developers pledge in a CBA to help the communities generous enough to provide them with tax breaks and other financial support.

It’s only fair, Wise said.

“They’re asking for a lot,” he said. “So we’re asking for something in return. Something to benefit from our tax dollars, from my tax dollars, and I’m not talking about free tickets to a Royals game, or Salvy (Royals catcher Salvador Perez) and some of the players holding a baseball camp, or dollar hot dogs.”

The Royals declined comment for this article. But the team has committed to signing a strong community benefits agreement ever since owner John Sherman announced more than a year ago his desire to have the Royals leave Kauffman Stadium for a new ballpark in downtown Kansas City.

But the Royals have also consistently said that those discussions are more appropriate after a site has been selected. And that’s been frustrating for those who think that now is the time to talk about issues that will be pertinent no matter where a stadium is built, if that’s what the voters want.

Why wait?

Among those pushing for the team’s engagement now is Jackson County legislator Manny Abarca, who showed his solidarity early on by speaking at a rally outside City Hall in downtown Kansas City this summer in support of a living wage and affordable housing for the people who will work in and around a new ballpark.

“I will stand up for all of what Stand Up KC stands for,” he said in an interview last week. The team shouldn’t have to wait to pick a site to discuss wage and job preference rules for stadium workers, he said.

“Regardless where it’s at, they can do that ahead of a lease agreement,” he said. “Honestly, the CBA has to be part of the lease before it goes on the ballot,” Abarca said.

Currently, the main focus of stadium talks is in downtown Kansas City. The team has been in separate negotiations with city and Jackson County officials over the possibility that a new downtown stadium and ballpark district might rise from the vacant land and surface parking lots of Kansas City’s East Village.

The Royals have also been in dialogue with Clay County and North Kansas City officials for months about putting the proposed stadium and ballpark commercial district up north. Although those talks by all accounts aren’t quite as advanced, but could take off if negotiations with Kansas City and Jackson County should stall.

Jackson County Executive Frank White’s administration and the Royals have agreed not to discuss negotiations while they are in progress.

Rents, schools and small businesses

The Royals would like to get a stadium tax issue on the April ballot, which could be tough given all that needs to be done. For the stadium to be downtown, Jackson County would have to have new leases negotiated with the Royals and the Chiefs by January. Both teams would benefit from any extension of the current 3/8th-cent countywide sales tax that pays the debt incurred for renovations at the Truman Sports Complex more than a decade ago and provides money to both teams for stadium maintenance and repairs and operations.

The Chiefs have said they would like to stay put and make use of the space that Kauffman Stadium now occupies.

That tight timeframe explains the growing urgency felt by those who have so far been shut out of lease discussions and want to have input into what would be in the community benefits agreement.

Among them is the renters’ rights group KC Tenants, which has been asking for a meeting with the Royals since March to discuss how a downtown stadium might lead to the displacement and higher housing costs for residents of the low-income neighborhoods to the east of the proposed stadium site.

The Royals have said they are interested in an affordable housing component in a community benefits agreement, but what form has not been discussed publicly.

The Kansas City school district also feels shut out and worries that generous property tax breaks for a downtown stadium will hurt the district budget.

“It has become increasingly evident that next steps for a new Royals stadium are imminent,” Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Collier wrote in an Oct. 16 letter addressed to Sherman, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, Jackson County Executive Frank White and members of the Kansas City Council and Jackson County Legislature.

“As KCPS has not yet had a seat at the table in these negotiations, we request that no significant decisions are finalized until we are included.”

The city of Independence isn’t itching to talk with the team, but officials are hopeful that the city’s concerns are taken into account in any community benefits agreement.

A recent study showed business would suffer at small bars and restaurants in Independence that rely on game-day customers, should the Royals leave Kauffman Stadium.

“I was very happy and filled with hope and optimism when a local billionaire, John Sherman, led the group that bought the Royals,” Independence Mayor Pro-Tem Dan Hobart said, “because I felt very comfortable that somebody like him with Midwestern values would not hold the town hostage, that he would not leave Kansas City, and that if something like this came up and he ended the lease early that he would do right by the county…and that he will do right by the places that are affected by this like Independence.”

What form that might take in a community benefits agreement, he wasn’t sure.

‘Clock’s ticking’

It’s unclear where those negotiations stand. The Royals had originally wanted to announce their choice of a stadium site by late September, then backed off that deadline.

Lately, the team’s main focus has been on getting a deal done soon and with that January ballot deadline looming, Wise is growing nervous.

“That’s why it’s so urgent for us to get an agreement,” he said. “The clock’s ticking,” Wise said.

But Rose Welch, lead organizer for the union that represents 650 to 700 workers at Kauffman Stadium – Service Employees International Union Local 1 – says the time schedule set by the Royals is self-imposed. Nothing is dictating a move to a new stadium by 2028 but Sherman’s desire to do so, she said. The team’s lease runs until Jan. 31, 2031. So it’s up to the Royals, she said, to make time now to sit down and negotiate a community benefits agreement that is more than an afterthought.

“The Royals have been promising Kansas City an economically beneficial stadium development, and we believe that a strong community benefits agreement is the only way for the Royals to fulfill that promise.”

And she thinks one can be worked out quickly as her union sent the Royals its proposals months ago.

All current stadium workers could keep their jobs and receive a living wage, under that proposal. Currently wages average $17 an hour, she said, but not all make that. And they would be union jobs.

“We have the draft language ready,” she said. “Other stadiums have done exactly what it is that we’re are asking for that, at this point, is boilerplate for community benefits agreements.”