Screw it, let’s put the new Royals stadium at the Mission Gateway site

Why not?

Ever since Kansas City Royals majority owner John Sherman floated the idea of a new Royals stadium in September 2021, Royals fans and city residents alike have wondered about the location for where this new stadium would be. In April 2024, Jackson County Voters rejected a proposal that would have placed the new stadium in the Crossroads Arts District just south of the T-Mobile Center, necessitating a new site (or a new proposal) for the stadium.

In the long timeline of the Royals new stadium push, countless locations have been proposed. There’s the current flavor of the month site, which is at Washington Square Park by Union Station. Before then, there were potential sites at the East Village and at 18th & Vine, as well as one in the Northland.

But none of those sites have worked out because none of those sites are the best sites. Come on, Royals, just say “screw it” and put it at the best site possible: the Mission Gateway site.

What is the Mission Gateway site?

“Mission Gateway” is the name for a development on the former site of the Mission Mall in Mission, Kansas. Bordered by Johnson Drive on the north, Roe Avenue on the east, Roeland Drive on the west, and Shawnee Mission Parkway on the south, the site encompasses 17 acres and has stood in varying stages of disrepair for two decades since the mall was demolished.

If you’ve driven by it at all since the pandemic, you’ve seen the remnants of halted construction that has not been touched since the pandemic. The site is once again in limbo, as the county yanked tax credits for the project after payments weren’t received.

Could you even build a stadium there?

Let’s talk space: yes, you could build an MLB stadium at the Mission Gateway site. I drew a little trapezoid on the map above, which shows about 660,000 square feet of space as well as some overall markers of the distance on each side.

You don’t even have to do squeeze it in their Fenway Park-style; when looking at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, you can see that the entirety of the complex fits into the space with 20,000 square feet to spare.

Why would you want to build a stadium there?

Sure, building a new baseball stadium at Mission Gateway would bring the Royals across the state line, and it would not accomplish the initial goal of being downtown. However, it would accomplish the goal of being within an actual area where people live. At the current stadium, you have to go half a mile from Kauffman before you hit any houses at all, and there are very few residences even going out to an hour radius.

The Mission Gateway, on the other hand, is in an established residential area. The majority of the combined 44,000 strong population of Mission, Roeland Park, Fairway, and Prairie Village are within a two mile radius of the site. Additionally, the area is walkable—the downtown Mission/Johnson Drive area is one of the most walkable areas in the metro.

Furthermore, the site is only a 3.5 mile drive from the Plaza, which brings us to our next point:

Parking and Transit

This would probably be the thorniest part of the development, but it could be done. Immediately south of the Mission Gateway is a triangle that consists of about 220,000 square feet of space; it is only occupied by a Bank of America and a couple of smaller businesses. Additionally, just west of the site, there’s another 135,000 square feet that is mostly parking lot.

In this scenario, there’d be no parking lots, and we’d be looking at parking garages. At the new airport, the parking garage has 300,000 square feet of space and about 6,000 parking spaces. By keeping a similar ratio of footprint-to-parking, converting most of those two areas with a pair of parking garages would net about 7,000 onsite parking spaces.

That’s fewer than the 26,000 spaces at the Truman Sports complex, but keep in mind a few things. One, this is only a baseball stadium, not a combined football/baseball layout, and therefore will not need that many spaces. Two, other spaces are available, namely a wide availability of nearby street parking within a 15-minute walk. Three, again, people actually live here, and walking to the stadium will be way easier. Four, rideshare will be way easier to use as well.

If I were in charge, I’d also spin up a park & ride operation to bring folks from the plaza right to the stadium. It’s truly just down the road a few miles.

Could this happen?

No. There are three big roadblocks in the way here. The biggest location issue here is that it does not have particularly easy highway access. Another one is that I do not think the residents of the area would assent to such a project going in their backyards. The other big issue is that I truly do think the Royals specifically want to make a downtown stadium work, and this ain’t it.

But is it something I want to happen? Yes. Please. I am tired of looking at unfinished concrete building blocks like we’re living in a The Last of Us situation. Someone please help.