KANSAS CITY, Kan. — There are important meetings Tuesday night regarding the future home of the Chiefs. Late in December, the team announced they planned to build a new stadium in the western portion of Wyandotte County, near I-70 and I-435.
If you want to weigh in on the city giving back some of its future sales tax revenue back to paying off the stadium development, you need to show up to Kansas City, Kansas, City Hall for Tuesday night’s meeting that starts at 5:30 p.m.
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The commission won’t vote on this issue until Thursday at 5:30 pm, but after talking with Unified Government of Wyandotte County Administrator David Johnston Monday, he wants the state and the local sales tax increment to be a much smaller portion of the county.
Johnston wants portions of the area east of 126th Street and west of 118th Street, north of State Avenue to be in the Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond District, not all of Wyandotte County. Drivers currently can’t go north of State Avenue on 118th Street. The road’s closed.
The development will likely be west of the new American Royal. Johnston called this much smaller proposed STAR Bond district of the county ‘the project site,’ in an interview with FOX4 Monday.
“That will include the stadium and the entertainment district,” he said.
Our next question for him was whether he thinks the bonds will be paid off if the district is much smaller than the image floated around just a day after the announcement that the Chiefs were coming to Kansas.
“Well, since the bonds are going to be issued by the state, ask them that question,” Johnston replied.
FOX4 sent an email to the Kansas Department of Commerce after Johnston told us about wanting the STAR Bond district drastically changed.
“The State has not yet determined the scope of the STAR Bond District,” Kansas Department of Commerce Director of Marketing and Communications Patrick Lowry responded. “We anticipate the Unified Government pledging the incremental sales tax revenue that will be generated from the area around the stadium and the mixed-use development.”
“No, this is just stressful,” Johnston said when asked if he was upset when it came to the stadium debate. “I mean, this is a huge project, and you’ve got only two and a half months to work on it, and therefore, we’re trying to make sure that we’re doing what’s best for our 160,000 citizens and their tax rates and their sewer rates, and all that, and since we weren’t at the table since this legislation was passed in what? June of ’24? [The] first we heard about it was in December.”
Michael Austin, an economist and consultant who opposed the Sales Tax and Revenue or STAR Bond bill that the Kansas legislature passed in the summer of 2024, wonders how the spending west of Kansas Speedway will impact other areas when the development opens.
“If you have Wyandotte residents that decide to shift their shopping into that STAR Bond District, what would be labeled as ‘new’ would really just be today’s tax base just being redirected,” Austin said in a Zoom Interview with FOX4 Monday.
Wyandotte County Public Information Officer Krystal McFeders says they’ll have clip boards available for people to sign their name to if they’re interested in talking to the commission Tuesday night. You’ll only have two minutes to speak.
