The history of cities that rejected baseball stadium ballot measures
Teams don’t typically move at the first “no” vote.
Last week, Jackson County voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to extend a 3/8 cent sales tax for another 40 years to fund a new downtown ballpark for the Royals and renovations for Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs. The failed vote immediately brought concerns that the Royals could soon relocate, possibly to another city in the area, or even outside the metro area.
But those concerns are pretty premature. The Royals currently have a lease to stay at the Truman Sports Complex until at least 2030. Relocation is also rarer in baseball than in other sports. Just one franchise has moved in the last 50 years - the Expos moved to Washington DC in 2005 after nearly a decade of trying to get a new stadium in Quebec. The Athletics are trying to become the second after two decades of efforts to get a new stadium in the Bay area, and their attempt to move to Las Vegas faces some obstacles before becoming a done deal.
Jackson County voters are not the first to reject a ballpark ballot measure. Here is a history of other cities who told their team “no” initially.
Cleveland
Municipal Stadium was a grand 74,000-seat multi-purpose venue that hosted the Browns and Indians. It originally opened in 1932, but by the 1980s, when the hapless Indians were playing in front of hundreds of fans, it seemed out of date. Cleveland also needed to do something to stem the loss of jobs and residents from its downtown area.
In 1984, Cuyahoga County Commissioner Vincent Campanella pushed for a $150 million bond measure paid for by property tax increases, that would finance a new 72,000-seat domed stadium for both teams. The dome would sit at on Carnegie Avenue between Ontario and E. 9th Streets, with hopes it could rejuvenate the Central Market area. Mayor George Voinovich had wanted a lakefront stadium, but nevertheless endorsed the plan.
The Browns didn’t even want a domed stadium, and neither did the public. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, voters rejected the measure. Undeterred, the city began buying up property the next year, with plans for a new “Gateway” project, a private/public partnership that would build an open-air baseball-only ballpark for the Indians and lure the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers back from their suburban home to a downtown arena.
By 1990, the county had a proposal to put before voters with a total price tag of $344 million. Taxpayers would fund half of the proposal through a “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes that amounted to 1.7 cents per drink, and 4.5 cents per pack for cigarettes. Voters approved the measure with 51 percent of the vote and by 1994 “Jacobs Field” opened to a capacity crowd. The next year, the team began a streak of 455 consecutive sellouts.
Milwaukee
Milwakuee’s County Stadium was originally built to be a minor league stadium, but quickly became a Major League stadium to house the relocated Boston Braves. Four years after the Braves departed for Atlanta, the Seattle Pilots moved to County Stadium and became the Brewers. By the mid-80s, it appeared the stadium was becoming obsolete, so the club proceeded with plans to privately finance a new $120 million stadium if the public covered the $60 million in infrastructure costs.
But when the economics of baseball began to change, and plans evolved to include a roof, the club found it harder to finance the stadium themselves, particularly once the game suffered a work stoppage in 1994. Instead, they put forth a ballot measure in April of 1995 to have taxpayers pay $180 million for a ballpark using funds from a baseball-themed lottery, with the team paying $10-15 million plus $2-3 million in rent for 20 years. Voters had been hoping the newly-created lottery would be used to provide property tax relief, and overwhelmingly rejected the stadium proposal with 64 percent voting “no.”
“The question now is how to interpret the vote,’’ said Assembly Speaker David Prosser, R-Appleton. “Are the people of Wisconsin opposed to a sports lottery as a funding mechanism for sports facilities or are they opposed to any public effort to save major league baseball?”
That fall, the Wisconsin Legislature debated a contentious proposal to levy a 0.1 percent sales tax in five counties in the Milwaukee metro area to pay $310 million for a $400 million ballpark. The vote was headed for a loss in the state senate, but after 16 hours of deliberation, Republican Senator George Petak from Racine changed his vote and approved the measure - a switch that angered voters and got him recalled in a special election. Nevertheless, the tax was signed into law and the Brewers moved into Miller Park in 2001.
Seattle
The Mariners had played in the multi-purpose domed stadium known as the Kingdome since their inception 1977. But it was always a dreary place to play, and when tiles from the roof fell in 1994, ownership increased their demands for a new stadium.
In 1995, the Washington Legislature rejected the idea of using state taxes to fund a stadium, leaving it to King County. The county approved putting a measure before voters that September to increase the sales tax from 8.2 percent to 8.3 percent, to provide $240.8 million in public funds for a $325 million retractable-roof stadium.
”If [the measure] should fail, the Mariners believe that sending a sales tax or any other proposal for funding a new stadium back to King County voters in November does not meet the ball club’s needs or the critical timetable for constructing a ballpark,” Mariners chairman John Ellis wrote.
And if it fails, “there is no reason to believe a second vote would succeed,” Ellis added. “. . . if there is to be another effort to fund a stadium at this time, supporters should turn attention to the state Legislature.”
The vote-counting proved to be as dramatic as any Mariners game. On election day, the “yes” side was up, but as absentee ballots came in, the measure headed for defeat. Meanwhile, on the field, the team was making a late run for their first-ever division title, eventually tying the Angels to force a one-game playoff, a game the Mariners would win in dramatic fashion.
After the failed vote, Mariners ownership set a deadline of October 30 for a new stadium, or they would sell the team. Groups in Northern Virginia and North Carolina made overtures to lure the team. The Washington Legislature reconvened and voted for a plan to build a $320 million ballpark, pending King County approval. The state would provide $59 million in state sales tax credits and $48 million from a scratch-off state lottery game. The team would provide $45 million. The county would provide the rest through a 0.5 sales-tax surcharge on restaurant and bar tabs, a 2 percent hike in the car rental tax, and a 5 percent admissions tax at the new ballpark. Safeco Park, now known as T-Mobile Park, opened in July of 1999.
Pittsburgh
The Pirates shared the multi-purpose, artificial turf Three Rivers Stadium with the Steelers as both teams enjoyed their hey-day in the 1970s. But by the 1990s, city officials began talking about giving the Pirates their own ballpark, and those talks got serious when Kevin McClatchy bought the team in 1996. The state legislature established the “Regional Renaissance Initiative” to allow Allegheny County and ten other surrounding counties in southwest Pennsylvania to increase their sales tax by half a percent to raise $700 million. The money would be used to build separate new stadiums for the Pirates and Steelers, expand the convention center, and fund various other projects throughout the counties. The 1997 measure was overwhelmingly rejected, with nearly two-thirds of voters disapproving in some counties.
“Maybe people just said, ‘We don’t want to make this investment, we don’t want to raise taxes in western Pennsylvania,” said Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, a strong supporter of a measure called the Regional Renaissance Initiative. “Maybe we didn’t tell the message right, maybe we waited too long to get our message out.”
The Pirates insisted they would have to move without a new ballpark, so city and county leaders put together a proposal called “Plan B”. In 1998, the Allegheny County Regional Asset District Board approved a plan for a $803 million project that would build two new stadiums and expand the convention center. The Pirates would contribute $40 million with the Steelers kicking in $76.5 million, with over $50 million from other private sources. The rest would come from taxpayers - $328 million in state and federal funds, and $305 million from bonds, paid for by a reallocation of funds that were going to Three Rivers Stadium, plus an additional $3.4 million per year over 30 years. The plan was dubbed “Scam B” by critics and was unpopular in polls, but by 2001 the Pirates were playing in PNC Park.
Minnesota
The Metrodome was beloved for its home-field advantage in the 1987 World Series, but fans lamented it was generally an awful place to watch baseball. The Minnesota Legislature failed three times to pass stadium legislation in the 1990s, and Twins ownership began exploring a relocation to North Carolina. But a 1998 stadium initiative to build a ballpark in the Carolina Triad also failed after it was undermined by Twins owner Carl Pohlad saying he wouldn’t necessarily move the team if the stadium measure passed.
The city of St. Paul, Minnesota proposed a half-cent sales tax increase in 1999 to help pay one-third of the cost of a $325 million stadium, with the state and the team paying the rest. But that measure was resoundingly defeated with 58 percent of voters saying “no.” The state legislature again failed to pass a ballpark measure in 2001, and MLB approved a measure to contract the Twins and Montreal Expos, only to be blocked by a court ruling.
In April of 2006, the Hennepin County Board finally approved a plan to allocate $350 million towards a new ballpark through a county-wide 0.15% sales tax. The team initially paid $130 million, but added an additional $65 million in infrastructure expenditures. Target Field, an open-air stadium in downtown Minneapolis, opened in 2010.
Kansas City
This year’s ballot measure is not the first time Kansas City voters have rejected the sports teams. In 2004, the Chiefs and Royals sought improvements to the Truman Sports Complex. The teams had leases through 2014, but had the option to leave in 2007 if the facilities were not “state of the art.”
Rather than ask Jackson County voters to bear the costs, local officials came up with a bi-state proposal to fund renovations. There was precedent for such a measure. In 1996, voters in Jackson, Platte, and Clay counties in Missouri, and Johnson County in Kansas overwhelmingly approved a sales tax increase to renovate Union Station (Wyandotte County rejected the measure).
But in an effort to garner more support, the plan also added in arts funding, including a proposed performing arts center. The price tag soon swelled to $1.2 billion, with 50 percent for the stadiums and 50 percent for the arts, to be funded by a quarter-cent sales tax in five metro counties.
The campaign soon faced criticism that while the arts funding would be governed by a board made up of members from both sides of the state line, the stadium funding would be governed solely by the Jackson County Sports Authority. It also didn’t help that across the state line, the St. Louis Cardinals were building a brand-new ballpark with 75 percent of costs privately financed, while the Royals were contributing just $15 million and the Chiefs just $50 million, when renovations for each stadium would total $177 million.
The measure was rejected in every county except Jackson County. While Royals owner David Glass quickly asserted the team would not look to move, many began to question the future of the team.
This is all we have left now. The renovation game is over. The Royals asked to have their stadium renovated, the metro area said no, so now they will certainly go big-stadium hunting. Kansas City is the smallest market in major-league baseball. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner would not even waste his time bending down to pick up the pittance the Royals make on local television and radio. You can scream and yell and whine about David Glass all you want, but without a competitive stadium, his team has no future here.
Mark it down: If nothing is done, the Royals are gone within 10 years.
-Joe Posnanski
Two years later, Jackson County went it alone and returned with a slimmed-down proposal without the arts funding. Voters in the county approved a 3/8 cent sales tax to raise $425 million for renovations to the Truman Sports Complex (they also rejected a use tax to fund a rolling roof over the stadiums). The Royals would contribute $25 million, the Chiefs would contribute $75 million, and the state of Missouri would fund $50 million towards the $575 million project. The teams signed new leases keeping them at the complex through 2030. The renovations at Kauffman included the Outfield Experience, Royals Hall of Fame, restaurants and patios, improved access, scoreboards, and other amenities. In 2012, the stadium hosted the MLB All-Star Game.
Will local officials and the Royals come up with another plan to keep the team in Kansas City? Almost certainly. The teams aren’t going to move tomorrow, but there is some added pressure now to get a deal done before this drags out. Hopefully a better plan is produced that benefits the teams and the community.