Still Kicking: The American Royal is champing at the bit to build its new KCK home and to emphasize its foundational message of food and ag
KANSAS CITY, KS. (May 12, 2023) – A different kind of cultivation is occurring in western Wyandotte County this spring. Workers are turning dirt on a 127-acre site northwest of Kansas Speedway for the American Royal Association’s new home.
The complex will be a marked departure from the American Royal’s current home and surroundings near the site of the old Kansas City Stockyards. The project underway in a Kansas City, Kansas, greenfield also is quite different from what was imagined a half-dozen years ago, when American Royal officials announced plans for a new home.
The physical changes are influenced by the evolution of Kansas City’s self-image from a historic agribusiness center to a forward-looking global metropolis. Still, American Royal CEO Jackie McClaskey said the new facility will reflect the organization’s roots.
“We want to catch both intentional and unintentional learners throughout our events and activities, in addition to the building,” McClaskey said. “We exist to champion food and agriculture, but our mission is to be the nation’s leader for food and agricultural education events and engagement.”
A new home
The latest plans for the American Royal complex include a massive barn with approximately 400,000 square feet of exhibition space. There would be three arenas — two indoor and one outdoor — as well as an education and welcome center.
Although the site will include roughly 850,000 square feet of structures, American Royal officials say 150,000 square feet of outdoor learning space will take the total complex space to a million square feet.
JE Dunn Construction is the contractor. Kansas City-based Multistudio is lead designer.
Site work began this spring on the three-arena facility. Construction will take about two years. A future phase could be built on 77 acres west of 118th Street for festival grounds to host outdoor concerts, RV space, barbecue competitions and more.
The project’s total cost — from land acquisition to construction to moving expenses — is estimated at $350 million, with a 10% contingency.
“The barn alone is almost seven football fields long, so if you could just imagine almost seven Arrowhead fields and then try to picture that where we are today, it just doesn’t fit,” said Walt George, chair of the American Royal building committee.
The new complex will be more than twice the square footage of the organization’s West Bottoms home, and its cost also will be more than double the original estimate in 2016, when the American Royal announced that it would leave the Bottoms.
At the time, the organization laid out plans for a $160 million complex with two arenas and more than 300,000 square feet of exhibition space. It also was to have included a museum and dedicated education center. Officials hoped that the American Royal would attract retail, hotels and other uses to the site.
At the time, backers also hoped that the complex would entice new agribusiness companies to put down roots in the surrounding area. Fast forward to today, and a new $403 million project sits across State Avenue from the American Royal site — an Urban Outfitters Inc. distribution center.
Long, winding trail
American Royal officials appeared to be riding high in the saddle in 2016. Then-Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback supported $80 million in sales tax revenue (STAR) bonds to finance half the project. Cliff Illig, an American Royal supporter and former board member, prepared to lead what he called a “roadshow” rather than a “campaign” to raise the other $80 million from private sources.
But one of its most vocal supporters, Cerner Corp. co-founder Neal Patterson, was diagnosed with cancer in early 2016. He died in July 2017, and Illig stepped in as interim CEO of the company.
Patterson had criticized Kansas City officials’ lack of vision in not accommodating an American Royal expansion in the West Bottoms. Patterson already had rejected a Kansas City site for Sporting Kansas City, moving it out to KCK’s Village West area. Cerner also had built an office building in that area.
“He saw a future much more expansive than the Royal we all grew up with and committed to that future with a $10 million bequest in his estate, one of only a few he made,” said Lindsey Patterson Smith, Neal Patterson’s daughter and president of the Patterson Family Foundation. “He engaged and inspired the next generation of leaders, who he trusted would ensure the true potential of the American Royal would be reached.”
Despite Patterson’s hefty contribution, the American Royal didn’t complete raising the original $80 million until last fall.
In the interim, the players, plans and costs kept changing.
Lynn Parman, hired as president of the American Royal in November 2015, left in August 2018. Around that time, the price tag on the new complex was up to $200 million.
The organization tapped Glenn Alan Phillips, a veteran of the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo as the new president. McClaskey, a former Kansas secretary of agriculture under Brownback, joined the American Royal to lead fundraising and the effort to build what was to be a $250 million complex — the price driven higher by land costs and a larger facility planned.
The American Royal completed a planning process with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, in 2020, but the pandemic brought work to a halt.
By December 2022, Phillips was gone, and McClaskey took over as CEO.
The organization used the time during the pandemic to regroup and fine-tune its mission, vision and purpose to focus on food and agriculture education, McClaskey said.
“We’re actually going to tell some of those stories better there in the new home than we probably even do today,” she said.
Leaving the Bottoms
Discussion of a new headquarters for the American Royal dates to 2005. It picked up speed in 2011, when the organization and the Kemper family put forth a $60 million plan to raze the city-owned Kemper Arena — which lost most of its traffic once what’s now T-Mobile Center opened in 2007 in Downtown — and build a smaller events center for the American Royal’s livestock and equestrian shows and other events.
Despite the big names behind the American Royal’s plans, city officials also considered a proposal by developer Steve Foutch to redevelop Kemper Arena as a hub for youth and amateur sports.
The debate turned nasty at times, pitting the history of the American Royal against questions about its future viability.
The City Council undertook a request for proposals to save the arena — and the American Royal began looking at other locations.
Opinions about the American Royal’s impact and future remain split.
Bill Haw Sr., owner of the Livestock Exchange Building and a former member of the American Royal’s executive committee, said he started losing interest in the organization after the livestock industry began leaving the Stockyards District.
“Once the stockyards left this district, agriculture became less relevant in the community. Therefore, the American Royal became less relevant,” Haw said. “If the American Royal ever leaves, I don’t think they’ll have a significant effect on the people down here, and I don’t think we’ll even notice they’re gone.”
Jill Myers, co-owner of the Golden Ox and the Ox Café, said the Golden Ox has long gotten business from the nearby American Royal. Before the pandemic, the organization occasionally would buy out the restaurant for private events. That no longer happens, she said.
“Even though we’ll lose the numbers we’d get during those (American Royal) busy seasons, we won’t go out of business,” Myers said. “We’ll miss them though. This is the stockyards; it’s where they should be.”
McClaskey speaks fondly of the West Bottoms and the American Royal’s historic connection to the area. If 127 acres were available in the area, she said, the organization could stay. As it is, she said the American Royal will continue to honor the area.
The organization will celebrate its 125th anniversary at its old home in 2024 while waiting for its new complex to be completed.
“Maybe over time, everybody in the West Bottoms has sort of taken our history for granted,” McClaskey said. “And now we’re just going to make a really conscious effort to tell the story over and over again to remind and encourage people to celebrate another 125 years of Kansas City tradition.”
