Yesterday, Kansas City-based design company Pendulum has presented its vision on a downtown ballpark in Kansas City. In the past months, there have been rumors about several locations in downtown Kansas City. But so far the club hasn’t made a decision on leaving Kauffman Stadium.
The renderings unveiled by Pendulum showed a 30,000 seater in a modern style architecture. The unique part about this design is a park that is located next to the top seats along the first baseline and behind the right-center field bleachers.
Since John Sherman took over as owner of the Royals, he has been open to a possible move to a downtown ballpark. But since the lease of Kauffman Stadium will expire in 2031, it will take some time before that move will take place unless the lease will be lifted earlier.
The intention is to create an area that will attract people all year, also outside ballpark hours. A big variety of amenities would be able to do that.
The interesting thing is that Pendulum made the renderings on its own initiative. The company wasn’t contacted by the Royals and the plan wasn’t solicited.
Here are some other impressions of the possible new ballpark of the Royals.
Seeing the ballpark from this point of view, the 30,000 seater gives a more intimate feeling than many of those 40,000 or 50,000 seaters. TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha comes to mind. Compared to Kauffman Stadium, this new ballpark would have around 8,000 fewer seats. With this, the designers anticipate the downward trend of MLB attendance.
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