14 December 2007
KC Gets Stadium Deal
Posted by Drew Epperley under: KC Wizards; MLS; News and Rumors .
In what could be said a good day for the MLS and for the Kansas City Wizards, as they have nearly wrapped up a stadium deal. Last night the Kansas City, Missouri City Council unanimously approved the city’s portion of a $949 million redevelopment project at the site of a former mall (roughly $273 million). Included in this project is an 18,500-seat soccer stadium as well as 12 tournament-quality soccer fields.
The only thing left is to get state funding and from what I hear around KC, the state is likely to back up any deal and provide the proper funding for this project to go through as most in the state government are backing this project up.
After all the many years in an oversize NFL stadium and the next two years in a minor league baseball stadium, the Wizards can finally put this to rest for the most part.
Kansas City hopes to open their 2010 season in the new stadium, which is about 8 miles from downtown. No actual renderings of the stadium have been released. See a previous article on here about the KC stadium situation to see the renderings of the entire project.
Weird to think that the Wizards of all clubs are getting a stadium of their own before the crown jewel of the league, DC United. I know DC’s reason are political based but still, as we all know they should have had a stadium long before the Wizards.
This is really great news for the Wizards and for their longevity in the city of Kansas City. I really felt for some time that if they didn’t get a stadium deal in place in the next year or so that they would be on the move out of KC. Now, I don’t believe that will happen and that is a good thing. We don’t need another MLS original to go away.
2 Comments so far...
Kevin Says:
14 December 2007 at 6:43 pm.
This is pathetic for DC. KC, getting a stadium before the best (well, now tied for best) franchise is MLS history??? I don’t see why the Poplar Point project wasn’t approved right away; if you have read the proposal (which is on the United website), it sounds extremely fair and beneficial to the city. In fact, it would benefit the city more than the new Nat’s stadium will. They will never be able to fill a 41,000-seat stadium. I’m pretty sure United would be able to fill a 25-30,000 seater (in fact, they did on several occasions this year).
Group of Death: Opposition to NYC FC Mounts | New York City FC dotNet Says:
15 December 2007 at 1:27 pm.
[...] did not get a stadium the Wizards might relocate. I guess this alternative is out for a NYC FC. WVHooligan has the [...]
