On Tuesday, Kansas City’s team president discussed the team’s plans for a stadium upgrade.
The Kansas City Chiefs are committed to playing on GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, through the 2030 season.
But where the team will play after that remains a mystery.
Jackson County, Missouri — owner of the Truman Sports Complex, where Arrowhead and the Kansas City Royals’ Kauffman Stadium are located — would like to figure out a way to keep the region’s NFL team right where it is. But last year, the Kansas legislature began pushing both teams to move across the state line.
At this time a year ago, Chiefs owner, chairman and CEO Clark Hunt said that the team “would like to make significant progress over the next six months” on a stadium decision. Even then, however, he believed that was “probably optimistic.”
According to team president Mark Donovan, his boss was right.
“We continue to make progress,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “We’ve had more meetings. We’ve had more discussions.”
But so far, no decision has been reached. Donovan explained that the team is proceeding carefully, ensuring it understands every detail of each possible proposal before making a decision. Essentially, the goal is to have a ready-to-sign agreement in place for every one of the team’s options. Only then will the children of original team owner Lamar Hunt — Clark, Lamar Jr., Sharron and Daniel — decide what to do.
“Our job — and the team around me’s job — is to get the two best possible potential partnerships figured out down to the detail,” said Donovan. “At that point, we’re going to go to the Hunt family and say, ‘OK, here are your options. What do you want us to do?’ And they’ll decide. They’ll ask for our input — and then we’ll go do that better than anybody else.”
But Donovan noted that getting to that point is a long, involved process.
“You’re taking an agreement this long and whittling it down to, ‘OK, this paragraph, this paragraph [and] this line. Are we in agreement on this?’ We’re doing that on both sides,” said Donovan.
“The commitment on both sides has been really, really humbling. There’s a real interest to figure this out on both sides of the state line. That gives us a great opportunity to figure out what’s best for our fans and for the organization.”
But how will Donovan’s team — and more importantly, the Hunts — decide what is best? Donovan said the organization’s marching orders for a new stadium were made pretty clear by a survey it commissioned. Thousands of fans weighed in.
“Their big three [responses] were, ‘Make sure it’s loud. Make sure that tailgate is as good — if not better’ — in either option,” revealed Donovan. “And then the humbling one was a very, very high level of, ‘We trust the Chiefs to do the right thing.’
“So that’s humbling, but it also creates even more pressure on [our] responsibility to get it right. That’s one of the reasons we’re taking the time.”
But taking that time isn’t easy. With each passing day, the time pressure continues to build. Less than six years remain to make a decision — and then execute a complex renovation or construct a brand-new stadium. Donovan believes he is lucky that the team’s chairman is, by nature, a calm and careful person.
“Clark’s probably the most methodical guy I’ve ever worked with,” he said. “He makes me better because I’m not the most methodical guy. [But] he’s been extremely methodical in this whole process. There have been days when I walk out of a meeting, saying, ‘If we get that, we’ve got to go this direction.’ And then I’ll walk out of a meeting on the other side and say, ‘OK, we got that, [so] we can go this direction.’
“[But] he just stays steady through the whole thing.”
That should not, however, suggest that Donovan has any real idea how Hunt — and his siblings — are leaning. He closed his press appearance with an anecdote about the family.
“There was a meeting early on with the siblings where we talked about, ‘Are we going to go down this path?’ This [was] important for me to understand, [because] I don’t want to do all this work and then have [them] say, ‘We’ll never leave.’”
So Donovan asked the Hunt children a simple question: Should the team consider all the options?
“One of the siblings asked, ‘Would Dad want us to stay?’ And one of the siblings said, ‘Dad was the one who moved us from Texas, [so] I think he’d be OK. He wants us to make the best decision.’ And then another sibling said, ‘Dad would want us to do what’s best for our fans.’
“And that encapsulates Lamar — but it’s also the understanding of those children of Lamar that it’s about our fans. It’s about giving them the best experience for the next generation.”
What will that experience be? At this point, we cannot say. But if you believe that the Hunts have already made up their minds, you might want to reconsider that position.