Wizards New Stadium Plans May Take Place In KS, Not MO

Plans for a new soccer-specific stadium for Major League Soccer's Kansas City Wizards may take the team away from their home in Kansas City, MO and move them across the border into Kansas City, KS, according to The Associated Press.

The team had been playing at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO for years but have been playing at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, home to the Kansas City T-Bones minor league baseball team, until a new stadium can be built.

Plans originally called for a new stadium to be built in the Missouri city as the anchor of a $1 billion project to revitalize a former shopping mall.

In December 2007, the City Council approved the redevelopment plan that called for $273.3 million in city and sales tax incentives, to be repaid with new tax revenues coming from retail businesses that would open around the stadium, the Kansas City Star reported.

However, when the financial meltdown began and the economy sank, the company involved in the project, Lane4 Properties Group, a property developer who works with the Wizards' owner, OnGoal LLC, was told the Missouri city was unwilling to pledge credit to back the sales tax revenue bonds they would have needed to issue.

Wednesday, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, KS was set to meet with Lane4 and OnGoal to discuss building the $414 million project in their city.

The site, to be built near Kansas Speedway, would include an 18,500-seat stadium, a 2-field amateur sports complex and an office complex for Cerner, a medical software company based in North Kansas City, MO, that could hold 4,000 workers. Cerner co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig are also part of the Wizards ownership group.

OnGoal president Rob Heineman said the Missouri city's plans laid out in a new proposal wouldn't allow the team to meet a 2011 target date for being in a new stadium.

Wyandotte officials said Village West, where the new stadium would be built, has been generating $40 million annually in sales tax revenue and could pay off its original sales tax revenue bonds in 2013 or 2014, six years ahead of an original date of 2010, and the entire project could be funded without needing any new streams of revenue.