The Kansas City Wizards’ long-sought new stadium might not be in Kansas City. OnGoal LLC, the owner of the Kansas City Wizards, has prepared a new plan to develop the new stadium as part of a complex at the Kansas Speedway, located in the Village West retail district as part of Wyandotte county.
The new plan has derailed the initial one, in which the Wizards’ new stadium would serve as the heart of a $1 billion redevelopment of the former Bannister Mall property. The initial project included 609,000 square feet of retail, a 250-room hotel, office space and a 12-field amateur soccer complex. The Kansas City Council approved a redevelopment plan in December 2007 that included $273.3 million in city and state tax incentives for the project, to be repaid by the new tax revenues generated by the retail portion.
After financial markets collapsed, however, OnGoal was forced to look elsewhere for possible construction sites. As part of the new project, a medical software company, Cerner, will get 600,000 square feet of new office space. Cerner’s co-founders, Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig, are partial owners of OnGoal. The new proposal also includes an amateur sports complex with at least a dozen athletic fields, bringing the total estimated investment to $400 million. To fund the new proposal, the developer wants to use revenues from the existing sales tax revenue bonds, also known as STAR bonds, issued for the Village West retail district.