Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt is hopeful the team will make “significant progress” over the next sixth months on deciding where to play football in 2031, either at a renovated Arrowhead or perhaps a new stadium. But those plans, he said, will include playing football in the KC metro area.
“We’re really approaching it with an open mind, and we don’t really have a desired outcome,” Hunt said Monday at training camp in St. Joe, Mo. “We just have to find a solution that works for the community and something that works for the club. Our focus is very much on finding a solution in the metropolitan area.”
For 50 years, the Chiefs have played at the Truman Sports Complex, but in April voters in Jackson County, Mo., rejected a 3/8 sales tax renewal that would’ve gone to renovating Arrowhead and building the Royals a new downtown stadium.
Since then, the Chiefs have looked into moving across the state line to Kansas where the Legislature approved the use of STAR bonds to pay for 70 percent of a new stadium built in Kansas.
“We really appreciate what the Kansas Legislature did in passing the STAR bonds that would potentially give us the opportunity to look at a stadium over there,” Hunt said. “And we’re going to work very hard over the coming months and years to come up with a solution that makes sense for the organization, the team, but also one that makes sense for the community. So we’re approaching it with an open mind and look forward to talking to leaders on both sides of the state line.”
The original concept for the Truman Sports Complex included a rolling roof, but cost overruns nixed that. The concept was rejected by voters in 2006, but Hunt hasn’t ruled it out this time, saying a dome could be a possibility, especially in a new stadium on the Missouri side.
Hunt added that the team has outgrown its current training facilities, and renovations or a new facility will need to be done there as well.
“We love our training facility, but we’ve outgrown it,” Hunt said. “It’s hard to believe that 15 or 16 years after it was built we’ve outgrown it. But every NFL team has grown in terms of the number of people, personnel, number of coaches, and long term that’s going to be part of what we have to look at.”
