Officials in Lenexa and Shawnee both pursued the Kansas City Chiefs to relocate to their respective cities last year before the team announced a deal to build a new stadium in Wyandotte Couny and new team headquarters in Olathe.
This week, the Post confirmed Lenexa and Shawnee were both in talks with Chiefs officials to lure the team to their respective cities, which was first reported by KMBC.
The talks in both cities never went beyond initial conversations, officials say. Still, both Lenexa and Shawnee are now included in the Kansas Department of Commerce’s preliminary STAR (Sales Tax and Revenue) bond district.
The area covers nearly 300 square miles, including all of Wyandotte County and nearly all of Olathe, with both Lenexa and Shawnee lying squarely in between. A proportion of future state sales tax revenues within the district’s final boundaries will go to pay off the new $3 billion stadium, as well as the new headquarters building and training facility.
That means future state sales tax growth in Lenexa and Shawnee could be siphoned off to pay for the Chiefs project. That has caught some city officials by surprise.
“I was very surprised to hear that Shawnee was included and in the area, and I received several emails from constituents stating that they were not happy about their taxes going to support it, as excited as I am about Kansas getting the Chiefs,” Shawnee Councilmember Kurt Knappen said during Monday’s city council meeting.
“Extremely limited” talks in Shawnee
Early on in the process of the Chiefs looking for a new location for its stadium and practice facility, both cities communicated with the team about possibly moving to their respective areas of Johnson County.
Conversations between representatives for the Chiefs and city leaders in Shawnee were “limited,” said city spokesperson Doug Donahoo in an email to the Johnson County Post.
“City of Shawnee leaders did have some very initial conversations with the Kansas City Chiefs organization. The conversations were extremely limited and did not progress beyond the initial phase,” he said.
Two sites in Lenexa mentioned
In late 2024, Lenexa Mayor Julie Sayers and city staff met with representatives from the Chiefs to talk about potential locations for the stadium and practice facility, city spokesperson Denise Rendina confirmed this week in an email to the Johnson County Post.
At the meeting, the city discussed two properties that could potentially be suitable for development:
- the northwest or northeast corners of K-10 Highway and K-7 Highway
- and the northeast corner of K-10 Highway and South Ridgeview Road.
“The City had no legal control of any of the locations that were discussed and had not previously discussed the idea with the owners thereof, so we weren’t really ‘pitching’ anything, just having a discussion about properties that could potentially be suitable for such development,” she said.
While Sayers kept in touch with the team, the discussions didn’t materialize into an agreement between the two parties.
“Mayor Sayers reached out to the entire team of people we met with, including (Chiefs President Mark) Donovan, to see if any additional information was needed. Separate from Mayor Sayers’ email to the group, a few emails were shared among some of the people who attended the meeting, but the idea was ultimately not further pursued by the Chiefs,” Rendina said.
What the STAR bond districts means for both cities
STAR bonds are a financing tool that uses state sales tax revenues generated by a project to pay for development, usually a larger project.
The state sets a baseline for how much sales tax businesses within an established district generate, then redirects any sales tax over that determined baseline amount to pay off the bonds.
In other words, the STAR bonds won’t directly raise taxes. Instead, a portion of future sales tax revenues collected from the project within the final STAR bond district will help pay back the bonds.
In its agreement with the Chiefs, Kansas is responsible for 60% of the cost for the new stadium and team HQ and training facility. A term sheet released by the state commerce department shows the state will commit up to $1.8 billion in bond proceeds for the stadium in Wyandotte County and up to another $975 million for the Olathe facility and a mixed-use development the team plans to build around it.
What Chiefs’ STAR bond district means for Shawnee and Lenexa
The state doesn’t need Lenexa’s or Shawnee’s approval to finalize the STAR bond district’s boundaries, Lenexa City Manager Beccy Yocham pointed out.
“The state can do this with their increment without our approval and frankly, without our consent,” Yocham said.
“The only real impact is … If we had a different project that we wanted to use bonds for, you can’t have overlapping STAR bonds.”
Both Yocham in Lenexa and Paul Kramer, Shawnee’s city manager, made it clear that that was the most important part of the agreement they needed to be sure of: That residents’ taxes wouldn’t increase because of the agreement.
“None of this local sales tax revenue is included or at risk of being included in any STAR bond project,” Kramer said during the Shawnee City Council meeting on Monday.
Olathe, however, is being asked to pitch in a portion of its local sales tax revenues. City officials there have yet to schedule public hearings on the matter but must do so by late February.
Still, Kramer is concerned that not being able to establish a STAR bond district in the next 30 years is a concern.
“This could prevent the city from using STAR bonds as a tool in the future,” Kramer said to the city council. “We don’t have anything on the horizon, but it is a tool. Some cities have multiple STAR bond projects, and we are asking the state for some flexibility so that tool is not taken out of the toolbox.”
Public reactions are a mix of excitement and skepticism
In an informal survey of residents by the Johnson County Post, people from Lenexa and Shawnee expressed a mixture of anticipation, excitement, skepticism and questions.
“I’m excited that they are coming here, especially since I will be close to the new training facility. I am concerned about the money that was allocated and what else we may have to forgo in order to fund this,” said Dillon S., of Lenexa.
(A final location for the Olathe training facility has not been disclosed, though the state’s preliminary STAR bond map puts a marker for the site near K-10 and Ridgeview Road.)
Other residents still had questions about how and what taxes will be used to fund the development.
“I do want them in Kansas but not clear how we will be taxed,” said Jim B., of Lenexa.
Other responses centered around criticism of the Hunt family, which owns the Chiefs.
“The Hunt family are multi-billionaires. It is very wrong to use sales tax money, which could be used for roads, schools, salary increases for policemen or teachers, and hand it over to the Hunts for 30 years,” said Rodney H., of Shawnee.
In his discussion with the Shawnee City Council on Monday, Kramer repeated that their discussions with the Chiefs and the state are ongoing and the more they find out, they’ll relay it back to residents.
“No decisions have been finalized at this time, and my pledge to the governing body and the public is we will continue to work with the state with the primary goal of protecting the city of Shawnee’s revenues (and) preserving future economic development tools for Shawnee residents and businesses,” he said.
