KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Chiefs expect to unveil renderings for a new, $3 billion domed stadium later this year, and team owner Clark Hunt said Friday that their plan is to begin bidding for the Super Bowl, Final Four and College Football Playoff games.
The Chiefs announced in late December that they were moving from their longtime home at Arrowhead Stadium across the Kansas-Missouri state line. The move came after Kansas lawmakers voted to allow the state to issue a little more than $2.4 billion in bonds to cover about 60% of the cost of the stadium, a new training facility and retail and entertainment space.
The stadium itself will be built in Kansas City, Kansas, near Kansas Speedway and a retail district known as The Legends. The area is also home to Sporting Park, the home of MLS club Sporting Kansas City, and a minor league baseball stadium.
“We’re making progress,” Hunt said during a news conference introducing former linebacker Derrick Johnson as the latest member of the team’s Hall of Fame. “We have a design competition that’s ongoing between MANICA and Populous, and I would hope in the next several months that we’d be able to make a decision on the lead architect.”
Both of the firms are based in Kansas City, MANICA on the Kansas side and Populous on the Missouri side.
MANICA has been working on the new Nissan Stadium in Nashville that will be home to the Titans, and worked on Allegiant Stadium, the home of the Las Vegas Raiders. Populous has been wrapping up the new Highmark Stadium for the Buffalo Bills.
Hunt did underscore that “our thought process at this time is that it would be an enclosed dome.”
One of the long-held dreams of Hunt’s father, the late Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, was to host a Super Bowl — the name he coined for the NFL title game. That would have been unlikely in an outdoor stadium in Kansas City, given the frigid Midwest winters.
“We plan on bidding for Final Fours, College Football Playoff Games, bowl games and, of course, the Super Bowl,” Clark Hunt said. “It will coincide with the construction of several other NFL buildings, so we will have competition, but I will make sure that Kansas City and the Chiefs put their best foot forward in that process.”
The Chiefs hosted the NFL draft to widespread acclaim in 2023 at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, close to where the Kansas City Royals announced this week that they would be building a $1.9 billion stadium to replace Kauffman Stadium.
“I’m extremely happy for the Royals and (owner) John Sherman that they’ve found a solution, something that will have them very close to downtown, which I know has been a goal of the organization,” said Hunt, whose team and the Royals have been neighbors at the Truman Sports Complex. “I’m happy they have a plan and are going to be able to execute on that now.”
Meanwhile, the Chiefs also are hosting six World Cup games this summer at Arrowhead Stadium. It had to undergo minor renovations so that the 53-year-old stadium could fit the size of the field used for one of the biggest sporting events in the world.
The World Cup in Kansas City is another crowning achievement for the Hunt family.
Lamar Hunt was one of the original founding investors of Major League Soccer, and he originally owned two teams, the Columbus Crew and the Kansas City Wizards — now known as Sporting Kansas City. Hunt later purchased a third team, the Dallas Burn, which has been rebranded as FC Dallas is still owned by the Hunt family.