Wichita poised to pump an extra $14.6 million into Riverfront Stadium district

Wichita is poised to pump an additional $14.6 million into its Riverfront Stadium district, including a new parking garage, tax breaks for the Wind Surge owners’ private development company, Arkansas River improvements and a federal-funded skybridge over McLean Boulevard.

In return, the Wind Surge’s minor-league baseball team owners’ development companies — WRLP and EPC — would agree to develop two acres sold by the city at $1 an acre in 2019. The plan calls for two new office buildings between the stadium and McLean and a 160-room hotel across the street, overlooking the Arkansas River and downtown Wichita.

City Manager Robert Layton said the newest batch of public incentives is estimated to generate an additional $23.8 million for the city to help pay for Riverfront Stadium, one of the most expensive minor league ballparks in the United States.

“Probably the most important part of that is that, of that amount, $10.5 million of that would go towards stadium debt service,” Layton said. The rest would go to Visit Wichita for tourism marketing and into the city’s local sales tax fund, according to the city’s agenda report.

The proposed additional investments bring the total public price-tag for the ballpark district to nearly $120 million.

On Tuesday, the Wichita City Council is scheduled to vote on $8.7 million in tax increment financing (TIF) to pay for a 283-stall parking garage just east of the stadium on McLean and other unspecified infrastructure costs.

With the vote, the council would also approve issuing up to $40 million in industrial revenue bonds (IRBs) for the team’s office buildings, which provides a $906,500 tax exemption on building materials for the Wind Surge owners.

Changes to TIF financing, which locks in property values in a district and sets aside future property tax increases, require a two-thirds majority vote.

“We want to make sure that we have the revenue streams to pay off the CID and STAR bonds,” Layton said. “Because what we’re trying to do is leverage the private investment.”

Public investment

Riverfront Stadium has had a rocky rollout.

After a deal fell through to land the Double-A San Antonio Missions, the city set its sights on a Triple-A club from New Orleans, the Baby Cakes, doubling the pricetag on the ballpark in the process.

To draw the Baby Cakes to Wichita, the City Council agreed to tear down Lawrence Dumont Stadium, buy out a multi-million-dollar lease agreement with the independent league Wingnuts, build a Triple-A stadium and sell riverfront property to the ball club owners.

But Wichita never got to watch a Triple-A baseball game in the new stadium. The Wind Surge, formerly the Baby Cakes, had their first season canceled because of COVID-19. Then Minor League Baseball forced the team to drop down to Double-A.

Attendance has not kept up with initial projections and neither have sales taxes collected at the stadium to pay for the ballpark, meaning the city’s ability to pay the debt on the stadium largely depends on private development around the stadium.

The city has thrown at the project virtually every economic development incentive in its toolbox: STAR bonds, TIF, CID, GO bonds and, if the latest proposal passes on Tuesday, IRBs.

Here’s what’s been committed so far and what the Wichita City Council will consider committing on Tuesday:

▪ $82 million — stadium and surrounding improvements, including a plaza and reconfiguration of McLean Boulevard. Funded by the city of Wichita through STAR bonds, CID, TIF and general obligation bonds.

▪ $19.2 million — multimodal transit facility and 500-space parking garage, including a $14.2 million federal grant and $5 million in general obligation bonds.

▪ $8.7 million — parking garage and “site infrastructure” to support the Wind Surge owners’ private development east of the stadium. This investment was originally planned for $5 million but has increased and changed to “pay-as-you-go” financing, meaning increased property tax in the area would reimburse the developers as they complete the project. The parking garage would add 283 parking stalls.

▪ $5 million — “riverfront improvements” and a skybridge connecting a hotel and office building near the stadium. It’s funded by a $5 million grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce using dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act. It requires a 25% match by the city of Wichita, which city officials say is already met by the other city spending in the district.

▪ $3.4 million — The city bought property west of the stadium that had been accumulated by Riverfront Partners (George Laham, Jerry Jones, David Burk and David Wells) leading up to the new ballpark announcement and leased parking spaces for public use. The land is for parking and a multimodal transit facility.

▪ $906,500 — tax exemptions on building materials for up to $40 million in Industrial Revenue Bonds issued by the city to the Wind Surge owners to complete an office building near the ballpark.

Federal-funded skybridge

As part of the latest plan for the Riverfront district, Wichita plans to spend about $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to construct a skybridge connecting a private hotel to a private office building, both owned by the Wind Surge.

Wichita received funding for the skybridge through a $5 million grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce’s Building a Stronger Economy (BASE) program, a $100 million pot of money set aside from the state’s allocation of ARPA money.

When Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly announced the BASE program in January, she said the ARPA funds would be used to “provide vital funding to ensure Kansas communities continue to recover from COVID-19 and grow their economies.”

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, likewise said the funds would help in “positioning Kansas for long-term economic growth.”

So far the only BASE project approved for the state’s largest city — Wichita — includes $4 million for Arkansas riverbank and sidewalk projects around the Wind Surge hotel and $1 million for a skybridge over McLean.

“It’s an amenity,” said Kathy Sexton, interim assistant city manager. “It makes the project nicer. The need for it is that you’re connecting an upscale hotel that’s mostly hotel rooms and the restaurants that are in the hotel and then you’re connecting directly to an office building. That office building is going to have a fitness center in it as well as meeting rooms.”

“Maybe you’re just staying at the hotel and crossing the skybridge to go to the fitness center to work out as a hotel guest, but it’s raining outside, and you don’t want to walk outside to go to the fitness center, that kind of thing,” Sexton said.

“It makes it a Class A kind of a place to have a meeting where you can have people at the hotel with people in the offices,” she said. “And they’re all sharing these meeting spaces and instead of having to go out and brave the elements and get across the street, they’ve got that additional piece in the skybridge.”

How does that help Wichita recover from COVID-19 and grow the economy? And why should taxpayers pay for it?

“My understanding is it’s trying to create the synergy around the ballpark that’s going to help economically,” Mayor Brandon Whipple said. “I’d have to do a deeper dive into what the conversation was around this. I wasn’t involved in those discussions.”

“We’ve got to make sure we’re moving forward with bringing more commercial space there, and we’ve got to make sure this is as successful as it can be,” Whipple said. “And to do so, you need to increase commerce in that area. So if the skybridge is an integral part of that, and that’s why the state gave us extra money to fund it, then all right. We’ll have to see what the economic reasoning was behind it.”

This story was originally published April 17, 2022 at 6:19 AM.