page_title: Kauffman Stadium
section_title: Renovations
hierarchical_section_title: Kauffman Stadium / Renovations
caption_attribution_description: English: Kauffman Stadium - home field of the Kansas City Royals
context_page_description: Kauffman Stadium, often called "The K", is a baseball park located in Kansas City, Missouri. It is home to the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball. It is part of the Truman Sports Complex together with the adjacent Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League. The ballpark is named for Ewing Kauffman, the founder and first owner of the Royals. It opened in 1973 as Royals Stadium and was named for Kauffman twenty years later on July 2, 1993. Since its last major renovation in 2009, the ballpark's listed seating capacity is 37,903.
  Kauffman Stadium was built specifically for baseball during an era when building multisport "cookie-cutter" stadiums was commonplace. It is often held up along with Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles as one of the best examples of modernist stadium design. It is currently the only ballpark in the American League to be named after a person and is also one of ten stadiums in Major League Baseball that does not have a corporate-sponsored name.
context_section_description: On April 4, 2006, Jackson County voters approved a 0.375% sales tax increase to fund plans to renovate the Truman Sports Complex. As part of this measure, every Jackson County residential address was to receive vouchers good for 50% off two tickets at Royals games on certain nights.  The construction began with a ceremonial groundbreaking inside Kauffman Stadium on October 3, 2007, with completion of Kauffman Stadium in time for Opening Day in 2009, and full renovation of the complex (including nearby Arrowhead Stadium) by 2010, depending upon cost overruns. The team committed to a lease that will keep them in Kansas City until 2030, an extension of their current lease expiration of 2015.
  The improvements to Kauffman Stadium included the following:
  Reducing capacity to 37,903
  New HD scoreboard, dubbed "Crown Vision" and control room
  Fountain view terraces
  Outfield concourse
  Kids' area
  Taste of KC
  Right field sports bar-themed restaurant
  Left field hall of fame and conference center
  New group sales areas
  Wider concourses
  New and upgraded concession and toilet amenities on all concourses
  Enhanced vertical circulation to all levels
  Four new entry ticket gates
  New press facilities
  The new HD scoreboard was one of the first features to be installed. It replaced both the old matrix board in the shape of the Royals logo that had been in the park since its opening, along with the video board that had been installed in 1989.  The new scoreboard was ready for Opening Day 2008. It is 84 feet (26 m) wide and 105 feet (32 m) tall, and was, at the time it entered service, the largest high-definition LED display in the world. The Kauffman Stadium screen was eventually surpassed by the new scoreboard at Seattle's T-Mobile Park in 2013. The display was assembled in 55 separate segments, including an active bottom taper to resemble the shield in the Royals logo. The video scoreboard alone cost $8.3 million, and the control room that operates it is staffed with 17 people on game days.  It was adorned with a crown during the 2008 offseason.  Strobe lights atop the scoreboard flash after every Royals home run.
  A second proposal on the April 2006 ballot would have installed a rolling roof at the Truman Sports Complex. The roof could have been moved to cover either Kauffman Stadium or Arrowhead Stadium when needed. The measure failed at the polls.
caption: Aerial view in August 2013
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