Robb Heineman's afternoon starts in the media building at Kansas Speedway. The president and CEO of Sporting Kansas City is on a panel with other local sports bigwigs — noticeably, the Royals aren't represented. They're speaking to the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Centurions, a group of young businesspeople who spend two years in the program learning to become better capitalists.
From there, he drives his black Mercedes sedan out of the massive race complex and down the street less than a quarter mile, to a trailer in the Nebraska Furniture Mart parking lot that serves as the team's construction headquarters. LiveStrong Sporting Park, the club's new soccer stadium, nears completion across the street.
Inside the trailer, Heineman, whose thick, permanently parted hair is the silver-gray of brushed stainless steel, takes off his sport coat, drops the public persona and becomes boss. In a conference room filled with maps, blueprints and samples of stadium chairs, he eats a veggie wrap and potato chips (taken from the spread at the Centurions meeting) as members of his senior staff update him on the size of the stadium's wine cellar, what shade of stone will appear in certain areas of the building, and when the scoreboards will be turned on. His eyes move from his VPs' faces to his Samsung Epic phone again and again, unsatisfied with receiving just one stream of information at a time.
Nothing is simple in the stadium-making business. Heineman hears about the latest problem: parking, specifically the 6,156 parking spaces that the team is contractually obligated to provide for each game. Police are concerned about what they're calling triple-header nights: when the T-Bones and Sporting KC both play at home on big movie weekends at the Legends.
When will installation of the light-blue seats that spell "Sporting" be complete? There are concerns and hand-wringing about fans without tickets parking in the distant lots and walking all the way to the stadium, without knowing if the game is sold-out. Heineman slices through the discussion. "We have an easy iPad solution for that," he says. All they'll need is an employee camped out in faraway lots. "We have an iPad with a card swipe, and somebody can park in a remote lot and not have to go all the way to the stadium to find out if we're not sold-out." Next topic.
Good news: The patio at the front of the stadium has been finalized. Heineman wants to see it for himself. He puts on a hard hat and a yellow safety vest and strides to the construction site. Dodging bulldozers, and trampling loose nails and discarded strands of rebar, he arrives at the area that will be the patio. Satisfied, he hikes back across the street to his Mercedes and drives off to another meeting.
Two days later, on a sunny April day in the club's brick-walled office in the Crossroads District, Heineman breezes around in khaki shorts, sandals and a Sporting shirt. On the hunt for more data, he's told when new drafts of menus for the new stadium will arrive, about a splashy promotional video that has been proposed, and about a youth sports initiative's need of funding. In a series of rapid meetings, he moves from discussing player injuries to the merits of grass over turf. When he writes something down, he usually underlines it.
Then, another major decision: Is the drawing of the team's new mascot OK? He says he likes the costume, and he bandies about some name possibilities. Somebody suggests polling employees. He likes the idea.
"Do you want to do a Katherine-Charlie test run?" he asks, suggesting his young children. He puts the mock-up in his bag and moves on to discussing the kind of person he wants to hire.
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Tisk Tisk...
The only thing 'tanking' here is your lack of vision. Try getting out of town every once in a while to be reminded of the possibilities.
If your true concern is investment efficacy, why not rally behind the first year and help the machine?
So failing to sell out a mere 18,000-seat stadium - including available blocks of 10 tickets available in prime seating locations at midfield on the television side - because you didn't advertise enough isn't tanking?
Having one win and zero inspiring play in the 10-game road trip to open the season isn't tanking?
Whining and clamoring to try to establish yourself as a rival of a team that doesn't care about you isn't tanking?
The stadium is nice and pretty, but when you're spending someone else's (read - taxpayer's) money it is very easy to put all the bells and whistles on.
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