The city that will be the eventual home for the Kansas City Chiefs’ new headquarters and training facility has agreed to pledge a portion of its tax revenue to help pay for the project.
The Olathe City Council in Kansas unanimously approved an ordinance detailing its participation in a Sales Tax and Use Revenue (STAR) bonds district to help repay the bonds issued to build the $300 million facility — a key component of the NFL team’s move from Missouri to Kansas that includes a new $3 billion stadium in Wyandotte County.
STAR bond districts are designated areas in Kansas used as economic development tools to finance major tourism, entertainment, or commercial projects. The districts allow local governments to issue bonds repaid through the incremental increase in state and local sales, use, and transient guest taxes generated within the district.
The new facilities are proposed to be at the northwest corner of College Boulevard and Ridgeview Road, south of Kansas Highway 10. The money spent in that area will help repay the STAR bonds used to build it. All of those pledges would come from within the 165-acre plot at College and Ridgeview.
The city plans to use three separate tax pledges to repay STAR Bonds over a 30-year period.
The pledges include 1% of the general city sales and use tax, Olathe’s portion of the 0.5% Johnson County general purpose sales tax, and 7% of Olathe’s 9% hotel occupancy tax.
Olathe will not be obligated to repay bonds if insufficient sales tax is made from the STAR bonds district, the city said.
The sources are 1% of the General Sales and Use Tax, 0.5% of Olathe’s portion of the Johnson County Sales Tax, and finally a portion of the 9% tax on sleeping accommodations, “including any hotel, motel, or tourist court.”
The training facilities and headquarters are part of an agreement reached in December 2025 between the Chiefs and the state of Kansas to relocate their homebase to Wyandotte County and Olathe in Johnson County, a $4 billion project to build a new stadium, training facility and headquarters in Wyandotte County for the football team in preparation for the 2031 football season.
The state will finance the projects with taxpayer funding, covering 60% of the costs with the Chiefs bearing the remaining 40% and any overruns.
The stadium site has not yet been finalized. The agreements require it to be open in time for the 2031 NFL season.
Photo by Larry Koester, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, from Wikimedia Commons
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