Cities Score When Sporting Venues Spur Waterfront Development

The new CPKC Stadium in Kansas City, MO, sits alone, for now, on a broad, largely vacant site at the edge of Berkley Riverfront Park on the Missouri River. But by the time the FIFA World Cup comes to town in 2026, the stadium will anchor a European-style “urban village,” a mixed-use district whose vision Perkins Eastman is designing for the Kansas City Current women’s soccer team founders.

Perkins Eastman’s vision plan for a new mixed-use district on the banks of the Missouri River in Kansas City is designed around the new Kansas City Current women’s professional soccer stadium.
All renderings © Perkins Eastman

The project, which knits a major sports venue into the downtown core and animates its riverbank in the process, is the latest commission that places some of Perkins Eastman’s core expertise at the vanguard as cities reimagine their increasingly valuable waterfront real estate. Stadia and performance venues are prized as economic drivers, and as cities rediscover their formerly industrial urban waterfronts, situating one with the other offers a world of opportunity. Together, “they’re changing the value proposition to try and get people to stay behind, beyond the match, in a more meaningful way,” says Perkins Eastman Principal and Executive Director Hilary Bertsch, the principal in charge for the Kansas City project. Meanwhile in Tennessee, principals Eric Fang and Vaughan Davies are following the implementation of Nashville’s Imagine East Bank Plan, a new, 338-acre mixed-use district that will develop industrial land along the east bank of the Cumberland River as it flows through downtown Nashville.

The Tennessee Titans’ new stadium will anchor future development on Nashville’s East Bank, forming a central locus from which green space flows down to the river and outward along its shores.

The district’s first phase is centered around a new stadium for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, which will sit farther back from the river than the existing 25-year-old structure. The move “gave us an opportunity to provide a park setting for the stadium to connect to the river,” Fang says. “That’s a really big difference.”

Both projects build on Perkins Eastman’s experience planning, designing, and advising developers and cities for decades on how to revitalize their underutilized waterfronts—and their home teams—with districts that have since become year-round destinations as well as functioning, mixed-use neighborhoods. The Wharf in Washington, DC, is the firm’s most celebrated example, where The Anthem music hall anchors a mile of mixed-use residential, office, retail, food and beverage destinations along the Washington Channel.

The Anthem, above left, anchors a hive of activity at The Wharf in southwest Washington, DC.
Photographs © Jeff Goldberg / Esto / Courtesy Perkins Eastman

Developers behind Imagine East Bank and the Berkley Waterfront have looked to Perkins Eastman’s master plan for The Wharf as inspiration for their own projects.

Kansas City Current and the Berkley Riverfront

One month after the CPKC Stadium opened in Kansas City this spring, becoming the world’s first purpose-built stadium for professional women’s soccer, the team’s founders, along with Marquee Development and the Port Authority of Kansas City, unveiled Perkins Eastman’s vision plan for a mixed-use district that will expand outward from a grand plaza at the stadium’s front door. “Our goal is to reconnect Kansas Citians to their riverfront, bringing even more energy and activity to the water,” said Angie Long, who with her husband Chris Long, Brittany Mahomes, and her husband, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, founded the KC Current. “We believe this foundational investment will benefit our community for years to come and cement the Berkley Riverfront as one of Kansas City’s great neighborhoods for residents and visitors alike.”

The Kansas City Current stadium’s plaza features a grassy area where people can sit or play, in addition to a series of sitting steps leading to a platform overlooking the river—a clever way of hiding a city pump station that could not be relocated. These details recall aspects of another stadium district in Minneapolis, where Perkins Eastman designed the public space and amphitheater that forms a connective tissue between the multimodal Target Field Station and its namesake ballpark, home to the Minnesota Twins.

The stadium plaza, along with a new river promenade and the first two blocks of buildings that radiate out from the stadium, form the plan’s first phase. Responding to the Longs’ desire for a European feel, Perkins Eastman Principal and design lead Peter Cavaluzzi looked across the Atlantic for inspiration. He was particularly drawn to the colosseum in Verona, Italy, which nestles into its urban context with a wide plaza and park. “It’s just totally integrated with the fabric of the city,” Cavaluzzi says.

Left: The city of Verona, Italy, radiates outward from its ancient colosseum; photograph © Berg via Adobe Stock
Right: Puerta del Sol, Madrid; photograph by Jorge Franganillo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Next, he looked to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, where light-colored “background” buildings, punctuated with defining details such as the iconic neon Tio Pepe sign and the clock tower atop the city’s old post office building. Here, pedestrians and vehicles share space across its curbless plane. “The integration of public realm and buildings is key, creating a street wall and background while reinforcing gestures” such as open-air cafes, fountains, and green space, Cavaluzzi says. Bringing that approach to Kansas City will allow the new development to “feed off the energy of the stadium and be integrated with the stadium,” he adds.

Further amplifying that effect will be a new street alignment that will straighten the existing River Front Drive so it runs straight into the new plaza, where the stadium as its end point serves as the “crescendo” to one’s passage through the development, Bertsch says. “It’s all about programming and scale,” she explains, noting also that the development will be interspersed with smaller courts, alleys, and mews. “How do you get a more intimate feel when you’re in the presence of something so big?” By moving stadiums from their suburban islands amidst seas of surface parking back into cities more focused on people and the variety of daily life, she says, “they’re becoming more than just sports-themed spaces. They’re becoming more authentic places in and of themselves.”

Kansas City will be one of FIFA World Cup’s North American locations in the summer of 2026. CPKC Stadium will serve as a practice field for teams that will compete at Arrowhead Stadium nearby. By then, the Berkley Waterfront district will be ready to accommodate soccer fans and new local residents alike.

“The key is designing buildings and spaces together. That’s our large-scale ethos,” says Perkins Eastman Principal and large-scale mixed-use practice leader Peter Cavaluzzi, the design principal for the Berkley Waterfront vision. The above renderings illustrate the human scale of the stadium plaza and river promenade.

“We are proud of the team of globally recognized experts in sports-anchored and waterfront development that we’ve assembled for this project,” Kansas City Current President Raven Jemison said at the April announcement of the development. “This thoughtful investment will not only benefit the city and our players, but ultimately create a more welcoming environment for our fans – a place they’re proud to call home and show up to cheer on the team. We look forward to creating a place that is authentically ‘Kansas City’ with our team.”

Tennessee Titans and Nashville East Bank

Perkins Eastman’s East Bank vision plan is expected to take at least two decades to complete across the area’s 338 acres, but its first phase has already begun with the construction of the new stadium. The owners had initially considered upgrading the existing structure, which is surrounded on all sides by acres of surface parking. But they concluded it could not be renovated in a way that would satisfy their modern needs. The decision to build a new stadium opened up new design opportunities for the plan, Fang says. “The location of the new building will yield a better urban district around it because it’s set back from the river, allowing for new waterfront mixed-use development, and it will still have really fantastic views of the Nashville skyline and feel connected to the downtown. It will no longer be an impediment at the river’s edge for the people who live in East Nashville and the upland neighborhoods, so that was a huge advantage.”

The new Tennessee Titans stadium will benefit from acres of public green space and trails leading down to the Cumberland River.

Cascading green space flowing down from the central plaza outside the new stadium will perform double duty to mitigate flooding and stormwater runoff.

A map depicts a new, broad network of parkland and public green space anchored by the new stadium.

The residential and office buildings framing the new grounds will feature ground-floor shops and cafes and will make the area a destination whether it’s game day or not.

Fang praised the Titans’ leadership, and especially President and CEO Burke Nihill, for their openness to seeing beyond the surface lots where tailgating holds a sacred tradition for so many fans. The new plan will reimagine that tradition, offering green space, outdoor restaurants, and the stadium’s own terraces and amenities for fans to celebrate both before and after games. “They had a very progressive vision and outlook,” Fang says.

“Vibrant Urban Ecosystems”

The stadium districts taking shape in Kansas City and Nashville are emblematic of a larger trend occurring nationwide, according to the real estate consulting firm RCLCO. The firm launched a venue-anchored development tracker in April that follows mixed-use development linked to stadiums across the nation’s professional baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and soccer leagues. There are currently 43 already built, with seven under construction and 34 more planned. “We are seeing a burst in development interest around sports venues and stadiums, as teams and owners seek to diversify and control future revenue streams, as well as enhance the fan experience and deliver local community benefits,” said Erin Talkington, Managing Director of RCLCO. In a separate analysis, the sports branding firm Athelo Group wrote in March that “gone are the days when stadiums are arenas stood alone. These venues have now blossomed into vibrant urban ecosystems, incorporating a diverse range of amenities like hotels, bars, retail outlets, entertainment venues, and residential developments.”

Perkins Eastman’s Sport + Entertainment practice leader, Scott Schiamberg, has written and lectured extensively about the urban placemaking example ballparks in particular have served for over a century. In a classic case of what’s old is new again, he says, cities are clearly embracing that model across the sports spectrum, and for good reason. “It’s about the old days of walking to the ballpark, walking around the city you’re in, and being able to experience it all at the same time.”