KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kansas City Royals Chairman and CEO John Sherman held his annual news conference Wednesday before Opening Day. The team has its first game of the regular season Thursday afternoon at 3:10 at Kauffman Stadium. Besides the play on the field, Sherman was asked many times about t heir efforts for a new stadium. "We have multiple opportunities on both sides of the state line," he said. Sherman followed that up by saying he has empathy for people who feel like that process hasn't been clarified yet.  The statement may be surprising to fans after Wichita's Occidental Management, the owner of the old Sprint campus in Overland Park, said they were not in discussions about the team building their new ballpark northwest of 119th and Nall. That campus is now known as Aspiria.  New ‘blackout’ style license plates may be coming to Kansas Sherman said he doesn't see the team playing at Kauffman once their lease expires after the 2030 season. He did not name any sites specifically on Wednesday but said he feels like he has a solid group of potential partners that are trying hard to do something. "This is a tough decision for us," he said. "But I don't think it's helpful to talk about things in this particular context before we're ready to kind of talk about something that's buttoned up." Sherman was asked if the Aspiria site and Washington Square Park in Kansas City, Mo., are still places the Royals could build a new stadium. "I won't comment on those, you know, and again, it's out of respect for the process and our partners to be fair to all of them," he said. The same day Sherman spoke to reporters, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas was asked about the kind of funding plan the city and state could put together to make it more enticing than what leaders in Kansas can offer. "They are redirections from revenues that are earned both at the stadiums themselves and in an area surrounding them that would go to help support the project," Mayor Lucas said. "That's the story that it looks like in Kansas. That's the story here. I think that we've been responsible in Kansas City, and we'll continue to be. We're not looking to raise other funds broadly. We're not trying to impose different taxes on people." Kansas City Royals game day promotions, theme nights for 2025 MLB Season Following the Mayor's remarks Wednesday, FOX4 asked Sherman what his funding plan would be for a new stadium. The question revolved around how much of the project he expects to be public investment and how much of it he expects to be private. "I expect that we'll have a good public partner," he responded. "I would expect that we will be a very large investor in both the stadium and certainly around it, but you know, that's a hard question to answer right now, just because of the status of the negotiations with multiple parties." Sherman said he would still like to talk about a specific location the team would like to build at in June or July of this year. There's no word when construction could start.  ...read more read less