Buried inside the same HB 3231 that created Missouri's Innovation Zone program is something with far larger near-term dollar figures attached: the revival of the Missouri Downtown Economic Stimulus Act (MODESA). The 2003-era TIF-style tool helped finance Kansas City's Power and Light District and stopped taking new applications in 2013. HB 3231 does not just revive it. It expands it.

The expanded MODESA increases allowable tax increments, extends project durations, authorizes a residential income tax increment of up to 70% of wages earned by project-area residents, and permits two new developments per municipality plus expansion of existing ones. The stakes are immediate and named. Kansas City is weighing MODESA financing for an 18,000-seat CPKC Stadium expansion and a possible $3B Royals ballpark at Crown Center, on top of up to $235M in local incentives already signaled for the current project and $600M for the Royals, which faces a competing initiative-petition vote. The KC Current's riverfront stadium expansion is also in the mix.

In St. Louis, revived MODESA is described by Greater St. Louis Inc. as "a key building block" for Ballpark Village Phase III and the Millennium Hotel redevelopment. A specific provision allowing MODESA projects along riverfronts and in areas not physically connected to an existing downtown project was added, per a state senator, specifically to let Ballpark Village connect to the Gateway Arch grounds. That provision is the kind of legislative tailoring that signals a named project behind the language, not a general policy preference.

The Show-Me Institute, a free-market think tank, published a sharp dissent calling this "doubling down on a failed economic development scheme." Their argument is that Missouri taxpayers already have a decade-plus of experience with MODESA's actual returns, and that experience should have counseled against reviving it rather than expanding it. That is the accountability angle district managers and policy analysts should hold alongside the project-specific stakes: a tool that was allowed to lapse in 2013 is being brought back not because its track record justified it, but because the political coalition for stadium-adjacent financing is strong enough to override the lapse.

For Kansas City specifically, the question is whether Mayor Lucas actually deploys MODESA for the Royals project. Lucas has commented that "past bond engagement does not foreclose future MODESA support," which is carefully hedged language. The competing initiative-petition vote on the city's existing $600M Royals bond proposal complicates layering a second incentive mechanism on top. Two incentive streams for the same project is not impossible, but it is the kind of financing architecture that invites the exact accountability critique the Show-Me Institute is already making.

Source: Missouri Independent, June 17, 2026; KCUR, June 18, 2026; The Beacon: Kansas City, June 16, 2026; Show-Me Institute, July 22, 2026; Greater St. Louis Inc., May 14, 2026; Missouri Senate bill tracker (HB 3231, Sections 99.918-99.980).