The American Royal finally has its own home after 127 years, Walt George told a crowd gathered last Thursday to celebrate the completion of a new American Royal Barns and Exhibition Hall near the Legends in Kansas City, Kansas.
“We have always held our events in buildings that were owned by someone else,” George, board chair for the nonprofit American Royal, continued. “But tonight, welcome to our house.”
“These barns are built with purpose,” he added. “And it’s designed for things like this to bring people together around agriculture to compete, to learn, to do business, and to build relationships and carry our traditions from one generation to the next. And tonight is more than just a celebration of the opening, it’s a celebration about persistence, partnership, and the work it took to get here.”
The new $375 million, 390,000-square foot American Royal campus — designed by Multistudio and JE Dunn — features five distinctive barn gables, 3,744 cattle ties, 1,528 horse stalls, and up to eight simultaneous arenas. The new barns played host this weekend to their first of five fall events, welcoming the Royal Showcase Horse Show to the complex…