KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Lamar Hunt, the man credited with coining the term Super Bowl, says he's not ready to give up on his dream of bringing pro football's championship game to Kansas City.
Voters on Tuesday split on a pair of measures to pay for upgrades to the city's sports stadiums, approving a sales tax for renovations but rejecting a plan for a rolling roof to make both facilities climate-controlled.
Hunt had secured the National Football League's promise of the 2015 Super Bowl if both the renovations and the rolling roof were adopted. He helped found the American Football League and first envisioned the rolling roof when the stadiums were built in the early 1970s.
"Naturally, I would hope the dream of the rolling roof and the Super Bowl for Kansas City can be kept alive," he said after the final vote was announced.
The measures in Jackson County were designed to raise more than $500 million to renovate Kauffman Stadium, where baseball's Royals play, and Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Chiefs.
Voters supporting the tax increases feared the teams might leave without the improvements. Opponents decried giving aid to millionaire team owners.
A three-eighth-cent sales tax will raise $425 million over 25 years to renovate the stadiums and add such amenities as a pavilion behind the baseball stadium. A separate user tax would have generated about $200 million for the rolling roof.
The sales tax passed with 53 percent of the vote, while the roof plan failed with about 48 percent. The rolling roof would have moved between the two stadiums, providing climate control.
The teams' owners have pledged, together, more than $125 million toward the renovations. But arguments have raged for weeks over whether the Royals' David Glass and the Chiefs' Hunt were putting up enough of their own money.
During the run-up to the vote, the owners did not threaten to leave town if the measures failed, but they refused to promise they would stay.
"I voted against," said Joyce Merrill of Kansas City. "I think athletics makes higher profits than almost any other industry. We don't subsidize anybody else to help them build facilities to help them make more money."
A no vote would mean the Jackson County Sports Authority, the body that governs operations of the stadiums, would be in violation of a requirement in its lease that it maintain the facilities in "state of the art" condition. After Jan. 1, 2007, the Royals and Chiefs would both be free to leave.
Supporters of the tax increases pointed to other cities that have lost franchises beloved by their communities - Cleveland's Browns and Baltimore's Colts, for example - over largely the same issue, inadequate stadiums.
The NFL pledged to award Kansas City a Super Bowl in 2015 if the measures passed, and Major League Baseball said it would give the city an All-Star Game sometime after 2010.
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