Katy Schwartz was born into a family fanatical over the Kansas City Chiefs. The family will travel to River Falls, Wis., this summer to watch their beloved Chiefs’ summer training camp.

Next year’s commute to the training camp will be far shorter.

“Chase,” a Bichon Frise sporting a Chiefs jersey, accompanied his owner, also wearing a Chiefs jersey, Monday at the future home of the Kansas City Chiefs’ summer training camp — Missouri Western State University — for the ceremonial groundbreaking.

“I’ll be here every day,” said Ms. Schwartz, who as a teacher at Central High School has summers off.

About 250 people came out to the ceremony at the Chris Faros Alumni Pavilion, which will be in the shadow of the indoor practice facility, construction of which is slated to begin Wednesday. The $10.3 million building project will take a year to complete.

Kansas City Chiefs president Denny Thum accompanied Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and local officials at the ceremony. Sen. Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, and Dirck Clark, president of Western’s board of governors, also spoke Monday about how the deal went down. Apparently, it took hundreds of hours of negotiations to bring the Chiefs training camp back to Missouri.

“Dealing with Dirck Clark is like dealing with Drew Rosenhaus or Tom Condon,” said Mr. Thum, playfully referencing two well-known sports agents.

Mr. Clark, who in his college days worked traffic and security at Chiefs games, said he never thought he’d one day be negotiating with the president of the Chiefs. The groundbreaking marked the end of a process that began last August.

“This cleans up a space on my speed dial,” Mr. Clark joked of the his frequent calls to Mr. Thum.

Mr. Shields talked about the snowstorm that canceled a flight from Kansas City to Jefferson City where he was going to pitch the Chiefs proposal to the Missouri Development Finance Board (which later approved funding for the project) — and how a plane carrying a heart from Wichita, Kan., to Kansas City for a transplant intervened to get them to that meeting.

“Fate played a part in that,” Mr. Shields said.

Thanks, congratulations and standing ovations were plentiful Monday, but not everyone was in a festive mood. On the outer fringe of the crowd watched a handful of men in matching T-shirts reading “Laborers Local 579.” M. Scott Howell, business manager of the Laborers’ International Union Local No. 579, gathered the men from his “out of work list.” Their concern is that despite having a $10.3 million project in their backyard, they’ll likely remain on the list.

“Looks to me like more of this job should have been done locally,” said Mr. Howell. About 50-plus percent of the work is going to out-of-town subcontractors.

Crossland Construction, a general contractor from Columbus, Kan., which submitted the lowest of 14 bids submitted for the project, chose 11 local subcontractors for the job. Western officials initially believed six locals would be used.

Jimmy Myers can be reached

at jimmym@npgco.com.