A 51s Ballpark Grows In Summerlin; Howard Hughes Breaks Ground Thanks To LVCVA’s $80 Million Deal

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

Donny “Baseball” Logan’s long wait is over.

 

Logan, the longtime business head of the Las Vegas 51s baseball team, has watched the Raiders break ground on their $1.9 billion stadium project, the Vegas Golden Knights capture the hearts of their new market and new teams like the WNBA Las Vegas Aces and soccer’s Las Vegas Lights FC plant roots here.

 

All along, Logan and the 51s wanted the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) to kick in, oh, $80 million or so and the Triple A minor league ball club could build a pretty 10,000-seat, 22-suite ball yard next to the Golden Knights’ twin-rink training center in Summerlin.

 

And finally, with the $80 million naming rights deal firmly in hand (approved by the LVCVA Oct. 10), the 51s ball club, team owner/Summerlin master developer Howard Hughes Corp. and Logan staged a well-orchestrated Las Vegas Ballpark groundbreaking amid cold and breezy un-Las Vegas-like weather conditions.

 

The groundbreaking stage included Logan along with Howard Hughes Corp. executives, Pacific Coast League Commissioner Branch Rickey (grandson of the man who integrated Major League Baseball) and county commissioners Steve “Groundbreaking Shovel” Sisolak and Susan Brager.

 

 

Truth be told, the crowd wanted the ceremonial words to end as quickly as possible because it was so cold and windy out. Howard Hughes’ master of the groundbreaking ceremony, Ton Warden, actually cracked some funny jokes (“Welcome to the Winter Olympics”) that added a few laughs to the event. He also quipped, “We sold those (shovels) on eBay already.”

 

PENTA and Hunt Construction will build the $150 million venue, complete with 360-degree concourse and swimming pool, in a year so that the ballpark will be ready for Big League Weekend in March 2019. The 51s will finish their stay at downtown Cashman Field in 2018 and then move into their new venue in the Summerlin ‘burbs 12 miles to the west of downtown in 2019. (The Las Vegas Lights soccer team will take over Cashman as its sole tenant next year.)

 

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LVSportsBiz.com joked with Logan that he hasn’t had to break out his annual “backed up sewage in the dugout at Cashman” story this year.

 

But Logan, always with a keen ability to put things in perspective, noted, “We still have one more season to play there.”

 

Good point, Donny.

 

LVSportsBiz.com caught up with Rickey after the groundbreaking. He has long called for a new Las Vegas ballpark and was happy that local fans will be able to afford tickets to watch Triple A minor league ball. The 51s’ least expensive ticket is $11, but expect that cost to go up a few dollars with the new Las Vegas Ballpark, Logan has mentioned.

 

County Commission Chairman Sisolak, who is running for governor and never misses a sports venue groundbreaking, had his name on one of the groundbreaking shovels. Howard Hughes is quite detail-oriented, so the shovels were all made from baseball bats. Even the posts for the red roped-off seating area were made from baseball bats.

 

 

The ballpark site is outside the city of Las Vegas limits, which is why Mayor Carolyn Goodman and some other Las Vegas city officials were probably not around at the groundbreaking even though they were invited. Las Vegas Councilman Steve Seroka did attend. The 51s venue will be so close to the City National Arena Golden Knights building that you could literally place seats on the hockey team’s training building roof and have a good view of left field and the rest of the baseball diamond.

 

 

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