By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
I’m sitting in my usual position at the Raiders stadium board meeting today.
There’s a small nook with a power outlet I need for a laptop next to the dais where nine Las Vegas business leaders who make up this public stadium panel move along a litany of stadium agreements that is needed to sign off for the Raiders’ 65,000-seat, domed palatial playground. I used this nook to watch quite a few stadium approvals this past year.
The stadium board meetings started last year with hoopla with Laborers 872 members packing the joint wearing Raiders-themed union jerseys and Clark County Chairman (and unofficial county sports commissioner) Steve Sisolak tossing small footballs into the meeting room audience.
Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak with Raiders cheerleaders on the Strip last year.
Today, stadium board chairman Steve Hill and Raiders President Marc Badain signed a lease deal, development agreement and a bunch of other documents to seal the stadium deal that was, in essence, a done deal the moment Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Senate Bill 1 Oct. 17, 2016.
The truth is there has been scant new public policy shaped since these meetings began last year.
The enabling legislation provided a scorecard outlining the approval process and a list of approval boxes to be checked along the way. And when a team is receiving a record $750 million stadium subsidy and a local community is hungry to host a transplanted NFL team, you have lots of mutual motivation to grow a new stadium a 15-minute walk from the Strip.
The $1.8 billion stadium being built on 62 acres at Russell Road and Polaris Avenue with $750 million in public dollars is set to open in mid-2020, with stadium board member Tommy White, the Laborers 872 leader, bearing a “Beat LA” patch on his shirt to open the Raiders stadium in LV before the $5 billion Rams/Chargers stadium in LA.
The guaranteed maximum price for the Raiders stadium construction was actually a hair below $1.4 billion, with the other $4 million going to design, land purchase, equipment and engineering costs.
Today’s stadium board meeting had all the drama of a taking-a-knee, victory formation at the end of a one-sided football game. When Clark County moves along a stadium plan minus 13,000 parking spaces that are required under county standard, you get the sense this stadium project with trays of grass to be moved in and out will be built hell or new drainage easement.
The NFL owners also blessed the Raiders project at their meeting in Orlando this week.
“That box is checked,” Raiders President Marc Badain told the stadium board Wednesday. “The league has been impressed. They’re excited about the project.”
Each stadium board member came representing a specific slice of the community. Ken Evans, the Urban Chamber of Commerce president, has called for diversity and inclusion in stadium hiring. If it was up to White, construction would have started the day after Sandoval signed the stadium bill. (“We would have already been half finished by now,” he quipped to LVSportsBiz.com after the meeting.) MGM Resorts International executive Bill Hornbuckle, who knows many Raiders and stadium visitors will park in his company’s hotel-casino parking garages on the other side of the interstate, raised a few questions on parking at a few meetings.
But most of the stadium board nine didn’t engage in public discussion much. And several dozens of stadium agreements sailed through during the past year, with Sisolak, who is running for governor, rooting on the process with tweets of stadium construction photos and gratitudes.
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Stadium deals are a bonanza for lawyers.
Lawyers did the negotiating for the Raiders to share the joint with the UNLV football team (as was required by SB 1) and lawyers handled everything else, from consultant Jeremy Aguero moving the agreements along from month to month as the stadium board train conductor to the drafts of the Raiders community benefits plan for the stadium (that did not need any formal agreement, but generated the most heated public comments at meetings.)
There’s so much site work, drainage construction, detonation and big gear equipment at the stadium’s 62-acre site that you wonder why there needs to be all these approvals in the first place.
The state legislation provided the checklist of required approvals and the debate on subsidizing a member team of the richest sports league in the land has been moot since the governor signed the $750 million subsidy into law a year and a half ago.
Local TV stations have camera staffers videotaping these meetings and I wonder what is going through the minds of TV news producers back at the studio when they start combing through footage of a local government process that can be placed in the “done deal” file.
Badain appeared in a jovial mood after the meeting. He said he could understand why long-time Raiders fans in Oakland would lament the team’s move to Las Vegas. He said 30 team workers have already transitioned to Las Vegas digs. And he’s already talking with a few companies interested in the naming rights deal for the building.
For a franchise known for always having the possibility of moving, it was nice to know the Raiders will have a place to call home for a while after the venue opens in 2020, the team president said.
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