Subdued Raiders Stadium Meeting Allows MGM Resorts’ Hornbuckle’s Parking Concerns To Draw Spotlight
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
Gone are the days when a good ol’ Raiders stadium meeting used to pack ’em in, with County Commission Chairman/Raiders superfan Steve Sisolak tossing foam, nerf-style footballs to union guys wearing Raiders jerseys in the crowded commission chambers.
These days, with $400 million already spent on building the $1.84 billion Raiders domed palace, we’re left Thursday afternoon to watching Raiders stadium official Don Webb wow two dozen stadium groupies with cool, whiz-bang videos of the stadium construction site and overhead footage courtesy of a drone.
You can watch the stadium construction animation right here.
It was a slow news day at the stadium board meeting, but it did give board member Bill Hornbuckle — MGM Resorts International president — a forum to lament about the parking-challenged stadium site and proposal offered up by the Raiders.
“We’re petrified we’re going to be choked out,” Hornbuckle said of his company’s hotel-casino parking garages and lots on the Strip on the other side of Interstate 15 from the 62.6-acre stadium site bounded by Russell Road on the south, Polaris Avenue on the west and Hacienda Avenue on the north.
Hornbuckle also mentioned that the parking crunch could “squeeze out tourists,” too.
Webb, the distinguished-looking Raiders stadium executive, felt Hornbuckle’s pain. It was time to break out the word, “disingenuous,” to soothe Hornbuckle’s feelings.
“It would be disingenuous for us to say we are satisfied,” Webb told the stadium board.
Webb dropped an interesting number on the board when he said that 20,000-25,000 people would be reaching the 65,000-seat stadium by walking from the Strip via Hacienda Avenue — the road that divides MGM Resorts’ Luxor and Mandalay Bay hotel-casino properties.
That’s a lot of stadium-related cars that will be occupying spaces at those two hotels.
After the 90-minute session, Webb said he wasn’t insulted by Hornbuckle’s concerns and that parking is a concern to himself, too.
“It is our business,” Webb pointed out, noting he’s happy to work with MGM Resorts on stadium parking issues.
The Raiders have identified four satellite parking locations, where fans will take shuttles to the stadium. The off-site locations offer 9,625-11,925 parking spaces and are designed to disperse the traffic. The stadium site itself provides 2,375-2,725 spaces, so the grand total of stadium spaces is, drum roll please, 12,000-14,650.
Webb told LVSportsBiz.com that the Bali Hai Golf Club off Las Vegas Boulevard just south of the Russell Road intersection was considered for parking, but was too costly an option for a parking location. And he didn’t want to bunch up all the stadium parking in one big location.
There’s a whole other committee tasked with figuring out what would be good events for the stadium besides Raiders and UNLV football games. It’s the Southern Nevada Sporting Event Committee, which meets 1 p.m. Sept. 24 at Las Vegas City Council chambers.
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