The LVCVA: ‘It’s A Public Agency That Acts Like A Private Company’

By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com

About a week after the “Great Las Vegas Snow Blizzard of 2019” coated the elevated sections of outer Las Vegas with several days of Facebook snow photos, I hopped on my trusty road bicycle and pedaled to Red Rock Canyon when the temperatures reached the 60s again. I made a right turn on Calico Basin Road to gaze at the pretty landscape that we’re lucky to have here in Las Vegas and reached the circular dead end near the red-and-calico scenery. It was there where I met two local guys and began chatting.

The topic turned to Summerlin and the new baseball park that Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corporation is building and the fact that Howard Hughes Corp. is receiving $80 million of your public dollars from the local public tourism agency in the form of a “naming rights deal” to call the venue, “Las Vegas Ballpark.”

The public tourism agency is also known by five capital  letters — LVCVA for Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

One of the two guys then casually interjected into the conversation, “It’s a public agency that acts like a private company.”

Wowza! When a guy off the street comes up with that type of analysis you typically hear on the current events show on your local PBS station, your ears perk up. You know that feeling when you think you’re the only one who thinks a certain way about something, but then someone else you don’t even know articulates the same exact thought? Well, I got that feeling that day.

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The date was Oct. 10, 2017. Locals know the date well because it was the day that the Vegas Golden Knights played their first regular season home game ever. It was only nine days after the Oct. 1 shooting massacre on the Strip and Las Vegans experienced a jumble of intense emotions from excitement for the Knights’ first home game to grief from the loss of so many lives from our country’s deadliest mass shooting.

It was the dominant news event of the day. Local news stations were focused on the Golden Knights’ big day.

So, what day did the LVCVA choose to have its board vote on giving $80 million in public money to Howard Hughes Corporation for its $150 million ballpark in Summerlin?

Oct. 10, 2017.

The LVCVA board’s approval of the $80 million for Howard Hughes Corp. hardly made a news splash on a day when local news crews were focused on T-Mobile Arena and the Golden Knights’ historic first home game. I was there at that LVCVA board meeting along with a reporter from the local newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

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The LVCVA has an annual budget of nearly $360 million, including more than $100 million for advertising. Its advertising agency is private company R&R Partners, which does the ad buys for the LVCVA and functions as the ad department for the public tourism agency.  Not only does the LVCVA pay R&R Partners millions of dollars, it also spends a lot of money on travel for staffers to go to places to tell folks about the alluring features of Las Vegas.

The Review-Journal hammered the LVCVA in a series of stories in 2018 outlining former LVCVA CEO Rossi Ralenkotter’s misuse of LVCVA money, including gift cards. Here’s Ralenkotter at the Feb. 23, 2018 ballpark groundbreaking event next to Aviators president Don Logan.

Ralenkotter also traveled personally on the LVCVA dime, the RJ reported. Ralenkotter left the LVCVA in August 2018 when the board approved a $455,000 retirement plan.

Disclosures: The Review-Journal is owned by the family of local hotel tycoon billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who owns the Sands Expo Convention Center — a facility that competes against the LVCVA’s Las Vegas Convention Center. And, I am a former Review-Journal business reporter who left the newspaper in February 2016 shortly after Adelson bought the RJ.

Ralenkotter was replaced by former Silver State Materials concrete company owner Steve Hill, who served as former Gov. Brian Sandoval’s economic development chief and is the current chairman of the public stadium board overseeing the construction of the Raiders stadium. Hill started on his new job Sept. 1.

The public in Southern Nevada is raising more than $1 billion over a 30-year debt service repayment period so that it could give $750 million in public money to the Raiders so that the NFL team could build its domed, 65,000-seat stadium. Typically, giving public stadium subsidies to professional teams such as NFL clubs receives several years of public debate and political discussions, but the $750 million subsidy to the Raiders was discussed by a Las Vegas tourism infrastructure committee and approved by the Nevada Legislature and Sandoval in record time, leading some to believe it was “fast-tracked.”

While visitors are paying the extra hotel room tax to pay for the stadium, room fee revenues can technically be used for public needs such as education, health care or law enforcement.

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For four months, LVSportsBiz.com has asked the LVCVA to interview Hill. A former public relations staffer, Jeremy Handel, who no longer is employed by the tourism agency, said he sent our interview request to Hill’s office. LVSportsBiz.com also contacted Hill’s office.

LVSportsBiz.com also sent written questions to Hill and the LVCVA’s PR office. The questions were submitted Feb. 13 — nearly three weeks ago. A PR staffer said the agency was working on the answers. But LVSportsBiz.com still has not received any responses to our questions as of Tuesday. For the record, here is the Q and A with empty responses from Steve Hill and the LVCVA:

No answers from Hill and the LVCVA. Just the sound of crickets.

The fact that the LVCVA’s CEO is also the chairman of the Raiders stadium board is important because the LVCVA will be working with the Raiders to attract events to the stadium, which is scheduled to open at the end of July 2020.

There were poorly publicized Southern Nevada Sporting Event Committee meetings last year that were held to define the roles of the LVCVA and its non-profit offshoot Las Vegas Events to drawing events to the Raiders stadium.

In a state that prides itself on low taxes, giving $750 million to an NFL team that plays in a league that generates $15 billion in revenue annually is a major investment.

LVSportsBiz.com also asked Raiders president Marc Badain similar questions about how he envisions the LVCVA and the Raiders working together to bring events to the Raiders stadium. He declined to answer similar questions.

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The Las Vegas Ballpark is scheduled to open April 9, when the newly-rebranded Las Vegas Aviators (formerly the 51s) host the Sacramento River Cats.

The LVCVA’s $80 million commitment to Howard Hughes Corporation for a minor league baseball park is a stunning amount of money for a minor league venue. The majority of minor league baseball parks in this country were built for less than $80 million each.

And the ballpark in Summerlin will draw local people from metro Las Vegas — not the tourists and visitors whom the LVCVA is tasked with attracting to Las Vegas and its 150,000 hotel rooms.

Back at that Oct. 10, 2017 meeting when the LVCVA board approved the $80 million payout to Howard Hughes, LVCVA officials said the agency was losing so much money running the Cashman Center where the 51s used to play that it paid to take the money being lost and use it for marketing purposes at the new ballpark in Summerlin.

The $80 million in public dollars is being given to Howard Hughes Corporation, a land development company based in Texas that generated more than $1 billion in revenues in 2017.  The company plans to use the ballpark as an amenity for its marketing and sales purposes.

And they have the LVCVA and your public dollars to thank for that.

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