Downtown Las Vegas Soccer Stadium and Mile-Long Corridor Redevelopment Plan Includes Concussion Research Center, Esports Facility

By Alan Snel

LVSportsBiz.com

 

It’s an audacious urban redevelopment proposal that comes before the Las Vegas City Council Wednesday morning and the financing for this public-private project has not even been identified yet.

 

The concept has some headliner news like the idea of building a 25,000-seat covered soccer stadium and buying the Las Vegas Lights FC soccer team in hopes that the Triple-A soccer club would graduate to the Major League Soccer tier.

 

The Renaissance Companies, a construction management firm that hopes to win a 180-day “exclusive negotiation agreement” (ENA) from the council, has hired the Populous sports stadium design firm to design a covered soccer stadium with a translucent fabric roof that creates an outdoor feel to the facility while giving fans a climate-controlled indoor venue. It also has a retractable field enabling the stadium to be used for other sports and entertainment events.

 

LVSportsBiz.com has also learned the Renaissance redevelopment plan includes several intriguing features that transcend a soccer stadium and MLS team at a redeveloped Cashman Center site off Las Vegas Boulevard. Floyd Kephart and Candice Rauter of the The Renaissance Cos met with LVSportsBiz.com Tuesday evening to outline the plan’s scope, which includes the sale of the Lights.

 

Kephart and Rauter will join Lights soccer team owner Brett Lashbrook and investor company The Baupost Group representative Julie Kane at Wednesday’s council session to ask the members for an ENA to flesh out the project’s details and, very importantly, the funding and public contribution to the project.

 

Renaissance Chairman Kephart and Rauter, Renaissance managing partner, said the redevelopment plan covers a mile-long corridor along Las Vegas Boulevard from Stewart Avenue to Washington Avenue, a segment that includes the US 95 highway overpass/entrance and exit ramps and the Cashman Center site.

 

Kephart and Rauter began behind-the-scenes discussions with the city in February 2018 and began talking with Lashbrook about buying the Lights a year ago when the United Soccer League club was in its maiden season at Cashman Field. The redevelopment cost is unknown at this time, Rauter said.

 

“The purpose of the Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) is to determine what, if anything will be built and once that is determined, we can estimate costs,” said Rauter, who manages Renaissance’s Las Vegas office. “Any estimates prior to the conclusion of the ENA would be erroneous.”

 

But Kephart and Rauter have some ideas on what could potentially be built along a stretch that includes 86 aces of city land, including the 60-acre Cashman Center site:

 

^ A soccer concussion research center and sports medicine and training facilities.

 

^ An esports center where video game competitors could live, work and play and even get nutrition guidance.

 

^ Besides housing an MLS team, the project would also focus on women’s soccer play and development.

 

^ Keeping the Cashman Center’s 1,800-seat theater, but demolishing the 100,000 square feet of convention space at the center.

 

^ JRDV Urban International planners are devising a plan that “gives you the feel of outside inside, adding modern concepts with nature,” Kephart said.

 

Renaissance envisions a 10-year build-out to 2030, with any soccer stadium not opening in less than three years. The MLS is expanding from 24 to 30 teams and Las Vegas hopes the Lights can either be the 28th, 29th or 30th team.

 

Kephart said this will not be a short process.

 

“Everybody is focused on what will happen today. We’re not making Kool-Aid,” said Kephart, a Tennessee native who lives in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County.

 

It’s unknown how much public money will be requested.

 

The Raiders stadium is receiving a $750 million public subsidy from Southern Nevada, while the Howard Hughes Corp.-owned Aviators ballpark in Downtown Summerlin received an $80 million naming rights payout from the public LVCVA tourism agency.  (T-Mobile Arena opened in April 2016, privately built by MGM Resorts International and Anschutz Entertainment Group.) Four years ago, the city of Las Vegas and two private partners proposed a $200 million soccer stadium in Symphony Park, and the public money request produced public debate. Major League Soccer declined to pick Las Vegas as an expansion city at the time and, as a result, the subsidized soccer stadium idea went away.

 

This time, the soccer stadium proposal is part of a redevelopment project for a mile-long corridor that is blighted and economically depressed.

 

Kephart said no residents will be displaced in the development area.

 

“Our first job is to determine the highest and best use (of the land),” Kephart said. “What’s it worth? And what will it yield?”

 

We will likely begin finding that out starting Wednesday. Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Councilman Bob Coffin have said they will support the exclusive negotiating agreement.

 

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