Raiders President Badain Says There Will Be More Parking Spaces Than Needed To Serve Allegiant Stadium With Plenty of Parking Spots For Tailgating; Raiders Stadium Point Man Webb Says Media Exaggerates Construction Hiccups
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
As public meetings go, the Raiders stadium board sessions have sailed along the last few months. But the installation of the venue’s translucent roof has been delayed to mid-May, so that brought a serious tone to Thursday afternoon’s Las Vegas Stadium Authority board session.
LVSportsBiz.com reported four days ago that the stadium meeting status report said the roof won’t be installed until mid-May — 30 days later than expected.
The stadium board’s construction monitoring company, Grand Canyon Development Partners, said weather could be an issue. But Grand Canyon representative Tony Cosentino told the stadium board that he didn’t expect weather to delay the $1.97 billion project, which includes $1.4 billion for the construction of the actual domed, 65,000-seat stadium on 62 acres on the west side of Interstate 15 directly across from the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.
Stadium board members did not have a single question for Cosentino.
Raiders stadium point man Don Webb said 80 percent of the stadium project is done after construction started two years ago. He then ran an aerial video showing the stadium construction progress to the John Wick music that is used for the NHL Vegas Golden Knights player intros at T-Mobile Arena. Here’s the stadium construction video.
Webb said construction hiccups are exaggerated by the media.
He mentioned a handful of bolts broke in the stadium’s cable canopy structure and five firms modeled the conditions to identify the causes or see if there were underlying design defects. “There were none,” Webb reassured the stadium authority board.
Mortenson-McCarthy, the stadium development team, said the cable netting installation will be delayed by 30 days to mid-May, Webb mentioned.
Raiders president Marc Badain then followed up Webb and said the team is working on parking, tailgating and transportation issues for a report. He said fans need 9,500 parking spaces and staff and workers need 2,500. Badain then claimed the Raiders are eyeing sites that would supply 30,000 parking spots.
“Spots will exceed demand,” Badain told the stadium board.
He said Raiders have spent $50 million on land for parking. He there were 2,500 spots used for tailgating at the Oakland Coliseum and there will be more than enough spots for tailgating for the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium. Here’s Badain chatting about parking after the one-hour meeting.
He also said the Personal Seat Licenses are sold out and that he’s unaware of any new NFL stadium that sold out its personal seat licenses eight months before the venue opened. Here’s a pic of Badain, who noted 40 percent of the $478.3 million in PSLs were bought by non-Nevada residents and 60 percent are in state.
The chart below shows the Raiders have spent $514.7 million of the $750 million public subsidy that Southern Nevada is giving to the NFL team to build the stadium. The Raiders have raised an astounding $478.3 million in personal seat license revenues and have sold out the stadium — not bad for a team that rarely makes the NFL playoffs these days.
Southern Nevada is raising money for its share of the stadium by imposing a hotel room tax increase, which has raised $136.2 million in public dollars so far, according to the room tax revenue chart below.
The NFL is coming next week to the Clark County Commission meeting to chat about the 2020 college player draft event that is scheduled to be held in Las Vegas in April.
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