Raiders Stadium Receives Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (If Only There Were Events To Occupy Venue In August)
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Amid a coronavirus pandemic and postponed stadium events, the Las Vegas Raiders will not have any public celebrations or worker recognitions at the NFL team’s Allegiant Stadium Friday/July 31 — the Raiders stadium completion date.
Instead, Raiders owner Mark Davis, team president Marc Badain, stadium pointman Don Webb and an army of construction workers and managers can take pride in the fact that Clark County issued the TCO for full occupancy at the 65,000-seat domed venue on 62.5 acres on the west side of Interstate 15 across from Mandalay Bat hotel-casino.
“We received our TCO yesterday, tw0 days early in fact,” Badain wrote in an email to LVSportsBiz.com. “We are not planning any special events at this time as circumstances do not allow it nor would it be appropriate at this time.”
It’s not appropriate because there’s a pandemic going on that has claimed the lives of 150,000 Americans and has prompted a Garth Brook concert, a Raiders preseason game and an UNLV vs Cal football game to be scrubbed at Allegiant Stadium in August.
When will fans be allowed to attend Raiders games, assuming those games are staged in the stadium in 2020? Nobody knows.
Sports in the COVID-19 era are very fluid. The bubble environments for NBA and NHL games appear to offer the best chance for major league sports. Major League Baseball, not operating in a pandemic bubble, has already suffered setbacks with the Miami Marlins absorbing a coronavirus outbreak.
The NFL is following MLB’s path without a bubble environment for games as NFL teams are practicing at their home camps. The Raiders are holding camp at their new home back in Henderson.
The Raiders stadium used a big public money investment. Southern Nevada is on the hook for a 30-year debt service of more than $1 billion, which allowed Southern Nevada to contribute $750 million to the construction of the stadium. The overall stadium project was just shy of $2 billion, including $1.4 billion for the stadium construction budget. The other $600 million was spent by tho Raiders on items such as land purchases and stadium design costs. The stadium was completed in 31 months after a groundbreaking event Nov. 13, 2017.
Here is a link to a McCarthy announcement. McCarthy teamed with Mortenson to oversee construction of the stadium.
Check out the LVSportsBiz.com story showing the stadium’s construction progress. Here’s the finished product:
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