By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
It’s May 21 on the Las Vegas calendar, so it just slightly bizarre that it’s a chilly 60 degrees at the baseball park in suburban Summerlin Friday evening.
By the time the Las Vegas Aviators and Salt Lake Bees start playing their Triple-A ballgame, there’s no sunshine in the $150 million jewel of a ball yard.
The security folks have donned windbreakers and all of them are wearing masks as America’s professional sports venues are allowing more and more people through the turnstiles after the COVID-19 virus claimed the lives of 588,000 Americans.
Fans at the Aviators ballpark tonight can roam the venue without a mask if they have been fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus. Fans are on the honor system. Though, it does seem awfully fishy that the vast majority of fans strolling the concourse and sitting in seats are not wearing a mask when 40 percent of Clark County has been vaccinated.
It’s the 39th year of professional baseball in Las Vegas and one day Major League Baseball will find a home in Las Vegas. It just won’t be any time soon.
There’s been a lot of media hype about the Oakland Athletics touring Las Vegas next week. But unless a private source wants to cut a check for $1 billion or so for a retractable roof baseball stadium, don’t look for the Aviators’ parent baseball club to leave Oakland for Sin City like the NFL Raiders did.
Southern Nevada contributed $750 million to the Raiders’ football stadium construction, while the LVCVA tourism agency gave Summerlin master developer/Aviators owner Howard Hughes $80 million for the ballpark hosting tonight’s game.
The City of Henderson is spending $42 million on a 6,000-seat minor league hockey arena at the site of the old Henderson Pavilion and nearly another $11 million on a Vegas Golden Knights ice center in downtown Henderson. Here’s a video of the Dollar Loan Center arena in Henderson that will be completed in spring 2022.
The Oakland Athletics’ exercise of touring cities like Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville and Portland is to see which market might be willing to fork over public dollars with the full blessing of Major League Baseball.
Oakland has already lost the NFL Raiders to Las Vegas and the NBA Warriors to San Francisco, so it would be nice if the baseball team can get some infrastructure help from the city of Oakland for the waterfront ballpark that has been proposed. Keep the Athletics in Oakland.
Metro Las Vegas is all tapped out of free money for team venues, and it will be the NBA that comes next to Sin City, not MLB. T-Mobile Arena is turn-key ready to host more than 40 NBA games a year and the folks who own the $375 million arena that opened in April 2016 are hungry for more programming in the building.
The two-team package of Las Vegas and Seattle could expand the NBA from 30 teams to 32.
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Speaking of Las Vegas Ballpark and its next-door VGK-owned neighbor, City National Arena, take a look at how close the baseball park is to the ice hockey training center.
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Final from Friday night at Las Vegas Ballpark: Aviators 12 Salt Lake Bees 6