Story by Alan Snel Photos by Hugh Byrne
Well, here we go again.
It’s Stadium 2.0 for Las Vegas.
Back in the good ol’ days of stadium life in Vegas — oh, it was about 2017 — Raiders representatives in suits were joined by the chamber of commerce folks and construction guys in football jerseys at the Clark County government center where the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board held its meetings and did its best to move the Raiders stadium project along until it opened in 2020. Former Clark County Commissioner and Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak even showed up once at a stadium board meeting back then to toss nerf footballs to the construction workers in the meeting room audience.
Now it’s the Oakland Athletics’ turn to work with stadium board chairman Steve Hill — the man of many hats. And Wednesday’s A’s stadium meeting was more low-key than those early Raiders stadium sessions.
In baseball parlance, you would need a “scorecard” to keep up with the multiple roles played by Hill to help the A’s with their approved Nevada state bill that designated $380 million in state and county government assistance toward a $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium on the Strip at Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. Hill called the location an “iconic” site. Indeed, it’s the heart of the Strip, along with the Flamingo Road intersection.
Not only did Hill go to Carson City and help the A’s get their stadium funding, he’s also the head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), Las Vegas’ publicly-funded tourism agency.
The LVCVA just got the job as the administrative aid to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board, which Hill chairs. Here’s Ed Finger, the LVCVA chief financial officer who also worked the stadium authority board meeting.
Now the stadium board meetings are held on Hill’s home field — the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is run by Hill’s tourism agency. The convention center was a poor place for a public meeting. The surrounding traffic and lack of parking posed problems.
The stadium band was back together at the convention center board room Wednesday.
Well, kind of.
Las Vegas consultant Jeremy Aguero helped Hill move the Raiders’ domed stadium through the stadium board process of community benefits agreements, construction milestones and the eventual venue opening in 2020.
After Aguero took a job with the Raiders in 2021, he returned as stadium board consultant in 2022 — only to leave again to work as a consultant for the Athletics in 2023.
Let’s just say — to use a baseball term because puns were “pitched” throughout Wednesday’s meeting — Aguero is the ultimate stadium funding utilityman who can work for both a public stadium board or a private sports team, conflict of interest be damned.
The meeting’s speakers during the public comments period offered a replay of the Raiders stadium process with a twist.
There were the chamber of commerce and union representatives who rolled out hyperbolic phrases to describe the wonders of construction we all heard during the Raiders stadium meetings six years ago.
For some reason, business people in Las Vegas think that building a stadium in an entertainment/tourism market is “diversifying the economy” when, in fact, it’s actually doubling down on the one-trick pony Las Vegas economy of tourism/hospitality. There are no electric vehicle factories coming through the door to Las Vegas — only stadiums.
And this time around, there were two state school union representatives, Alexander Marks and Chris Daly, at today’s meeting who questioned the conflicts of interests around the Athletics stadium deal and asked why the A’s ballpark was moving forward in a public forum when Major League Baseball owners have not even approved the A’s relocation to Las Vegas from Oakland. The MLB owners might vote on the A’s relocation at a baseball meeting in Texas next month.
The Schools Over Stadiums group has filed a petition with the state requesting a referendum on the A’s stadium subsidy. That prompted two Athletics lobbyists to file a lawsuit against the stadium funding referendum effort. One of the lobbyists works for the local daily newspaper, which published the lawsuit story on its front page last month.
The stadium board’s lawyer, Mark Arnold, told the board members that the 30-year stadium lease is similar to the agreement with the Raiders in that there’s no rent and that the team runs the stadium and gets the stadium-generated revenues. Arnold’s firm, Hunton Andrews Kurth, is receiving $700,000 from the stadium board for legal work in 2024 and 2025. Another law firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck of Las Vegas, was approved by the stadium board for $300,000 for 2024 and 2025.
Ross Edwards, a representative for Mortensen McCarthy, which also built the Raiders stadium, said construction of the A’s ballpark must start by April 2025 in order for the stadium to be ready for Major League Baseball’s 2028 season. The Tropicana hotel site will be cleared of all buildings to give the A’s a clean slate to build their ballpark. Tropicana workers have not been told when the hotel-casino will close. Hill mentioned demolition would be late 2024.
CAA ICON is also the “owner’s representative” for the A’s ballpark. CAA ICON did the same for the Raiders stadium.
The meeting included the A’s community benefits agreement, which outlined items like workforce diversity targets, appreciation nights and educational support. Here is the document.
Then there was Athletics president Dave Kaval, who told LVSportsBiz.com that he could not talk about the stadium during the World Series. Major League Baseball has a tradition of advising teams to not talk about business during the World Series.
Instead, the A’s issued this statement: “Whether it’s supporting community needs or ensuring that we are addressing all questions from policy leaders, we are committed to being a strong community partner and contributor. We continue to meet and listen to Clark County Commissioners, Stadium Authority Board Members, staff, and community leaders, and look forward to finalizing the stadium planning and other details after the mid-November owners’ meeting.”
A new, non-voting member of the stadium board is Zach Conine, the state treasurer. In Carson City in June when Gov. Joe Lombardo called a special session for the Nevada Legislature to approve the A’s stadium’s $380 million public funding, Conine joined Hill and Aguero at a legislative committee hearing to support the A’s stadium. It was an odd appearance for a state treasurer to be part of the stadium funding debate and to side with the Athletics.
But this is Las Vegas, the outlier market where conflicts of interests are ignored by local elected officials and tourism projects take priority over local needs.
After the meeting, Hill fielded questions from the media. In some markets like Denver and San Diego, publicly-subsidized MLB ballparks have spurred new development, but Hill acknowledged the A’s stadium on the Strip will not spur new development at the baseball stadium site.
Hill did say it would produce jobs, though, to help the economy — a mantra espoused during the Raiders stadium times, too. The A’s want to build their stadium on a nine-acre section of the Tropicana hotel’s 36-acre location at the southeast corner of Tropicana Ave. and Las Vegas Blvd. It’s being touted as a tourism draw.
Stadium board meetings will be held mostly monthly to discuss the Athletics stadium issues. The next stadium meeting is set for Dec. 14.
LVSportsBiz.com did not publish past A’s stadium renderings for this story because the team itself said the renderings are not accurate depictions of its baseball stadium. Indeed, for example, one rendering showed the baseball stadium taking up most of the Tropicana hotel site when the team said it plans to build the stadium on only nine acres of the site. A stadium rendering appeared at the stadium meeting.