By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
No stadium drawing.
No public forums.
No community outreach.
Not even a mention on Thursday’s Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board meeting agenda.
You’d think a major league sports team presented with $380 million in government assistance more than a half-year ago to help build a stadium would be bonding with its new host community with public meetings, stadium info and chats with local residents.
All Las Vegas has is Athletics owner John Fisher’s word that he intends to build a $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium on nine acres at the Tropicana Hotel site at one of the busiest intersections on the Strip.
LVSportsBiz.com inspected the stadium board meeting agenda for Thursday and there was no mention of the Athletics on the docket. See for yourself.
The agenda’s major item is the stadium board being asked to approve a payment of nearly $2 million to UNLV to make up the loss of net income because of the closing of Sam Boyd Stadium, where the school’s football team used to play. The Raiders now charge UNLV at cost to use Allegiant Stadium for its six annual home games.
But regarding the Athletics stadium on the Strip, Las Vegas residents still have precious little info about this venue. Athletics team president Dave Kaval and consultants have attended at least two previous stadium board meetings, but none are scheduled to appear Thursday.
The team showed last year whimsical drawings of a stadium that the A’s admitted themselves had no connection to what they were actually designing for the Tropicana hotel site.
The Athletics were scheduled to stage a forum to show the actual stadium drawings in early December, but scrubbed the event because the team said it was not appropriate to continue with the renderings showing after two Nevada state troopers were killed at an Interstate 15 stop in Las Vegas.
Now the Major League Baseball team is using the friendly confines of the Vegas Chamber’s annual preview program Jan. 24 for — in the chamber’s words — “addressing the community for first time.”
Technically, the public can attend the A’s speaker at the Chamber preview event. But it’s far free. Instead you will have to buy a ticket. A chamber member ticket starts at $95, while a non-member has to fork over $125 to hear from an Athletics representative.
A local resident quipped about the ticket price in her social media post:
The chamber event’s speaker lineup will include some familiar Athletics stadium subsidy advocates, none other than Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) CEO Steve Hill and his trusty sidekick and A’s consultant/former stadium board consultant/former Raiders executive Jeremy Aguero.
Not only does Hill chair the stadium board and Aguero served as the panel’s former consultant, the duo also teamed up to convince state lawmakers in June to earmark that $380 million in assistance to help the A’s build their stadium.
Many thought, at first, that the Athletics’ idea of building an MLB stadium on the Strip was whimsical and well, let’s face it, downright bizarre.
But Fisher claims he has the financial resources to come up with more than a billion dollars to complete the construction funding in Las Vegas, though there’s a legion of doubters. Fisher has not explained why he just wouldn’t spend the same $1 billion plus on an open-air stadium in the Oakland area. It’s nore costly to build the stadium in Las Vegas because the A’s will have some type of roof to limit the intense high temperatures of Las Vegas summers.
The Athletics still have not told the public how they play to pay for the construction of the Vegas stadium with the exception that the team has $380 million in public resources at their disposal.
The team says it plans to start demolishing all buildings on the Tropicana hotel site at the end of 2024 to start construction in 2025 so that the A’s can start play in 2028.
But Tropicana hotel employees have not been informed of any timetable regarding when the hotel will be closed for demolition. The entire site at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue has to be cleared for the stadium project.
The last time the stadium board met was Oct. 25.
In stadium board news, here are graphics showing capital projects for 2024 and stadium attendance in the third quarter of 2023.
Stadium attendance in July, August and September of 2023. You will notice most of the events are private events.