A’s Prez Kaval On Vegas Stadium ‘Spherical Armadillo’ Renderings: Athletics Stadium On Strip Will Usher In New Generation Of MLB Ballpark Design
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
Athletics President Dave Kaval told LVSportsBiz.com Tuesday that his team’s new “spherical armadillo” stadium on the Strip will “define a new era” in Major League Baseball stadium design in the way Baltimore’s Camden Yards ushered in a new generation of red-brick retro ballparks across the majors.
“We are making history,” Kaval declared after the team released drawings of its $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium at the Tropicana hotel-casino site at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue intersection. Lead designer Bjarke Ingels and architect-of-record HNTB, a veteran sports architectural firm, are teaming up on the A’s project. Mortenson/McCarthy, which built Raiders’ Allegiant stadium, is also building the A’s stadium on the Strip.
Kaval said the stadium is designed to be sealed and climate-controlled. Ballpark drawings released today show the New York New York hotel-casino diagonally across the Las Vegas Boulevard-Tropicana Avenue intersection, but that’s because fans will be “looking through a curtain glass wall,” Kaval explained.
This cable-net glass window, facing that Tropicana Avenue/Las Vegas Boulevard corner, will be the world’s largest of its type. The stadium will include an 18,000-square-foot jumbotron, which would make it the largest screen in the major.
As for the venue’s look, stadium designer Ingels said, “The resultant architecture is like a spherical armadillo.”
Take a look.
Ingels was quoted in today’s press release that the planned stadium for the Tropicana hotel-casino site is “shaped by the local climate – while opening and inviting the life of the Strip to enter and explore. In the city of spectacle, the A’s ‘armadillo’ is designed for passive shading and natural light – the architectural response to the Nevada climate generating a new kind of vernacular icon in Vegas.”
Many people on social media said the look was reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House.
The A’s stadium, slated to open for the Major League Baseball season in 2028, calls for 2,500 on-site parking spaces and a plaza of two to three acres. The 2,500 on-site parking spaces are about as many as the Raiders have for their domed stadium of 62,000 seats on the west side of Interstate 15 across from Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.
Keep in mind the A’s stadium is planned for only nine of the 35-acre site, with Bally’s planning a new hotel-casino. Bally’s and landowner Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc. (GPLI) are working on a master plan for the site that will show the hotel towers and other related development besides the A’s stadium.
The A’s are working with Clark County government and Nevada Department of Transportation on traffic and transportation plans. The Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) will be involved on offering gameday express bus service that currently serves VGK games at T-Mobile Arena and Raiders games at Allegiant Stadium.
The stadium comes at a public price. The state of Nevada passed a law in June designating $380 million toward the $1.5 billion stadium construction bill, with that $380 million in government assistance including $120 million from Clark County.
Las Vegas thought it was going to get a view of the stadium renderings in early December when the A’s set a meeting to show the ballpark drawings. But the team postponed the stadium renderings meeting, saying it was inappropriate timing after two Nevada state troopers were killed at a stop on Interstate 15 in Las Vegas.
The meeting was never rescheduled and the stadium renderings were never displayed to the public until today.
When the A’s were asking for public money before the state legislative committees in June, they mentioned the stadium would be retractable. But in the end here, the stadium is planned with a fixed roof. Retractable roofs are far more expensive than a fixed stadium roof.
A state teachers union spokesman responded to the A’s stadium drawings today.
:While we finally have new pictures of the stadium, the not-so-pretty picture in Nevada public schools remains the same: 48th in per-pupil education funding; the largest class sizes in the nation; and the highest rate of educator vacancies in the country (which includes over 2300 vacancies in Clark County where the stadium would be built),” said Alexander Marks of the Nevada State Education Association, which is trying to block the state stadium subsidy through a lawsuit and a statewide public vote.
“It’s fitting the Vegas dome (inadvertently) looks like the Sydney Opera House since John Fisher sure changed his tune after getting nearly $400M in public money. Public money requires public trust, and the Nevada community deserves more respect. With the lies, misrepresentations, and lack of transparency since the Special Session, that’s not what we’ve received throughout this misguided project,” Marks said Tuesday.
“Schools Over Stadiums and our sister committee, Strong Public Schools Nevada, believe public funds should be going to public education and other essential services that everyday Nevadans rely on, and we are keeping up our fight to stop this misguided project.”
