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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The Big Leagues hit Las Vegas Friday night — Downtown Summerlin, to be precise — as the Oakland Athletics were playing the Milwaukee Brewers in a spring training game at an impressive Triple-A ballpark.
But this night was different.
The MLB Athletics set up displays on the main concourse showing drawings of their planned $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat domed stadium for the Strip that the team hopes to open for the baseball season in 2028.
The entire 35-acre Tropicana hotel-casino site at Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue will have to be cleared with the goal of a stadium groundbreaking in the first half of 2025.
Two earnest A’s workers with “front office” golf shirts greeted fans at the A’s-Brewers spring game to collect data on potential ticket sales at a stadium that is supposed to open in four years.
“You have to start somewhere,” another A’s front office employee said.
Somewhere was this week as the beleaguered yet historic MLB franchise revealed renderings for a ballpark that reminded many observers of the Sydney Opera House.
The A’s stadium designer Bjarke Ingels, who is working with veteran sports architectural firm HNTB and the Mortenson/McCarthy contractor team, said he took it as a compliment that people thought his “spherical armadillo”-style design looked like the famed opera house in Australia. Ingels mentioned the stadium panels are in the shape of baseball pennants, with fans able to see the lights of the Strip and hotel guests able to see the baseball field.
(He noted the terms, “spherical armadillo,” were created to identify the concept of the architectural look of the stadium. Ingels joked that no armadillos were harmed in the making of the stadium design.)
LVSportsBiz.com interviewed A’s owner John Fisher, team president Dave Kaval, team Director of Design Brad Schrock (who worked on Las Vegas Ballpark and other MLB stadiums) and Ingels.
Fisher insisted that the stadium can be built on nine acres of the 35-acre site owned by real estate investor Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc. (GPLI). He also said the stadium can be built for $1.5 billion and that his family is prepared to bring $1 billion to the table to help fund the venue, though Fisher said he’d like to have local Las Vegas stadium investors. The public is contributing $380 million to the stadium construction.
“My family is prepared to fund all the private equity. At the same time, we think it would be a benefit to have local and Vegas-focused investors but it is not a necessity.”
Here’s our interview with Fisher:
LVSportsBiz.com also interviewed Kaval, who told us that the stadium will have the highest percentage of premium seating in the majors. He said more than 30 percent of the 33,000 seats will be in a premium area.
Las Vegas is such a hot sports town that even though no city group was recruiting a MLB team to Sin City, the A’s showed up in Carson City looking for public stadium construction dollars after the team unsuccessfully proposed stadiums in San Jose, Fremont, Howard Terminal, the Coliseum site and at a community college district site in Oakland.
Nevada awarded the A’s $380 million in government assistance for the $1.5 billion stadium.
The name of the state law that designated the public share of the stadium funding is the “Southern Nevada Tourism Innovation Act.”
Las Vegas’ economy is so one-dimensional that tourism promoters like LVCVA chief Steve Hill and his friend, Jeremy Aguero, argued the A’s stadium would be a major tourism draw.
Attendance was announced at 7,938 for tonight’s spring game. The Brewers and A’s play again Saturday at 1 PM.
The Athletics’ lease at the Coliseum in Oakland ends after this 2024 season and the team is talking with the Oakland to play at the Coliseum in 2025, 2026 and 2027 while the stadium on the Strip is built. Mortenson/McCarthy, which built the Raiders stadium that opened in 2020, is also working with Ingels and HNTB to build the A’s stadium.