Tropicana Hotel Garage Reduced To Rubble At Athletics Stadium Site On Strip
By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The Tropicana hotel-casino’s parking garage along the Strip was reduced to rubble this week a little more than a month after the old hotel and gambling hall closed its doors April 2.
We now know that Tropicana’s owner, Providence, RI-based Bally’s Corporation, has “no urgency whatsoever” to build another hotel-casino on the 35-acre site on the Strip where the Major League Baseball Athletics are planning a $1.5 billion domed stadium of 33,000 seats.
The Bally’s executive’s declaration in a recent quarterly earnings report call of “no urgency” to build a new resort is newsworthy for this reason: A’s owner John Fisher and team President Dave Kaval led the media and the public this year to believe that the stadium and the Bally’s hotel projects were a coordinated effort. While there is no timetable for a new hotel, the A’s believe their new stadium can be ready for the 2028 MLB season.
Fisher told media in January after a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce talk that the stadium drawings that first scheduled to be revealed in November were pushed to another time to be unveiled to dovetail into the redevelopment of the overall site at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.
But the A’s have not identified where their nine acres for the stadium will be on the 35-acre site on the Strip. With Bally’s not having a site plan for its project — and not having an urgency to build anything — it’s unclear how the A’s will know where to situate their stadium on the site.
Fisher also said four months ago that he was looking for local investors to help finance the ballpark, which will be financed with $380 million in public aid thanks to a November state law approved in June 2023. That $380 million includes $120 million in Clark County bonds and another $25 million in infrastructure costs also paid by the county.
Then there was recent news that Fisher hired an investment banker to generate $500 million from private investors. The A’s have the lowest payroll and attendance in the majors and have a 17-19 record, third place in the American League West. They plan to play a Triple-A ballpark in Sacramento in 2025, 2026 and 2027 while their new stadium is built in Las Vegas.
It should be noted the Las Vegas Raiders got a loan from Bank of America to help finance their stadium in Vegas after the late casino tycoon, Sheldon Adelson, pulled his $650 million stadium financing commitment off the table in January 2017. The Raiders stadium was still built on budget and on time in 2020 and helped owner Mark Davis see his franchise get valued at $6.2 billion, according to a business magazine.
