The story so far: The University of Nevada-Las Vegas partnered with developers Majestic Realty on a proposal for a new domed 40,000-seat football stadium, which soon turned into an $800 million, 60,000-seat domed football stadium, which then became $900 million at which point casino owner MGM Resorts International (which was going to face a levy to help pay for the stadium) announced its opposition to the plan, and then UNLV, realizing who held the cards in their town, dropped Majestic like a hot rock. So what’s the plan now?
UNLV officials on Monday launched their attempt at building Stadium 2.0 with their new strategy firmly in place — a partnership between the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the Las Vegas casino-hotel industry.
If you can’t beat ’em, deal ’em in.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that the new partnership’s stadium board “is months away from determining many variables — how many seats the stadium should hold, whether it should be covered or not, how much the cost estimate will be and potential funding.” Also, that Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick told the panel that because Vegas already gets lots of tourists on weekends, any new stadium needs to be “an economic driver from Tuesday to Thursday.” College football stadium that draws people to town in the middle of the week — what could possibly go wrong with that?