Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis has closed on the purchase of 62 acres of Las Vegas land, spending $77.5 million for property on which to put a new football stadium, plus a bunch of giant parking lots where Raiders fans will presumably want to tailgate briefly before dying in the desert heat. And boy, are local property owners excited!
As of Monday, the Review-Journal reported the property’s valuation at $40 million, but it was sold for $77.5 million, nearly doubling its price. The overnight spike is expected to bring the surrounding property values up along with it, and this is before any dirt is ever turned.
Okay, really it’s just Las Vegas Now (the website of the local CBS affiliate) that’s excited, since they don’t actually quote any property owners as saying that they expect their property values to go up as well. As well they shouldn’t, since everyone is expected to drive to the game and park in those parking lots (or maybe take the monorail, if it’s extended to Mandalay Bay, and then walk across a highway to get to the stadium), so it’s not like there’ll be a ton of football fans eager for other places to eat and shop nearby — and even if there are, it’ll only be for eight days a year, so, really, no, don’t count on a ton of new development surrounding the stadium.
Anyway, here’s what the future home of the Las Vegas Raiders looks like today:
I can’t find any coverage of why this plot of land remains vacant when everything around it has been built on, beyond a mention that the banks that sold it to Davis foreclosed on it back in 2008. Any Vegas natives with a sense of local history, please speak up!
Madalay Bay just next door continues to sink to this day. The land is not fit for building. Geotech issues with that site for sure.
Im very familiar with the location, in the bottom left corner (W. Russell / S. Polaris) is the Terrible Herbst (gas station/gaming company) headquarters and vault (where they bring all the gaming winnings). I used to have to go there every Sunday night for a job I had in my 20’s.
It really is a great piece of property, too bad it will destroy the view. But the main reason it’s vacant is that the south end of LV Blvd has just started to see major development over the last 15 years or so. Parcels are held onto as investments to be sold for large projects like this or casinos or condo towers to be built as the area between Sunset and St Rose continue to be developed.
I-15 to the east and about half a mile to the South is the i-215 interchange (i215 encircles the whole valley). There are also half a dozen city crossing, east to west major roads just south of that location.
In addition Dean Martin to the east of the site and west of I-15 stretches the entire length of the resort corridor mirroring LV Blvd to Downtown . South, West and East (on the other side of I15 and LVBlvd) of that area are upperclassmen suburbs.
Vegas is setup on a grid, so every 3 or 4 streets is a valley crossing N/S or E/W major road. Dean Martin allows for almost direct access to the new arena, the whole resort corridor and the “industrial area” without needing to use LV Blvd or I-15
I was just zooming in on that picture and OH MY GOD IT’S WAYNE NEWTON!
His house is like 3 miles east of that spot, big property but kind of a dump being that it’s way older than most properties in town. He and Mike Tyson were actually neighbors for a while, Iron Mike’s house was way nicer.
Ok, so now we know why Davis really wanted to move to Vegas… the whole stadium thing was just a ruse.
Thanks Mark!
Don’t thank me. Thank Randy Quaid and Las Vegas Vacation for that addition to the American Lexicon.
Ironically if you follow Russell to it’s East end, there lies the Silver Bowl (Sam Boyd Stadium).
Am I missing something? That plot of land looks to be comically small for a NFL stadium.
It is. The average acreage for a football stadium is around 200. The soil at this location is porous at best due to an aquifer running underneath. Unless the Raiders/Clark County/State of Nevada are going to spend millions to mitigate this, then the same thing that is happening at the Mandalay Bay will happen here.
It is completely laughable that the appraised value is being reported as $40 million. Everyone is lying. First the broker for these banks said he purposely over-inflated the initial asking price of $100 million to discourage would-be buyers. Funny that one of the banks is the bank that is loaning Davis $650 million. Also only in Nevada can a consortium of banks can “legally” come together and form a corporation.
It’s going to be hilarious when the next economic crash comes and the money spigot runs dry. What will the residents think when the taxman comes ready to collect directly from them.
Wait — average acreage for a football stadium isn’t 200 acres, it’s more like 15-20. Do you mean including the parking lot?