Oakland A’s management, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, Clark County, and other Las Vegas area officials issued their promised joint statement about the team’s stadium plan yesterday, and let’s just read the whole thing:
Governor Joe Lombardo today announced a tentative agreement between his office, the A’s organization, Treasurer Zach Conine, and Clark County officials to forward a bill for consideration by the Nevada Legislature that would bring Major League Baseball to the Las Vegas Strip.
“This agreement follows months of negotiations between the state, the county, and the A’s, and I believe it gives us a tremendous opportunity to continue building on the professional sports infrastructure of southern Nevada,” said Governor Joe Lombardo. “Las Vegas is clearly a sports town, and Major League Baseball should be a part of it.”
The tentative agreement is being drafted into legislation that will be introduced in the Nevada Legislature in the coming days to be publicly debated and considered.
“We’re very appreciative of the support from the State of Nevada and Clark County’s leadership,” said A’s President Dave Kaval. “We want to thank Governor Lombardo, the Legislative leadership, the Treasurer, and Clark County Commissioners and staff on the collaborative process. We look forward to advancing this legislation in a responsible way.”
The tentative agreement includes the creation of a Sports and Entertainment Improvement District for a planned 30,000-seat, publicly owned, retractable roof stadium located on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. Construction is estimated at $1.5 billion and will create more than 14,000 construction jobs.
“Clark County has been working diligently to negotiate a deal that will protect the taxpayers of Clark County as well as the finances of Clark County government in our negotiations with stakeholders, and in reviewing this proposal, we believe it is reflective of the prudent financial practices of Clark County,” said Clark County.
As a part of the proposed legislation, the public-private partnership includes public financing constituting less than 25 percent of the cost, making it the third-lowest public share of cost for the 14 Major League Baseball stadiums built this century.
“This tentative agreement minimizes the risk to Nevada taxpayers in the most fiscally responsible manner,” said Treasurer Zach Conine. “I’m also pleased that this project will leverage the most private investment of any baseball stadium in the country.”
With the Nevada Legislature in its final two weeks of session, Legislative leaders said they were happy to finally have a proposal in front of them that could be publicly vetted by their members.
“I am excited that we have finally received the A’s proposal and we are currently reviewing it,” said Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager. “As I have continuously said throughout this process, no commitment will be made until we have both evaluated the official proposal and received input from interested parties, including impacted community members. At the end of the day, any decision will be guided by what is best for Nevadans, our economy, and our communities.”
Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro said the proposal will be given full consideration in the Senate before the end of the session.
“Over the time we have remaining during this session, we will give this proposal a thorough vetting to fully explore the opportunity and its impacts on Southern Nevada,” said Cannizzaro.
So as far as stadium financing details, we now know … nothing? I’m going with nothing. We know that $1.5 billion is the “estimated” price of building the stadium (including infrastructure?) and that “public financing” (including all tax kickbacks?) will amount to “less than 25 percent” of that $1.5 billion, which means less than $375 million, unless there are hidden costs, in which case it will be more. For more specifics, we’ll have to refer to the legislation itself, which will be revealed “in the coming days.” (State Sen. Scott Hammond says Saturday. Maybe.)
In short, it’s an announcement of plans to make an announcement, mostly serving to circle the wagons and show who’s on board: The A’s, Gov. Lombardo, the entirety of Clark County (or maybe this Clark County?), the state treasurer, and the leaders of the state assembly and senate. That is definitely a solid bloc of pols who’ve hashed out this deal behind closed doors, which bodes well for pushing legislation through the legislature in a matter of less than two weeks; it doesn’t bode nearly so great for Nevada taxpayers or Nevada legislators finding out exactly how much the public would be on the hook for this plan, but they can’t wait forever to reveal an actual bill, right? Maybe don’t answer that.
Local news has really hit the talking point that “only 22% of the project will be funded with public money”
I’m not sure the Clark county commission is 100% committed here. Ultimately they play ball, but they’re really the legislative body to be looking at.
Assuming the “25%” rule is maintained (and that this number does include being paid back for the other 75%, or possibly more than the other 75%, over an indeterminate period of time based on the ‘tremendous’ new revenues that the stadium will bring in that a casino, apparently, could not…) I would have to say this isn’t that bad of a deal for Nevada taxpayers.
Except, I can’t say that because there is essentially no information on what the costs will be, what the team will fund directly and what it will “pay back” over time, who is responsible for operating costs and upgrades, whether the facility pays property taxes etc etc etc.
I would only point out that a new stadium in Oakland would cost less than half the projected amount this one will (and could cost a quarter of the LV price if the team worked at it) and that Oakland is offering about double the subsidy that Las Vegas appears to be prepared to offer.
And dummy Dave is on record as thanking the Nevada politicians for working with them while crapping all over Oakland politicians who have offered twice as much money for a cheaper build.
Yeah.
My only thought is that the process of getting the Howard Terminal project is taking so long, and Fisher is desperate to get a resolution to get revenue sharing money AND Ballys will be funding a huge share of his construction costs- otherwise, none of this makes a whole lot of sense.
Bally’s is not funding a huge share of his construction costs, according to what little we know so far.
Now various Vegas bloggers are reporting that the A’s are still looking at the Rio and Las Vegas Festival Grounds sites!
Hahaha, this is so stupid
Hey, if two sites are good four/six has to be better, right?
Will Fisher continue to get MLB RS in Las Vegas?
I understood his right to that in Oakland expires in 2024 new stadium or not… but I wasn’t aware that a new facility in Vegas would qualify for revenue sharing? Is that under the ‘small market’ provision? If so, he’s just moving to farm the subsidy even longer than he has done already… I would hope his fellow owners will keep that in mind when considering how to vote on relocation.
It does appear Fisher is desperate. I don’t really understand why, given the fact that he has much more on offer in Oakland than he appears to in Vegas (including a larger marketplace and less professional sports competition for discretionary spending…).
I saw a report the other day that the A’s will generate $60m in profit this year (which, given their team payroll is not surprising… even with Coyotes-like attendance), more or less in line with the non-spending Rays in a smaller marketplace (whom I would expect to generate about $40-45m in profit this year).
There are only a (small) handful of MLB teams that generate more annual profit than these two do…. and yet, they are in fiscal ‘crisis’.
That is some Major League Bullshit.
Yeah, Oakland was excluded from revenue-sharing because it’s a big market, then Fisher argued he should get it anyway because waaaaaaah lookit my stadium, then MLB said “Okay, but figure something out by 2024 or you’re cut off.” Moving to Vegas gets him back on the subsidy-farming list — though presumably it’ll bump whatever team is currently 16th in market size, so it doesn’t really increase the amount of shared revenue, just redistributes it.
Ok, thanks. I had in mind that any team building a new stadium (apologies… having a new stadium built for them by the taxpayers) was automatically off the MLB welfare plan… but it seems not.
Wasn’t the original goal of the ‘limits’ placed on the RS plan to eventually get everyone into new stadia and either fully or mostly off the plan?
Nope, the limits on revenue sharing were designed to keep teams from just sitting around and neither earning nor spending money of their own while collecting league checks and cashing them. Cutting off revenue sharing to teams with new stadiums might disincentivize team owners to seek new stadiums, and we can’t have that.
I’ve seen one article raising the question of traffic in the South Strip area on game days. I think it’s going to be nightmarish, especially if there are other major events nearby at the same time.
Given how team owners make outrageous demands of taxpayers (like state of the art clauses), I wish that the taxpayers could make demands in kind.
For example, and this is particularly focused on the Athletics, could the state of Nevada and Clark County demand that the Athletics field a team with a payroll that is equal to or greater than the league average? If taxpayers are subsidizing a major league team, they should get an actual major league team.
I’ve always thought that MLB should have a salary floor similar to the NBA. The NBA mandates that teams have a payroll that is 90% of the salary cap. That’s sort of steep for teams in the rebuilding phase so I would say that MLB could put it at 75%. The problem is that MLB doesn’t have a cap so I would figure out where their “competitive balance tax” line is and then make the salary floor somewhere around 60% of that
MLB owners will only accept a salary floor if they’re allowed a hard salary cap, and the union understandably doesn’t want to go there. So here we are.
The union can, and does, file grievances against team owners who underspend too dramatically. But so far that’s only gotten us things like Aledmys Diaz getting paid $6m/year to play for the A’s, if “playing” is what he can be said to be doing.
I am still wondering about the water. How can these two things be true at once: Nevada agrees to historic cuts of allotment from the Colorado River AND Nevada agrees to build another stadium.
I don’t get this debate, these type of venues are very efficient, both in water use and electricity. Nevada doesn’t use anywhere near their current allotment, we can handle a reduction better then our neighbors.
I think the question is less whether a stadium will increase water use than whether Las Vegas will still be a major-league-size city by the time this stadium is paid off.
Well it’s barely a a major league city now!
Southern Nevada has had tremendous growth the last 30 years, but it’s much slower growth then other sun Belt cities like dallas and Phoenix. There’s two structural reasons for that- 1)everyone is gets water from the Southern Nevada Water Authority, so any growth needs to go hand in hand with centralized sewers/water infrastructure 2) much of the region is federal land, and how that land can be sold off for development is decided by Congress (a slow process).
While there is a little growth on the edges of the metro area (a lot of those were projects stopped back during the recession!), southern Nevada is now more into its infill phase. Most future growth will be denser, more energy efficient.
Because of the proximity to the Lake, we can recycle our water easier and because the SNWA manages the region, they have teeth when it comes to regulating water use.
In Arizona- each municipality regulate their own water use- so you get stupid things like Phoenix building a massive microchip factory, industrial cotton farming and a patchwork of watering policies.
Politically- Nevada punches above its weight both in the Colorado River Compact and in Washington, that will continue for the 20ish year lifespan of a modern MLB stadium.
Las Vegas is in better shape vis-a-vis water than Phoenix, I’ll give you that. But if you’re talking a 30-year stadium lease, which is typical even if team owners start jonesing for a new one after 20, I wouldn’t bet on either city being especially habitable by the mid-2050s.