The Oakland A’s have had quite a year so far in Las Vegas, and now the relocation process is all but complete—in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, team owner John Fisher finally broke his silence on the process, and indicated that the relocation application has now been submitted to Major League Baseball (MLB).
In recent months, the team has already secured all the other necessities needed for the move, including a blockbuster deal with Bally’s Corp. and Gaming and Leisure Properties (GLPI) to build a new $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark on the site of the Tropicana Las Vegas and a public funding package worth up to $380 million from the state of Nevada to help build the park.
The last remaining hurdle is approval from at least three-quarters of MLB’s other 29 team owners, but Fisher and the league have declined to put a timeline on the process. Most unofficial projections assert that it likely won’t happen this year.
“My hope is that this will get accomplished sometime soon, but I don’t want to put a timeline on that, because that timeline is really governed by the commissioner and by our fellow owners,” Fisher told the Review-Journal.
The process has been extremely controversial thus far, in both Nevada and California—the team first made headlines in Las Vegas back on April 19 when it announced that it had struck a deal with Red Rock Resorts to purchase the 49-acre plot that previously featured the Wild Wild West Casino.
However, the deal was extremely shaky and required at least $500 million in public funding, a tough sell for a town that already shelled out $750 million in public funds for the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium in 2016, which was a record at the time.
Then, on May 15, the team announced that it was nixing the Red Rock deal in exchange for the Bally’s-GLPI package instead, which now looks to be the winner after all.
Once the new deal was struck, it was discovered that the team had lowered the public funding request to $380 million, but state lawmakers were not exactly pleased when it was introduced in the state legislature. They were so displeased, in fact, that the bill did not even reach a vote before the regular legislative session adjourned June 5.
Governor Joe Lombardo then called a special session for the bill, and after several minor tweaks and compromises, Senate Bill 1 was approved June 14 and signed into law by Lombardo the following day.
Meanwhile, In Oakland, local fans have long been displeased with both the team’s performance (the A’s have consistently been among the worst teams in the league for decades) and with Fisher’s apparent lack of investment in the team.
This season in particular, in which the A’s team has tallied one of the worst performances in league history by statistical measures, fans have cascaded games with chants of “SELL THE TEAM,” directed of course at Fisher; the chants can even be heard at away games with rival fans joining in.
“I have not considered selling the team,” Fisher told the Review-Journal. “I’ve now owned the team with my partner Lew Wolff, it’s shocking really how the time flies, but since 2005. Our goal since then has been to find a new home and build a new home for our team.”
The team and the city of Oakland have pointed fingers at each other for years with regard to building a new stadium there, but no real progress was ever made. One proposal, a multibillion-dollar mixed-use development centered around a new ballpark at Howard Terminal, gained traction among city officials as well as California Governor Gavin Newsom, but the team appeared to back away from it for various reasons.
In recent months, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has been extremely vocal with regard to the team’s relocation, saying primarily that the Howard Terminal proposal was more than feasible—Thao even went so far as to meet with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred earlier this summer to discuss the proposal and other issues related to the saga.
Politics aside, the move looks all but complete, but even if the owners approve it there still remains one huge question: how will the team secure the remaining $1 billion-plus to fund the ballpark?
“We have a very good financial plan in place,” Fisher told the Review-Journal. “We’ve been working closely with Goldman Sachs, and my family as well, as indicated, is planning to invest a substantial amount.”
The rest of the organization seems to also echo this sentiment, as it announced August 21 that it has selected a pair of developers, known as the Mortenson | McCarthy Joint Venture, to construct the stadium.
The duo are the same partners that built Allegiant Stadium, and according to a release from the A’s, they’ll be in charge of “overseeing all construction-related activities” for the project, including estimations, logistics, planning, bidding, construction management and more.
Before the developers can begin work, however, they must gain approval from the Las Vegas Stadium Authority (LVSA), which is extremely likely, given that the LVSA oversees Allegiant as well.
Overall, Fisher is excited about the future, and hopes that the team’s fans will still love the perennial last-place finishers, wherever they play.
“We have tremendously passionate fans in Oakland,” Fisher told the Review-Journal. “And while our attendance this year has definitely been heavily impacted by all the relocation efforts and by the fact that the team has had an extremely difficult season, in baseball you start out in the spring and there is this incredible amount of hope and rebirth. And every team goes into the first game of the season, following spring training, all tied for first.”
