The 2020 debut of the National Football League Las Vegas Raiders took another big step forward after the other league owners voted overwhelmingly to approve a $200 million loan for a 65,000-seat domed stadium for the team.
Raiders owner Mark Davis hailed the 31-1 vote as a “big day”.
“It’s exciting again to see a public-private partnership that has just gone so well and so smoothly. You’ve got to give (Nevada) Gov. (Brian) Sandoval, (Clark County Commissioner) Steve Sisolak and even Tommy White with (Local) 872 so much credit for bringing this project together. The jobs they’re creating for Las Vegas and the benefits they’re bringing to that community, it’s just extraordinary.”
With the project’s quasi-public owner, the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, slated last week to review a host of final legal and contractual details, construction is expected to begin in earnest this year and be completed in time for the Raiders to play their first exhibition game of the 2020 season in the desert.
“It’s amazing that it was a year ago we got approval,” said team President Marc Badain. “We got a big hole in the ground, the steel being ordered, the concrete being poured. The Preview Center opened. It’s happening fast. Imagine a year from now. Imagine 850 days from now.”
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ football team will share the facility, located at Interstate 15 and Russell Road at the far south end of the Las Vegas Strip, under the terms of state legislation authorizing $750 million in public bond financing toward its $1.8 billion price tag backed by an increase in the Clark County hotel room tax. The Raiders are contributing the balance of $850 million of which $179.9 million has been spent to date to purchase the site and to cover some design, engineering, construction and equipment costs.
There is still a lot more to be paid for: among them a training facility and team headquarters in the suburb of Henderson, estimated at $100 million; and the cost of offsite parking and development of a shuttle transportation system to get fans in and out of the stadium.
