Earlier this month, the Oakland A’s secured a $380 million public funding package from Nevada lawmakers to help finance the construction of a 30,000-seat, $1.5 billion ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip. Now, two important steps lie ahead: the Major League Baseball (MLB) relocation process and the demolition of the Tropicana to make way for the ballpark.
With regard to MLB, Commissioner Rob Manfred said at a press conference during the league’s annual owner’s meetings in New York City that the team had to do what it had to do, given what he perceived as a lack of cooperation from the city of Oakland to find a new stadium.
Manfred told reporters that he feels “sorry for the fans in Oakland,” and made sure to note that he understands “why they feel the way they do,” but was firm in his belief that Oakland officials “never got to the point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site.”
In response to Manfred’s comments, Oakland Mayor Sheng Tao released a statement via spokesperson to the Associated Press vehemently denying the idea that the team had no choice but to leave.
“There was a very concrete proposal under discussion and Oakland had gone above and beyond to clear hurdles, including securing funding for infrastructure, providing an environmental review and working with other agencies to finalize approvals,” the statement read. “The reality is the A’s ownership had insisted on a multibillion dollar, 55-acre project that included a ballpark, residential, commercial and retail space. In Las Vegas, for whatever reason, they seem satisfied with a 9-acre leased ballpark on leased land. If they had proposed a similar project in Oakland, we feel confident a new ballpark would already be under construction.”
In any case, Manfred confirmed that the A’s will now begin the months-long relocation process with the league, which includes an application detailing the team’s efforts to stay in Oakland and its reasoning for choosing to relocate to Las Vegas instead.
Officials must also define the operating and television territories of the new market, before making a formal recommendation to Manfred and the rest of the league’s executive council. The council in turn makes a recommendation to the rest of the existing franchises, and the owners must then approve the move by a three-quarters majority.
The commissioner also noted in his comments that the A’s will not be charged a relocation fee.
If approved, Las Vegas would become the fourth home for the A’s franchise, which played in Philadelphia from 1901-1954, Kansas City from 1955-1967 and in Oakland from 1968 until now.
The most recent relocation in league history happened in 2005, when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals.
“It has always been baseball’s policy and preference to stay put. And I think that always colors any conversation about relocation,” Manfred told reporters, according to the AP. “Having said that, I think that the owners as a whole understand that there has been a multiyear and approaching a decade effort where for the vast majority of the time the sole focus was Oakland.”
A’s owner John Fisher, who has been the subject of much consternation in Oakland before and after the Las Vegas announcement was made, has still not commented publicly on the move.
Politics aside, a new stadium does appear to be coming to the Strip one way or another, which means that the legendary Tropicana Las Vegas, just acquired by Bally’s Corp. in the last year, will soon be reduced to rubble to make way for the stadium, which touts a semi-retractable roof.
It would appear, based on comments from Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim, that a lot of details still need to be ironed out, and quickly.
“Now that this is going to happen, we really need to put some pen to paper and start planning out how the months go,” Kim told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We still need to talk to the A’s and make sure we’re coordinating on timing. We don’t have specific times yet.”
The Tropicana sits on a 35-acre plot, but only nine are expected to be used for the stadium—Bally’s and Gaming and Leisure Properties (GLPI), which owns the plot, have agreed to give the A’s the land for free as a sign of goodwill to help facilitate the development. Bally’s has said, however, that it plans to develop a new casino resort on the remaining acreage at a later date.
Kim told the Review-Journal that the land is worth approximately $180 million, and made it clear that the company sees the future economic benefits of the site as being greater than the investment costs.
Should the ballpark be completed, it would create a new “sports corridor” along the Strip that includes Allegiant Stadium, T-Mobile Arena and Michelob Ultra Arena.
“(Las Vegas Boulevard) will be the avenue of sports,” Kim told the Review-Journal. “There’s a lot of logic with that. You see the Vegas Loop plans and that will connect all of them… It just all works.”
The loop Kim was referring to is the underground transportation project under development with Elon Musk’s Boring Co., which plans to eventually build stops at just about every major property and intersection in the city.
