By DAN KARELL
Washington D.C. wasn’t the only city on Wednesday that approved a proposal for a soccer-specific stadium.
After months of negotiations between Las Vegas and commercial partners Findlay Sports and Entertainment and the Cordish Companies, Las Vegas City Council voted 4-3 to approve a financial package that calls for a $200 million 24,000 seat soccer stadium to be built in Symphony Park, very close to the city’s downtown and just a ten minute drive from casino row.
“We applaud Mayor Goodman and the Las Vegas City Council for approving the measure to support a public-private partnership to build a new soccer-stadium in downtown Las Vegas,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in a statement. ”We look forward to continuing our discussions with the Cordish Company and Findlay Sports & Entertainment regarding a possible expansion team for Las Vegas.”
The stadium deal is contingent on Las Vegas being awarded an MLS franchise. If the city is not selected to fill one of the final two available spots in MLS’ planned expansion to 24 teams by 2020, then the stadium deal will not go into effect.
The proposal, which was amended to favor the city after an original term sheet, calls for the city to provide $25 million out of $50 million in bonds to help pay for the soccer stadium, and provide another $31.5 million for infrastructure around the stadium. In addition, the city will provide the developers 13 acres for the stadium for free, priced at $38-48 million by Las Vegas economic development chief Brent Arent.
The stadium, which Findlay said would be built between 18-24 months, will be privately owned, operated, and managed. The stadium is also expected to be open air but feature a roof around the stands to give shade during the heat of the summer in the Mojave Desert.
The vote in favor of the stadium proposal is somewhat surprising after City Council demanded that the developers remove any public subsidies from their proposal and entirely finance the project privately. Instead, though they took out a large chunk of the subsidies, the city is still on the hook for a good amount of the project, nearly one-third of the costs.
The developers said that they would solely pay for the MLS expansion fee, expected to be around $100 million.
They also pledged to spend $250 million on “commercial and residential development” in the areas around the stadium site. The term sheet includes penalties if the developers delay in spending on their nearby projects.
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What do you think of this news? Do you think this could swing the expansion balance in Las Vegas’ favor? Would you be interested in seeing an MLS team in Las Vegas?
Share your thoughts below.
wtf is casino row? it’s called The Strip
Las Vegas outlaws.
could Beckham & Claure drop Miami and go with this bid?
21 & 22 – Atlanta and Los Angeles
23 & 24 – Las Vegas and Sacramento
Move SKC back east and done. Miami is a pretty important market but you can’t force the team on them when there are cities lining up for these last spots.
MLS is starting to make the wrong decisions with these stadium designs and locations.
For MLS to become a top league, You have to bring in rich ownership and knock out some prime real estate?
Why the %^&* would that be the stadium renderings? Do you realize the weather gets to 120 degrees. 10 miles away from the strip ??? Good luck with that ! Anyone ever drive beyond the strip…? Looks like $H!T
Somebody needs to buy the #$%^ hotel Excalibur (the perfect location), level it and build a stadium and a casino combo all under a dome
Lame MLS?
They can just use those uber-super-duper air conditioners and floating Mylar clouds that Qatar is going to use to cool off their country for the 2022 World Cup.
It’s good enough for FIFA. You’re just being hypocritical now.
The idea of building a stadium on the strip is borderline pointless. There is no sports team on earth that survives on tourists filling the seats. The local fanbase is what matters, and most Las Vegas residents I’ve ever met avoid the strip like the plague– particularly on Saturday nights (when most MLS games are played). Ridiculously terrible traffic (anybody who has ever been to Vegas knows you can walk the Strip faster than you can drive it on a weekend evening) is just the beginning of the problem. And even if you did target tourists (a terrible idea), you are competing against a billion other entertainment options…. do these people really want to spend their Vegas Saturday night watching MLS, which many of them could actually be doing in their hometowns?
Vegas has actual residents bud… they are the ones who will pay the bills for this team.
Las Vegas is not an impoverished community by any stretch of the imagination. Most of the suburban development is less than 20 years old. This includes a lot of master planned communities.
I have lived in Las Vegas for over 35 years and it has never hit 120 in that time. 115 on occasion, but that is rare. 110 is a fairly typical high during the summer. It gets that high for about two – three weeks total during the summer. Usually it’s between 100 and 110.
That being said, I do think it’s a mistake not to enclose the stadium. It stays hot in the evening.
Where they are proposing to build the stadium is centrally located in the city. It makes sense to put it where they are proposing. It is right next to two of the main freeways.
I’m with you. Having the shade in 120 degree heat won’t help. It’s still as hot as Hades in Vegas! The stadium should be totally enclosed.
Shade in 120 degree heat absolutely helps in an arid climate. Granted, you are right that it would be smart to have the stadium be totally enclosed or at least a retractable roof, but the shade is good enough for me to buy season tickets.
It will be interesting to see how they work out scheduling for the Vegas games. I played soccer at night during the summer here for years and it was always lovely: warm but not too hot. Night games would be no problem. Mid-afternoon games would be pretty brutal for the traveling players, and I cannot imagine they’d schedule games for that time. The early evening would be fine, but it would still be hot enough to create difficult conditions for opposing teams (if Denver’s altitude can be considered a “home field advantage” than why can’t Vegas’s heat?).
Vegas has hosted international friendlies, and if I remember correctly those always start in the late evening without any issue.
I don’t suspect MLS HQ or franchise business ventures take the following consideration into account: Latest computer modeling of long term (50 years) climate change in southwest shows a continued decrease in precipitation. This means Lake Mead, already at historic lows (and 90% of Las Vegas water supply) will dry up before then (Google: “When the Snows Fail,” National Geographic).
If Garber wants to make MLS a global soccer league, then Las Vegas and Miami should do the job, in addition to having NY and LA.
In reality garber needs to give Miami and Los angeles2 way more time, and we all know Miami and LA2 need to be executed perfectly in order to succeed like we all want.
So if Sacramento and Vegas have what it takes to join the western conference then let them in, while Los Angeles 2 finds a stadium site and fans.
Same thing with Beckham and Miami, they need time and Miami can be a hit with the south beach glamour and Beckham connections.
So why pressure LA2 and Miami, when Vegas, Sacramento and Minneapolis can come in, but if Miami needs time, and Minneapolis is not ready, then who in the east can come in. Maybe move skc or Houston to the east again while Miami gets build, or Minneapolis.
I think there is a decent point in here, particularly as relates to the readiness of new stadium facilities…. Really, the question will be, “Is it better for a project to slip a year behind schedule, if it means a better execution?”
I think we’re going to see this tested a bit with some of these expansion teams. I have worked in infrastructure finance, and I can tell you that some of these construction timelines are VERY aggressive. Right now, Orlando City is the only club I’d bet money on to be ready…. they have kept to their timelines very well and already have an operating soccer club in place.
On one hand, you don’t want to see teams spending a year (or more) in a cavernous, half-empty football/baseball stadium that they were forced to lease in the short-run because they were unable to get their SSS sited and constructed in time.
However, it is incredibly ambitious to expect that these new stadiums will offer best-in-class experiences for the new teams if they have only been finished 1-2 months before the new soccer team (also likely to be a work-in-progress) takes the field. In this sense a “practice year” with lowered expectations is not so bad. It gives the organization a chance to work out the inevitable operational kinks before the “real” opening in Year 2, with a shiny new, battle-tested stadium and a team that actually has some experience playing together.
We’ll see how it plays out, I guess.
Im pretty sure sacramento has everything ready from land to bulldozers once mls gives the green light.
Vegas could be also ready just like sacramento once they get the green light to start shoveling, but miami and los angeles2 sure need some very good time, specially for their dream stadium.