The moment I saw this clip from an episode of Succession two weeks ago, I immediately thought about the City of Oakland hashing out Howard Terminal with the A’s braintrust.
At the time I had an idea swimming in my head as a thesis for a future article: “What if Howard Terminal never gets past the point where we are right now?” That point was April 7. I decided against publishing then because I felt it would be too inflammatory and entirely speculative. Unfortunately, sometimes life comes at you fast. Now the question:
What if Howard Terminal never gets past the point where we are right now?
…is no mere speculation. My only response when I heard the news Wednesday night that the A’s entered an agreement to purchase land near the Las Vegas Strip for a ballpark was something more of a gut reaction.
In case you weren’t aware, the A’s struck a deal with the Station Casinos corporate parent to purchase 49 acres of land in Las Vegas, on the northwest corner of Tropicana Avenue and Dean Martin Drive next to I-15. The location is only one mile from the famed Strip, and curiously, was not among the top sites the A’s were reportedly pursuing. In hindsight, it’s not hard to connect the dots, as Station/Red Rocks shut down the Wild Wild Wild West Gaming Hall that occupied the site since the mid-70’s. Station is not a major player among the Strip properties as they mostly operate many smaller “locals” casinos in the area. Some major demolition occurred earlier this month, including a hotel tower. Kudos to the A’s for keeping this on the DL.
I pulled out the Google Earth and snapped a shot of the view from where home plate could be, looking east-northeast. You can see the CityCenter development to the left, Park MGM (formerly Monte Carlo) in the center, then T-Mobile Arena and New York New York Casino to the right. While the Oakland waterfront beats it in terms of summer climate, the skyline backdrop would put this site in the Top 3 in MLB.
Acquisition of land is no slam dunk, as any A’s follower knows from the last 20+ years. The A’s signed land deals for Fremont, San Jose, and Oakland’s Howard Terminal which to date haven’t produced finished ballparks. So if you heard this agreement is “binding,” it always comes with strings attached. Clark County approves uses especially for heavily trafficked commercial sites like this close to the Strip, so it stands to reason that they won’t approve this until an actual stadium deal is in place. What that deal would look like is up for debate.
An initial report pegged the cost at $1 Billion for a retractable roof ballpark, later revised to $1.5 Billion with $500 million in public financing. To me these are back-of-the-napkin math based on similar ballparks built like Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX. That park cost $1.2 Billion to build, experiencing a roughly 20% cost overrun despite clear signs of value engineering. Total project cost was $1.5 Billion including ancillary development.
Obviously, the cost estimate will only go up in the coming months due to market realities and the usual feature creep. And also, I suspect, we’ll see the inevitable growth of the project. 49 acres is a decent chunk of real estate to have adjacent to the Strip, and it seems that the fuzzy public financing model will include (with no current specifics) any number of ways to tax the crap out of everything sold or rented from the ballpark and ancillary development. There’s talk that the A’s and the state of Nevada need to complete a deal before June in order to get it approved before the end of the legislative calendar, which runs in two-year cycles. But there’s also this from the Nevada Independent:
If an incentive package is not agreed to by the end of the legislative session on June 5, state officials may be forced to call a special session to move forward with the relocation deal before Major League Baseball’s self-imposed deadline of Jan. 1, 2024, to sign off on the deal. If talks get far enough, frankly I expect NV to create the special session complete the deal if only because it’ll give a greater sense of due diligence. Rushing to get this done from soup to nuts in five weeks is a recipe for disaster.
The rush to complete this is because of the *arbitrary deadline alert* January deadline from MLB. What is this deadline? To get a stadium deal done or else the A’s forfeit revenue sharing. That’ll teach ‘em to sign Shintaro Fujinami with their first revenue sharing receipt in five years, right? Don’t make me laugh. Forbes’ annual valuations story had the A’s profit as a result of revenue sharing at $60 million. Forbes admitted to miscalculating and factored in a quarter-share in their revised number, which became $29 million. That’s still fairly healthy for a poverty franchise that pulls in over $90 million annually from national TV, streaming, and merchandising revenue. They’ll do fine with or without the welfare check. The one thing ownership has an argument about is that the A’s are historically cash poor. The revenue sharing doesn’t come until the winter after each season ends, and the team doesn’t get much advance revenue from season ticket sales or big sponsorship payments. But that’s how the franchise is run, so they have no one to blame but themselves.
Now that Vegas is elevated beyond the exploratory phase to a real threat, I’ll opine on how this might work out. First of all, I don’t expect this deal to wrap up by June because there are still loads of implementation details to work out. The project price estimate of $1.5 Billion makes for a limited ancillary build, making the best scale comparison Globe Life Field, which the A’s visited over the weekend and I visited a couple years ago. It has a hotel and retail next to the ballpark, de rigueur for baseball currently. Does Vegas need another small hotel or another indoor mall? Certainly not. They might get it anyway if the ballpark happens.
As for Oakland, Mayor Sheng Thao announced that she was “blindsided” by the news and cut off further talks for the time being. She also spilled the tea that the City and the A’s were supposed to have some sort of “summit” next week to try to bridge the remaining funding gap. That the mayor’s office had this defense prepared shortly after the announcement showed that they A) knew something was coming, and B) they had the CYA story ready for when the inevitable happened. Does this mean baseball in Oakland is dead? Of course not. The Vegas deal may not consummate in time, in which case it also won’t be dead. The whole idea is to create real competition between the two cities in terms of how much subsidies the A’s and MLB can squeeze from them. The A’s are looking for $500 million from Southern Nevada to surpass the $375 currently offered by Oakland. And it’s working. Casey Pratt and Brodie Brazil keep the fire burning through video reports, while the Chronicle’s staff wrote a series of obituaries of A’s baseball. I chose to wait to do a blog post until this first news cycle washed over me in order to take time to reflect. I’m not going to say that the A’s are gone, and I won’t say there’s a sliver of hope. Often deals like this turn on new information or factors, which we’re probably not aware of yet. I wouldn’t blame you for tuning out the A’s as many fans are doing. I’m in for the long haul, even if they move to Vegas. Forgive me for not prematurely writing an obituary yet. There’s still work to do. After all, this site is newballpark.org, not newballparkinthetown.com.
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P.S. – I’m in my late 40’s, which makes me past the normally acceptable music discovery age. That meant I didn’t catch New Zealand band “The Beths” when they came through America earlier in the spring or in prior tours. Still, I was eventually able to check out The Beths’ awesome third album last fall, shortly after the A’s were officially eliminated from contention after a long, laborious regular season. The leadoff single from The Beths was “Expert In A Dying Field,” a catchy little number to which I suspect many A’s fans can relate all too well.
P.P.S. – This story gets more predictably bizarre by the hour.
newballpark.org 