The Oakland Athletics baseball team signed a binding purchase agreement for 49 acres of land in Southern Nevada.
The move signals the end of the line to years of negotiations to build a waterfront ballpark in Oakland and will see the city’s third – and final – major league team leave the city in a 10-year span.
Inside the deal: The area is just west of the Strip and owned by Red Rock Resorts, the parent company of Station Casinos, nearly one mile north of Allegiant Stadium – home of the Raiders, the Athletics’ past Coliseum roommate.
- The A’s will have the option to purchase an additional eight acres from the gaming firm in the future.
- A $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat, partially retractable roof stadium is planned for the site, which will also include ancillary developments such as food and beverage outlets and an amphitheater.
- Las Vegas economist Jeremy Aguero of Applied Analysis predicts the new ballpark will draw around 400,000 incremental visitors annually to Las Vegas, providing a significant boost to the local economy.
- Team officials project that construction will begin in 2024, meeting a key deadline set by the MLB to resolve its stadium search, and be completed by 2027.
Backlash in Oakland: Thursday morning, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao announced the city was ceasing negotiations with the Athletics amid the news that it secured land in southern Nevada.
- Thao, who took office in January, said little in the early months of her tenure about the inner workings with the Athletics.
- In a statement Thursday, she claimed the team continued negotiations with Oakland purely to extract a better deal in Las Vegas.
What they’re saying: “For a while we were on parallel paths (with Oakland), but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” A’s President Dave Kaval told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.”
- “It’s a great location not only for tourists, because it’s in the Resort Corridor, but it’s easy to get to for locals,” Kaval said of the site. “About 70 percent of our fans are going to be locals, so we want to make sure we cater to them, to have a great experience at the ballpark. And this location will do that.”
- “The A’s have remained in Oakland long past the departures of other teams in the market,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “In 2021, given the continued lack of progress, MLB instructed the A’s to explore a parallel path plan with Las Vegas. Since that time, the process in Oakland has not progressed and Las Vegas has presented a comprehensive path forward for the A’s that will preserve this historic franchise forward and set the stage for future success.”
- “I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished as a city, including securing a fully entitled site and over $375 million in new infrastructure investment that will benefit Oakland and its port for generations to come,” Oakland’s Mayor Thao said in a statement on Thursday. “In a time of budget deficits, I refuse to compromise the safety and well-being of our residents. Given these realities, we are ceasing negotiations and moving forward on alternatives for the redevelopment of Howard Terminal.”
