But funding for the ballpark construction is still not available.
There is now land available for a baseball stadium in Las Vegas on a piece of property on the Strip. The Bally’s Corporation has blown up the Tropicana Hotel and once the rumble is cleaned up, the land will be ready for the construction of a ballpark. But will that $1.5 billion, 33,000 seat ballpark ever be built? That is a good question. It seems that Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics or just plain old Athletics owner John Fisher still does not have the money to start construction and cannot get his hands on Nevada taxpayers money, about $380 millions worth of public funding until he shows that he has the cash to start construction. The prevailing feeling was that the process of the stadium construction would have started by now. Fisher needs to sign three documents and show Nevada officials money to begin construction by December 5th. The three documents deal with details for lease, non-relocation and development agreements. There are no renderings of the proposed stadium.
Fisher’s team played its last home game in Oakland on September 26th. The team is scheduled to play in Sacramento in a minor league baseball stadium from 2025 through 2027. But there is a problem with that right now. The Major League Baseball Players Association is not thrilled with the idea of playing games in the Sacramento summer heat in a minor league baseball park. The newly branded Athletics franchise will share the Sacramento stadium with the minor league affiliate of the San Francisco Giants franchise. The Sacramento stadium seats just 10,000 people although 14,000 people can fit into the stadium with seats in the outfield. By staying in the far reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area TV market, Fisher might be able to get some of the Bay Area TV market money during his Sacramento stay.
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The Tropicana, once the home of the Rat Pack is gone.
