Show Las Vegas the money.
It’s Halloween and it is trick or treat time in Las Vegas. The owner of Major League Baseball’s former Oakland Athletics, present Athletics in Sacramento and future Las Vegas Athletics John Fisher was supposed to tell the Las Vegas Stadium Authority how he planned to finance his portion of the stadium bill. Nevada lawmakers have given Fisher about $380 million in public funding for the stadium and that stadium could cost $1.5 billion. Fisher claims he is looking for investors to buy into his business, but he also claims he and his family can pay for his share of the stadium construction which would include a $300 million loan.
The land needed for the stadium on a piece of property on the Strip is now available. The Bally’s Corporation has blown up the Tropicana Hotel and once the rubble is cleaned up, the land will be ready for the construction of a ballpark. But will that 33,000-seat ballpark ever be built? That is a good question. It seems that Fisher still does not have the money to start construction and cannot get his hands on Nevada taxpayers’ money until he shows that he has the cash to start construction. 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. Meanwhile in Sacramento, where Fisher’s baseball team will play in 2025, 2026 and 2027, that stadium will have a grass surface instead of artificial turf. Fisher’s team will be sharing the stadium with the San Francisco Giants’ organization’s Triple A. The Sacramento ballpark has 10,000 permanent seats. Fisher could not get a ballpark built in Oakland and decided Las Vegas was a better fit for his business.
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