IN THE SUN: UNLV, RAIDERS HAVE PLENTY OF ISSUES TO RESOLVE

UNLV’s rent on game days, field markings among scores of still-unsettled issues with Raiders

The bulleted list in tiny print stretches four pages, listing 119 potential issues in a stadium-use negotiation between UNLV and the Raiders.

Even that does not encompass the universe of what the team and the university might encounter in deciding how they will share the new 65,000-seat stadium, Las Vegas Stadium Authority staff said recently.

Jeremy Aguero of Applied Analysis leads the authority staff and created the document. Aguero compiled initial requests made by UNLV and the Raiders, combining those wants with matters covered in shared-use negotiations between colleges and NFL teams elsewhere.

Raiders officials met recently with university representatives for an initial discussion of the UNLV JointUse Agreement, as it formally is known. UNLV leaders remain anxious to receive a first draft of that document from the franchise. Aguero said recently he anticipated authority board members would see a draft version before their July 13 meeting.

“There is a pretty solid shared understanding of what that agreement will look like,” Stadium Authority board Chairman Steve Hill said.

Understanding lives far from agreement, however. Discussions likely need to finish within a few weeks to allow time for the Nevada Board of Regents to review and approve the contract before the authority board considers it, among a group of contracts needing blessing by October. Regents could control the pace of progress if they object to negotiating decisions made by university officials.

Among the 119 points sit a thorny few that will require more attention:

• Facility Rent and/or the Cost of Direct-Cost Chargebacks — Start with what could become the most difficult item of all: How much will the Raiders charge UNLV to play in the stadium?

Senate Bill 1, the state legislation that attached UNLV’s use of the facility as a condition of Nevada’s $750 million public contribution to the project, limits the rent to the Rebels’ actual use costs. But how do the sides determine those costs in a stadium yet to be built? Simply pinning down functional costs like air conditioning and heating could challenge negotiators.

“The calculation of figuring out what a game day costs UNLV is not a simple one because you have to keep track of so many individual things,” Hill said.

UNLV likely will pay on a per-game basis with the expectation its football team

MANICA ARCHITECTURE A rendering shows the interior of the planned Las Vegas Raiders football stadium. The Raiders and UNLV, who will share the stadium, are working to resolve a slew of dual tenant issues.