Difficult to make ballpark estimate
With A’s on ‘fact-finding’ trips to Vegas area, Kaval discusses pros, cons of Oakland, Nevada
A’s officials last week paid another visit to Las Vegas, their fifth since receiving permission from Major League Baseball in May to explore possible relocation in their pursuit of a ballpark.
Team President Dave Kaval has termed these “factfinding” trips, to gauge the area’s potential as an MLB market, as the A’s also continue negotiations on their waterfront ballpark proposal in Oakland.
How serious are the A’s about Las Vegas as a destination address? Skeptics of a move might see the A’s using Las Vegas as a way to strengthen their hand in negotiations with Oakland to achieve the team’s Howard Terminal ballpark development proposal. But when asked at the All-Star break, Commissioner Rob Manfred said, “Thinking about this as a bluff is a mistake.”
Despite other cities suggested as a possible MLB destination, the A’s have limited their visits to Southern
Nevada. What have they learned? Kaval discussed the state of the team’s explorations in Las Vegas in an interview Saturday with The Chronicle.
Market feasibility
The A’s main focus has been on judging whether the area would support an MLB team economically. Kaval said the A’s have spent “a great deal of time trying to understand the local business climate, obviously the interest in tickets, sponsorships, local media, all these aspects.”
Kaval said the process is ongoing, but the A’s have “seen a lot of qualitative data that’s good” through talks with area teams, political and business leaders, advisers and others. The A’s are awaiting a study from consultant firm Legends to quantify how locals and tourists would comprise demand.
“That’s not complete yet, but we’ve actually made a lot of progress on that and we’ve seen a lot of very positive green shoots that would indicate that it could be not just viable but it could really thrive in that marketplace,” Kaval said.
An MLB spokesperson declined comment on what the league has learned about Las Vegas’ viability as a market from the A’s visits.
Las Vegas’ sports scene has grown in recent years, as it’s home to the NFL’s Raiders, the NHL’s Golden Knights, the WNBA’s Aces and the Triple-A Aviators — an A’s minor-league affiliate — among others.
Kaval said the A’s have talked with executives from those teams to get a sense of local interest, as well as officials, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, the mayors of Las Vegas and Henderson, and Clark County commissioners, to gather feedback on how an MLB team would be received. Sisolak told the Las Vegas Review-Journal his talks with the A’s have been exploratory.
“It’s been incredibly positive,” Kaval said. “I think they’ve seen so much success with the other pro sports teams and events — that’s actually been in every conversation we’ve had, that’s come to the forefront.”
The NHL and especially NFL schedules are shorter than the MLB slate of 81 regular-season home dates. The Triple-A Aviators led minorleague baseball in attendance in 2019, the first year Las Vegas Ballpark opened in downtown Summerlin, but at a stadium of roughly 10,000 capacity, likely less than a third of what a new major-league ballpark would hold.
The Golden Knights draw more locally, Kaval said, but the Raiders are expected to bring in many out-of-area fans. That remains to be seen, because the Raiders did not have crowds in the inaugural season of Allegiant Stadium last year.
“It’s hard to know where we would end up on that spectrum if we were there, but it’s something we’ve got to figure out, because that also drives site selection,” Kaval said.
“If you find out you’re going to have predominantly visitors, then you’ve got to be closer probably to the resort corridor where there are more hotels. If you find out that like 90% of the people are from the Las Vegas Valley, well, you want to probably be somewhere that might be slightly away from that. So that’s driving some of the decisions around the 20-odd sites we’ve evaluated and we’re working on right now.”
Potential ballpark sites
Kaval said the list of possible stadium locations, which has grown since A’s officials started visiting the area, is “a pretty fair mix” of sites near the resort corridor and in nearby areas such as Henderson and Summerlin, where the Triple-A Aviators’ ballpark is located.
The A’s are working with Kimley-Horn, a traffic and parking consultant, to assess transportation aspects of the sites, Kaval said. They have toured sites with an architect, Brad Schrock, who Kaval said is already on staff and “can do the layouts and understand siting and how things can fit together.
“At the end of the day, it has to be a fan-friendly location. It has to be easy for fans to get to and from the location. We still like the concept of the placemaking, like what we’ve done in Oakland with our vision there, what we did in San Jose with the Quakes, to have ancillary development around it.
“I think that’s very important for baseball, whether it’s retail, or in Las Vegas, maybe it could be more like a hotel. Those are things that are important to create a reason to be there beyond just the stadium.”
In Oakland, the A’s have proposed a $12 billion development that includes a privately financed $1 billion ballpark at Howard Terminal, 3,000 residential units, up to 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, up to 270,000 square feet of retail space, 400 hotel rooms and up to 18 acres of publicly accessible open space. Kaval said it’s possible the A’s could explore a project on a comparable scale in the Las Vegas area.
“Some of the locations would afford that, some of them would just be more or less a ballpark, and we’re weighing the pros and cons of that,” Kaval said.
In Oakland, Kaval has said the A’s need to build a ballpark in a “downtown urban location,” citing that as reason for ruling out the Coliseum site. Locales like Henderson and Summerlin are miles from the central Las Vegas Strip, and a walkable ballpark would seem less practical in midsummer in that area. Kaval said it is an “absolute requirement” in the Bay Area “because we have to compete with the Giants.
“The Giants have a downtown, walkable, waterfront ballpark, obviously one of the best in all of sport, so fans in the Bay Area have that as an option to consider for where they’re going to attend a baseball game.
“In a one-team market, it’s a slightly different dynamic, because you’re the only baseball product. I still think if you look empirically, the urban environments where people can walk and be closer to other place-making activities historically have been the best. … So I still think that’s a preference that we have. But in a one-team market, there is a little more latitude.”
What factors would go into paring of the list of potential sites?
“One is the market feasibility and understanding the mix of locals versus tourists,” Kaval said. “Two, the traffic and parking plan to make sure you don’t make a catastrophic mistake in terms of a location that’s hard to get to. Those two things need to be completed before you can really understand maybe what the best site would be. And then you’d have to obviously negotiate a deal there, too.”
For Allegiant Stadium, the Raiders secured $750 million in public funds, generated by a hotel tax, toward the $2 billion project cost. Exploring potential for a public-private partnership in Southern Nevada was another focus named by Kaval after his first visit but is “probably the area we’ve spent the least amount of time” on, he said Saturday.
“We think it’s more important to first identify where the location would be and what the business plan for a team there would be before you could really even understand what type of public-private partnership either would be appropriate or feasible,” he said.
Kaval said the “potential solution set is still large. But what I would say is that once the feasibility (study) comes back, and the traffic and parking, and once we get a little more progress on the design, the city side and the civic side there in Nevada is very quick in the way they move. … That’s a very appealing proposition, because we need to have some answer and somewhere to play.”
‘Parallel paths’
Asked what the A’s seek in a new ballpark, Kaval said certain aspects apply regardless of geography. One is “having a more intimate stadium” as “fans really want to be on top of the action, close to things.” He said another is “to have an innovative fan experience, somewhere that people are excited to come, that they enjoy the experience, that they want to travel and see it.”
Kaval has described the A’s as being on “parallel paths” with the city of Oakland and Southern Nevada in their pursuit of a ballpark.
Oakland’s City Council voted July 20 to approve a non-binding term sheet for the A’s project plan that did not mirror the team’s proposed term sheet. The sides are in ongoing negotiations. A potential snag arose last week when Alameda County informed the city it will not vote in September on opting into a tax district to help fund the project, citing a lack of certainty about the stadium situation. The city has said that without county help, the project is unlikely to advance.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told KGO (Channel 7) last week that the city and the A’s are “aligned on the vast majority of the financial structure of the deal.” Kaval said Saturday the sides “remain apart on the financial terms.”
The A’s have expressed urgency in solving their ballpark problem as their current lease at the Coliseum, their home since 1968, expires after the 2024 season. Kaval said “it’s hard to say” at what point the A’s will have to choose one of their paths.
“I think there’s a huge effort between now and the end of the year to advance this as far as we can to understand what options we have in Las Vegas, to see where we stand in Oakland,” he said. “We should be able to have a binding vote in Oakland by the end of the year. If we can’t get to that, if the city can’t make that happen, that’s I think telling. And we’re going to need to then evaluate what that means.”