A week and a half ago, we laid out the known financing for the Athletics ballpark in Las Vegas, and discovered that the club and owner John Fisher would still be short by a decent margin–somewhere around $295 million. Earlier this week the A’s broke ground on their new ballpark, but there have been two new reports that have further suggested that the funding just isn’t there.
The first came in the San Francisco Chronicle, where Susan Slusser reported that the A’s Las Vegas project is independent of what happens with the San Jose Earthquakes, according to A’s executive Sandy Dean. The Earthquakes are the team that Fisher is now looking to sell, and we used a potential $600 million windfall from that in our previous calculations, while noting that it likely wouldn’t be that much that would go towards Vegas.
The expectation wasn’t that there would be zero overlap, however.
With that $600 million removed from the Vegas ballpark funding, that would leave Fisher having cobbled together roughly $855 million, or $895 million short of the $1.75 billion initial estimate for the ballpark’s construction. We also noted that the last estimate was provided months ago, before tariffs on steel took hold, and was already a $250 million increase from where it had previously been.
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As the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this weekend, John Fisher is now admitting that the ballpark will likely cost somewhere around $2 billion, or “thereabouts.” If the cost hadn’t gone up, he would have said something like “oh no, much lower,” but instead he went with the vague “thereabouts.”
Speculation would lead one to believe that the current ballpark figure would be higher than $2 billion as we sit here right now. That the project’s budget is still up in the air would seem to indicate that there is no guaranteed maximum price that has been set for construction, which also means that construction hasn’t really started in earnest. GMP’s are fairly common for projects of this size, and without one, construction typically doesn’t begin.
So to revisit the financials of the ballpark real quick. This would all mean that the $855 Fisher has raised is actually quite a bit short of the (at least) $2 billion in funding he needs for this project. Right around $1.145 billion to be exact. While it may not be something big, the reporting coming out of Las Vegas has routinely stated that the Fisher family will finance up to $1.1 billion themselves, if needed.
The gap would appear to be slightly larger than that figure at present, and without the GMP, there is nothing to protect them from that price continuing to go up. Still, minor investors either being added or announced formally could drop that gap back into the acceptable range for the Fisher family. The question is whether they’ll put up so much of the family fortune for this project.
Even with the groundbreaking behind us, this is still a developing situation–just not on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.
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A recent Review-Journal letter to the editor mischaracterized Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, also known as the Clark County Lands bill. As the former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, so I wanted to set the record straight.
Sen. Cortez Masto has been working on this bill for years in partnership with state and local governments, conservation groups like the NCL and local area tribes. It’s true that the Clark County lands bill would open 25,000 acres to help Las Vegas grow responsibly, while setting aside 2 million acres for conservation. It would also help create more affordable housing throughout the valley while ensuring our treasured public spaces can be preserved for generations to come.
What is not correct is that the money from these land sales would go to the federal government’s coffers. In fact, the opposite is true.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act is a landmark bill that identified specific public land for future sale and created a special account ensuring all land sale revenues would come back to Nevada. In accordance with that law 5 percent of revenue from land transfers goes to the state of Nevada for general education purposes, 10 percent goes to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for needed water infrastructure and 85 percent supports conservation and environmental mitigation projects in Southern Nevada. This legislation has provided billions to Clark County and will continue to benefit generations of Southern Nevadans. Sen. Cortez Masto’s lands bill builds upon the act’s success.
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So here’s the good news: All of the money generated from land made available for sale under Sen. Cortez Masto’s bill would be sent to the special account created by the 1998 law. Rather than going to an unaccountable federal government, the proceeds would continue to help kids in Vegas get a better education, bolster outdoor recreation and modernize Southern Nevada’s infrastructure.
I know how important it is that money generated from the sale of public land in Nevada stay in the hands of Nevadans, and so does the senator. That’s why she opposed a Republican effort last year to sell off 200,000 acres of land in Clark County and other areas of the country that would have sent those dollars directly to Washington.
Public land management in Nevada should benefit Nevadans. We should protect sacred cultural sites and beloved recreation spaces, responsibly transfer land for affordable housing when needed and ensure our state has the resources it needs to grow sustainably. I will continue working with Sen. Cortez Masto to advocate for legislation, such as the Clark County lands bill, that puts the needs of Nevadans first.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s jobless rate is holding steady, but the state is still adding jobs.
A new report from DETR shows February’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3 percent, with the labor force growing by nearly 3,800 people.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unemployment rate rises to 5.3% in January
Nevada now has about 1.6 million nonfarm jobs, up 2.2 percent over the past year and 1,500 more jobs than in January.
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“This month’s report shows a strengthening labor market,” said David Schmidt, Chief Economist. ”Compared to the report for January, the pace of job gains in the past year increased from 1.9% to 2.2%, building on what was already the fastest pace of job growth in the country. While the unemployment rate remained stable, the labor force participation rate rose to 63.7%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national level.”
Regional employment
In Las Vegas, employment ticked up by 1,100 jobs in February, about 0.1 percent, and is up more than 25,000 jobs compared to last year.
Reno added 1,000 jobs on the month, while Carson City shed about 200 but is still slightly above where it was a year ago.