The Fight for the New Las Vegas Arena

By Sabrina Siracusa

 Watch out Quebec, Las Vegas has rolled the dice, so to speak, in the vie to be home to a hockey team. One of the more interesting issues surrounding the Las Vegas arena involves which sports franchise it will house. The biggest battles in the under construction Las Vegas arena may not be the future sports or events played out there, but instead—the fight for which sports franchise claims the arena.

Las Vegas has no official pro sports team, so the new arena is being viewed as the opportunity by some to entice a sports team, literally any sports team, to call Vegas home. There has been talk of the NHL and even the NBA to move into the arena once it’s built. Not to mention that the arena has also caught the attention of UFC. UFC president, Dana White, stated on the UFC website, “No one is more pumped about this [new arena] than me and my team.”

So why is the arena so actively pursued? It is a $350,000,000.00, 20,000-seat indoor arena. It is one of the most modern and extravagant arenas in the world. And to top it off, this one will be sitting on prime Las Vegas Strip property. The franchise that ends up moving into the new arena will more than likely cash in on the benefits of sitting on the Las Vegas strip.

A Brief History Of How It All Happened, Sort of…

The Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) first tried to build an arena in Las Vegas in association with Harrah’s Entertainment. In 2007, the joint venture announced they would build a stadium behind the Bally’s and Paris casino-hotels.

Caesars Entertainment, Inc. had previously envisioned using the location to build a baseball park, but the company’s buyout by Harrah’s cancelled the plans. That pretty much ended there for them. Besides, Caesar’s has enough of its own financial problems without adding an arena to the mix.

Harrah’s was uncertain about continuing with the project. AEG had not made a financial commitment to split the costs. There was also concern do to the fact that Las Vegas does not have a guaranteed franchise to play at the arena (still an issue to this date). And would it be feasible given the enduring financial crisis of the times?

The original plan was to start construction in June of 2008, and complete the project by 2010. By 2009, the lingering project had not even done a traffic study despite being located near one of the busiest intersections in the world. Fast forward to 2010 when plans were changed to use an area behind the Imperial Palace. That went nowhere because financing would require a special taxation district. Opposition from Clark County regarding using public money for the project caused more delays.

AEG backed out completely by 2012. Then along came MGM Resorts International. MGM came up with its own project using a section of land behind the New York-New York and Monte Carlo resorts. AEG became interested again, mainly due to the fact that the project did not rely on public funding. MGM and AEG announced a joint arena plan on March 1, 2013.

Additional plans were negotiated over the following months with the announcement of a $100,000,000.00 pedestrian shopping area to serve as a gateway to the arena and the retention of prominent sports architecture firm Populous to design the project. The project finally broke ground on May 1, 2014.

Interesting as this all is, what really matters is how this will affect the lives of locals, how will the area impact the economy, and will it bring the revenue needed to offset the problems associated with having a new arena in town. Problems that sometimes don’t show up for many years, often decades later. Time will tell.

In the meantime, MGM chairman and CEO, Jim Murren, stated that the arena is prepared to operate in 2016 with or without an NHL or NBA team. “We’ll make money without a home team,” he said. “But we’ll be relying on Dan (Beckerman, AEG CEO) to work with the leagues on possibly bringing a team to the arena.”

More information can be found at www.arenalasvegas.com