Bally's Corp. Waiting on Oakland A's to Figure Out Their Ballpark Plan
The Oakland A's are making Bally's Corp.--the group that operates the Tropicana site where the team plans to build their new ballpark on nine-ish acres--wait until they figure out the design of the ballpark that already has renderings. How accurate those renderings end up being has been a hot topic of debate in both Oakland and Las Vegas.
The chairman of Bally's, Soo Kim, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal yesterday, "I am still waiting for them to get through their stadium design process." The LVRJ could not reach the A's for comment on where the design process stands. Given that the Review-Journal is always able to get a quote from the A's, could that mean that something is afoot? It wouldn't be fair to speculate wildly based off one non-quote, so instead let's talk about where the A's are in the relocation process.
The next step for the team will be the owner's vote, presumably sometime this summer or early fall, in which the A's would need 75% of the other owners to approve their relocation to Las Vegas. The vote is expected to pass, despite the A's relocation not necessarily being in other owner's best interest. Meanwhile Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao recently met with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for their first conversation, with the hope on Thao's end being to set the record straight on what was in fact on the table from the city of Oakland.
She also brought reports to be passed around to every MLB owner. Whether those reports could sway enough owners remains to be seen.
On June 28th, the Nevada Independent reported that the A's still planned to hire, "a design architect, a construction firm, and a project manager at some point." They also reported that the plan was to close and demolish the Tropicana Hotel in two years. That would seem to suggest that there is plenty of time to go through the process of mapping out a ballpark plan.
However, if Bally's is indeed waiting on the A's and time is of the essence, you may be wondering why they can't just demolish the hotel-casino and start building their own venture, since it will be using more of the land on the site while the A's ballpark will be tucked in a corner.
Well, the A's will be using nine acres, but there could also be "three to four acres of shared space" per the Independent. It's hard to determine the size and scope of the Tropicana project without knowing what the ballpark project could look like, and whether they may need a little more space than they had originally thought.
There are still plenty of questions as to how A's owner John Fisher will pay for this project, why there hasn't been a ceremonial signing of SB1 (the ballpark bill) as was promised, and why the A's are still fending off lawsuits at Howard Terminal that leave some wondering if the A's are even moving at all.
A's fans are looking for any glimmer of hope (hopium as it's affectionately called) that the team could end up staying in Oakland. While the recent report about Bally's waiting on the A's doesn't really mean anything based on previous reports, it could mean something if the team doesn't start ramping things up before long. They need to show that they can be good business partners on this land that they're being gifted, because that is a valuable plot, and it's difficult to imagine that another deal, perhaps a more profitable one, would be hard to come by for Bally's.