How's the A's Relocation Going You Ask?
Wednesday morning, Oakland A's owner John Fisher participated in a "fireside chat" with the Vegas Chamber in what was touted as the team's first time talking to the community. It also cost $125 to get in if you weren't a member of the Chamber.
Jeremy Aguero, who represented the A's as an unregistered lobbyist during the legislative session that landed the team $380 million in public funds, opened the event by showing a slide with the rendering that the A's deemed "trash" last summer. We have yet to see what this ballpark will actually look like, even nine months after the team announced their intentions to move from Oakland to Las Vegas. We've seen the fake ones that got them their handout and have been promised new renderings, but they haven't materialized.
Fisher fielded questions for about ten minutes, but talked in very vague terms the entire way, linking most of his answers to how the team wants to help in the community. Fisher's chat wasn't inspiring nor was it informative.
The big takeaway from the event itself came right after Fisher left the stage, and the speaker said to the crowd, "The Las Vegas A's! We like the sound of that, right Vegas? Yeah? Yes? Are we alive back there?"
If the A's relocation fails to land in Las Vegas, this will be a moment that everyone points to as one of the first public signs that it wasn't going to happen. The most common response to this tweet was just a GIF of Jeb Bush saying "please clap" and that is the exact energy this provides.
To be fair, this crowd is not necessarily fans that would be attending the games and spending money in the ballpark. Fisher's hope was that some in the room would spend money on the ballpark. The financing for his portion of the $1.5 billion project still seems like the biggest hurdle. He told the Nevada Independent that he and his family have the equity to finance the ballpark, but that he is also open to taking on local investors as minority shareholders in the team.
If he has the financing, then what's the holdup in announcing the plan?
He also told the NV Indy that the team has been working with GLPI and Bally's to figure out what the entire property will look like so that the renderings will show both the new hotel/casino and the ballpark. But haven't they been working closely with Bally's and GLPI the whole time? Weren't renderings of the ballpark supposed to come out nearly two months ago? Something feels off.
The one piece of new information that was given is that the A's now have a design architect on board in Bjarke Ingels Group. The team had previously told the public to expect that announcement in November. The Group had also been tapped to design Howard Terminal in Oakland.
While the A's are nine months into their relocation to Las Vegas, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of work done, especially with the new ballpark expected to open in 2028, which needs construction to be underway in about 15 months to meet that deadline. It also means that the Tropicana would need to be demolished this summer.
The timeline is going to sneak up on Fisher and the A's if they don't start moving with some purpose in the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, the lasting image from Wednesday's fireside chat is the emcee asking the room if they're alive out there after hearing from John Fisher.