Back in April, I expressed my dissapproval of the Raiders plan to relocate to Las Vegas. At the time, my primary objection was to the idea of building an NFL-size stadium adjacent to UNLV's campus. But as time has moved on, the plans have shifted, and the city has come up with new location proposals for the $1.9 billion stadium, as well as new financing plans. Last week, the Nevada State Legislature, on the order of Governor Brian Sandovall, convened a special session to vote on the proposed stadium financing plan. The successful vote was a win for the Raiders' plan to relocate, but was a major loss for the city of Las Vegas and state of Nevada.

The finance plan requires the city of Las Vegas to raise $750 million in funds from a hike in room taxes for its hotels. This leaves taxpayers supposedly off the hook by passing the bill onto tourists. Critics have complained that this takes money away from Las Vegas schools and other public infrastructure and services, but this criticism is a bit of a red herring, as there were no plans to collect such revenues and spend them on schools or other services to begin with. Critics are valid in pointing out, however, that this does take that money away from potentially being collected for the purposes of funding education or services in the future.

The city, tourists, and UNLV all get screwed

I would be fine with this $750 million price tag if the plan guaranteed some degree of revenue or profit-sharing for the city of Las Vegas. It would be an up-front investment with the potential of paying for itself over the long-term. No such fortune for us Vegas residents. This is a bum deal for the city of Las Vegas, however, as the plan does not allow for any revenue or profit-sharing from the proceeds that the stadium may gain. So public money is being spent on the project, but no money is going back to the public. Sheldon Adelson and Mark Davis are both billionaires. If they really wanted the Raiders to move to Las Vegas, they can afford to build their own damn stadium.

Mark Davis and Sheldon Adelson are both billionaires. They can afford to build their own damn stadium.

What really sours this deal though is that it also presents some other "screw you"-s to the city of Las Vegas. The plan to build a new stadium started out as a plan to build a new stadium for UNLV's football program. But UNLV gets screwed by this deal, as they will actually have to pay approximately $250,000 per game to the stadium's owners in order to play their home games there! They'd have to pay $250,000 per game to "rent" this facility! "Public stadium", my ass! If Las Vegas is raising tax money to pay for this stadium (and we're paying for almost half of the entire bill), then it should belong to the City of Las Vegas or Clark County. If it belonged to Las Vegas, then our public university (UNLV) should be able to use the facility, and should get revenue from ticket sales. Not so, apparently. Make no mistake, this is not Las Vegas' stadium; this is Mark Davis and Sheldon Adelson's stadium.

We don't get the stadium; we only get the debt. NFL teams have a long, sad history of screwing cities with stadium deals...

Football season's starting to get under way. The draft is coming up later this week, and I'll be interested in seeing who John Fox and the Bears select in their efforts to rebuild the team. However, there's a more personally-interesting story that popped up this week: according to several reports, the Oakland Raiders are showing interesting in relocating to Las Vegas. According to multiple sources, Raiders' owner Mark Davis has already visited Las Vegas in preliminary talks about relocating his team, and he will return on Thursday to meet with the Nevada tourism officials to discuss UNLV's planned domed stadium.

Mark Davis met with Sheldon Addleson and Las Vegas representatives about possibly moving the Raiders to Vegas.

This all sounds like a terrible idea, and I don't think it's a good move for either the Raiders or the city of Las Vegas. I'm not a big fan of the domed stadium proposal to begin with, mostly because I think the location is a disaster of traffic management waiting to happen. UNLV wants to build the stadium on or near UNLV's campus in order to encourage live-in students to attend games, since many of them might lack cars and can't travel out to Sam Boyd Stadium out in the middle of nowhere. Seems understandable, except that the proposed area is already a major traffic arterial that is prone to congestion, and the stadium is planned to replace the current parking lot of the Thomas and Mack basketball arena. The Strip, and the roads around it, already suffer from severe congestion and gridlock on a pretty regular basis, especially on Saturday nights when UNLV games are typically played. And that's without 60,000 people trying to funnel into a stadium!

Las Vegas is a commuter town (and UNLV is mostly a commuter school), but Vegas lacks any large-scale mass transit options. Our bus system is lackluster, and we don't have any kind of light rail. The monorail system that runs along half the strip doesn't even stretch to downtown or to the airport, and won't enable opponent teams' fans to travel from the airport to the stadium - let alone support commuters wanting to come from the suburbs of Henderson, North Las Vegas, Summerlin, or the rapidly-growing southwestern corner. In addition, I doubt that the location of the stadium on-campus will help all that much with student attendence at UNLV games. I think a bigger factor in students not attending is that many of them have part-time jobs and work on Saturdays. So they wouldn't be attending no matter where the stadium is located.

UNLV is considering building a new football stadium [LEFT] in the place of the
Thomas & Mack Center's existing (and barely-sufficient) parking [RIGHT]

And then there's the parking issue. Without public transit, fans are stuck driving to the game, and Las Vegas citizens are (from my experience) frustratingly-averse to carpooling. If you build a 60,000-seat stadium, you'll need a 60,000-car parking lot to go along side it. Except this stadium is replacing the existing parking lot outside of the Thomas and Mack. So where will everybody park? Are they going to add ten floors to the existing southern parking garage? They can't build an underground parking garage; that would be a disaster waiting to happen. Las Vegas is located in a valley, and UNLV's campus is at one of the lowest points in that valley, which means when we get our late August and September "monsoons", the area is prone to flooding. UNLV's parking lots have been known to flood during heavy rainstorms. An underground parking garage would likely turn into a subterranean swimming pool when a similarly heavy rainstorm inevitably happens.

The UNLV campus has flooded during heavy rainstorms, damaging vehicles and leaving students and visitors stranded.

But I digress...

UPDATE MAY 10, 2016:
More recent reports have indicated that the Raiders would continue to play in California until a new stadium is constructed in Las Vegas. They would not be playing in Sam Boyd Stadium. This certainly makes the move seem more serious to me, since most of my doubts regarding Davis' sincerity was the result of Davis suggesting that the Raiders might play at Sam Boyd for a couple years while waiting for the new stadium. So the following few paragraphs have now been rendered moot, so feel free to disregard.

In any case, such a stadium won't be completed for years! I'm not even sure if it's even been fully approved yet. But these reports are saying that the Raiders could be playing in Las Vegas as early as the 2017 NFL season. So where would they play? Mark Davis supposedly has already visited Sam Boyd Stadium, and has approved of it as a temporary home for the Raiders until the new stadium gets built.

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