SNTIC Gives LVCC Expansion Priority Over Oakland Raiders Las Vegas NFL Stadium

SNTIC Gives LVCC Expansion Priority Over Oakland Raiders Las Vegas NFL Stadium
SNTIC Gives LVCC Expansion Priority Over Oakland Raiders Las Vegas NFL Stadium Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis was treated like Moses who came from the promised land of the NFL to Las Vegas to bless the city and Clark County and Nevada with the promise of a pro football team - his own. He wowed the media at Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval's Southern Nevada Tourism And Infrastructure Commission when he spoke on April 28th. Many of the reports coming out of that meeting would have you believe the Raiders were already packing up and leaving Oakland for Las Vegas. Formalities like the $750 million hotel tax subsidy that Mark Davis, Majestic Reallty, and billionaire Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corp were asking for were completely ignored by all but the local newspaper reporter from the Las Vegas Daily Review - and that person works for Sheldon Adelson. Still, SNTIC website posts and reports contained clear warnings that Davis and Adelson were far from getting what they wanted. The media was so obsessed with what the NFL would do with Davis proposal, it forgot to even learn if a $1.4 billion stadium mostly paid for by hotel taxes was what Nevada and Las Vegas really wanted? One NFL media type even remarked on Twitter "We shall see this summer", even as I told him the fate of Davis proposal would be determined on May 26th, and not later. He, liked others, automatically assumed Davis proposal was going straight to the Nevada Legislature in a special session. The page for the Governor's commission's website provided warning: that, on May 26th 2016, the group would prioritize which project was most important to implement first. Well, a simple visit to the website now will reveal that answer: the expansion of The Las Vegas Convention Center. In letters larger than the rest, the desire to give the go-ahead for this much-need new phase is described like this: "Convention Center Legislature Recommendation". Then, below those words are these: "Stadium Proposal Follow-Up". In other words, the Commission has not even finished, let alone really fully started, analysis of Davis' proposal. Indeed, the consultant to the commission intended to have an analysis, but what was out on the website are two documents that are very damaging to Mark Davis' desire to have his team in Sin City. One document describes the percentage of public money that the Mark Davis proposal calls for, and compares that to other NFL Stadiums - the Davis proposal would result in the largest tax subsidy in NFL history. And that does not include the $200 million from tax increment financing - add that (and that is a conservative estimate) and the subsidy is almost at, if not over, $1 billion. The other document details the process of evaluating the 42 acre UNLV site that is next to two runways at McClarren International Airport - that calls for far more than height constraints and noise concerns. The whole of what needs to be looked at, alone, points to a process that could take four months to complete. And if that UNLV site is not used, then it's not as if other sites will not have their own issues that have to be worked out. Nevada is not going to hold up investing in the growth of its convention and tourism industry for the development of a football stadium, even if it's for the NFL. Mark Davis Has An Oakland Lease Problem The minutes from the April 28th meeting reveal another problem for Mark Davis: the lease the Oakland Raiders signed contains what the Coliseum Joint Powers Authority Executive Director Soctt McKibben has called "warrants" or markers to determine where both the team and the City of Oakland and Alameda County were in progress toward a new stadium at the Coliseum. Davis told the SNTIC that his intent was to play the Raiders in Oakland for the three year lease and then move to Las Vegas. The problem is that's not what the Coliseum JPA lease calls for. If the Raiders are in violation of the lease or about to be, is up to the NFL and the City of Oakland, but from this blogger's perspective, it certainly looks like Davis is close to being in that position. It's one thing to make a statement pointing to a possible violation, but on the other hand the last time the Raiders suggested they might break the Coliseum Master Lease agreement was 1997, and the City of Oakland did sue the Raiders on that basis. Right now, Oakland has no stomach to file a lawsuit against the Raiders, preferring to handle the problem behind closed doors. But will the NFL allow a member club to act in what its host community believes is a less than good faith manner? The NFL Relocation Bylaws call for good faith bargaining - something Oakland Officials have told me the Raiders have not done to date. Stay tuned.
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