The Athletics have scheduled a new Las Vegas ballpark groundbreaking for June 23, as work continues on the facility to be built on the former Tropicana Resort location on the Strip.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting the details of the groundbreaking. Construction work on the site began in April, when crew began driving pilings to serve as the foundation of the 33,000-capacity ballpark. When making the announcement that work had indeed begun, Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, noted that a June Vegas ballpark groundbreaking was planned.
And now scheduled.
If you lived an online life and consumed all your news via Baseball Twitter, you’d conclude that the new Vegas ballpark was inexorably doomed, that John Fisher would just hand the franchise to MLB in the wake of certain defeat, and that MLB would move the team back to Oakland. Yet here we are with another sign that financing and construction are proceeding apace.
We have some more reporting on the actual project: the ballpark will occupy nine acres, with Bally’s Corp. to develop a new resort and entertainment/retail facilities on 26 acres of the site. While nine acres seems small–and it is for a covered facility–it’s still a larger footprint than featured at Target Field and Fenway Park, both located on eight-acre sites. The new ballpark is slated to open for the 2028 season.
Rendering courtesy the Athletics.
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