The chief executives of Bally’s Corp. and Gaming and Leisure Properties didn’t reject the idea of the Oakland A’s building a Major League Baseball stadium on the same site as the Tropicana Las Vegas during quarterly conference calls last week.
But they never mentioned the team nor the facility while saying the 34-acre location at the corner of the Strip and Tropicana Boulevard could be improved with additional amenities, such as a baseball stadium, beyond the aging 1,500-room Rat Pack-era casino-hotel.
Officials from the A’s have explored the Las Vegas Valley since last year as a potential relocation site for the American League team, after MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred approved the team’s efforts to leave the crumbling 56-year-old Oakland Coliseum.
But even after the Oakland City Council voted last month to certify an environmental impact report for a proposed stadium that would be part of a $12 billion development at the Howard Terminal near Jack London Square, A’s President David Kaval told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the team was still exploring its options in the Las Vegas.
The A’s stadium deal for the Howard Terminal site in Oakland still requires additional approvals. Kaval told The Nevada Independent in an email Tuesday the A’s had offers out on four sites in Southern Nevada, but he didn’t disclose the locations.
“While we continue the process in Oakland, we are continuing our work in Las Vegas,” Kavel said. “Our focus in Southern Nevada is finalizing a site and then determining a public-private partnership with local officials.”
In December CNBC reported the Tropicana site was one of several locations in the Las Vegas area where the A’s were looking to build a $1 billion retractable-roof stadium with 35,000 seats.
Kaval said the A’s focus in Southern Nevada was “on a location that can attract both visitors and residents; something that is a unique and exciting attraction for Las Vegas.”
While the Tropicana property would fit that criteria, complicating matters further is that ownership of the property will soon change hands. Rhode Island-based Bally’s has a deal to buy the operations of the Tropicana from real estate investment trust GLPI in a deal valued at $308 million: $150 million for the own and operate the hotel-casino and $10.5 million annually over the next 50 years to lease the site.
Last week, Bally’s CEO Lee Fenton said the company hopes to finalize the transaction by the fall once Nevada regulatory approval is reached.
During its fourth-quarter earnings conference call, Fenton said Bally’s is having “advanced discussions with potential development partners. We expect to be in the position to communicate our chosen partners and plans by the (second) half of the year.”
He didn’t disclose the partners.
A day after Bally’s earnings call, GLPI Chairman and CEO Peter Carlino mentioned the possible stadium project on the Tropicana site. Carlino added that he wasn’t sure what Bally officials have in mind for the location.
“We have an announced transaction with them,” Carlino said. “But if we can enhance that transaction with deploying some capital in a broader way to a project that we feel comfortable with, we'd be open to that possibility.”
GLPI has negotiated a ground lease for the Tropicana based on just the hotel-casino. But if Bally’s were to negotiate “a favorable deal,” GLPI wouldn’t object.
“We would work with them should the opportunity arise,” Carlino said. “But again, it has to cross all the other hurdles that we would normally consider. So, nothing is locked in there beyond the deal we have.”
In an interview with The Nevada Independent in December, Kaval said the A’s were looking at combining a resort with a ballpark, but didn’t specifically name the Tropicana as one of the locations.
“Our designers have looked at a variety of sites and it's typically somewhere between 14 and 15 acres (for the actual baseball stadium),” Kaval said. “That (site) might also include mixed-use development around it, such as bars and restaurants, and maybe a hotel.”
