Raiders’ Henderson HQ on track, looks to be part of community
While most eyes are on Allegiant Stadium’s construction progress, the Raiders headquarters 12 miles away in Henderson is also rounding into form.
The under construction 335,000-square-foot facility located across the street from Henderson Executive Airport is slated to cost north of $75 million to construct, according to Raiders’ President Marc Badain.
Around 300 employees will work at the team’s office, where the team’s operations will be conducted, when it opens in June.
The 135,000-square-foot office area is now fully enclosed in dark tinted glass, with light grey side panels being installed, giving it a very Raiders feel. The glass is similar to the panels being used at Allegiant Stadium, which are darker on the outside, but more translucent from the inside.
Aside from the three-story office area where team and business personnel will be housed, the team headquarters will feature a cafe, a 150-seat theater, a Raider Image retail store and a memorabilia space with Super Bowl trophies on display. The Al Davis Memorial Torch from Ring Central Stadium in Oakland will be featured in the main entrance’s porte cochere.
Other features
In addition to the headquarters area, the facility will feature a 150,000-square-foot field house and a 50,000 square-foot performance center, which the team announced Monday will be called the Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center.
The entire north facing side of the field house is covered in black, white and grey color wall panels. The structure will feature one-and-a-half football fields with artificial turf, with a ceiling height of 110 feet to allow for punts and kicks to be made without obstruction.
A seating area where a few thousand people could fit is planned for the field house, according to Las Vegas Stadium Co. Chief Operating Officer Don Webb. The players’ locker rooms and training equipment will go in the field house, where physical therapy and recovery also will take place, Webb said.
Concrete flooring is beginning to be laid in the performance center, which sits directly to the south of the indoor field house.
The outdoor area, where three natural grass fields will go, is leveled and the drainage system installed. Although grass could be laid now, the Raiders will wait until the weather warms up.
“We already own the sod,” Webb said. “It’s still at the sod farm and we’re paying for them to manicure it.”
Open to the community
The Raiders are constructing their Henderson home to be open to the community, moving away from the model most NFL franchises have used in their headquarters and team training facilities.
“You could see a public event being in here… going on in the field house and being serviced by the theater and the cafe,” Webb said. “All these doors here (leading to the field house from the cafe) will open up here and it will be a continuous space between that cafe, theater area and the field house.”
Webb said typically such functions at a team facility are held on a different floor tucked away from players, but the Raiders chose to do their new office differently.
“Typically you don’t want the public having access to the players while they’re eating lunch or watching film, but we’ve chosen to do it deliberately so it’s very accessible,” he said. “You come through the lobby and it’s this big open lobby, right into the theater and right into the cafe. The hope is the public will use this as well as the Raiders.”
The facility offers a myriad of possible events, from high school sporting events, both indoor and outdoor, to corporate, charitable or civic events.
Webb said he doesn’t expect many public events to occur during the first year the headquarters is open, but once the team is comfortable with its new home and all the kinks are worked out, those events will become more regular.
“The team really wants to be part of the community and so it’s just not enough to say our address is Henderson and a lot of our executives live in Inspirada and Southern Highlands and all the rest,” he said. “It’s bringing people to this facility. We want them to feel a real affinity for the team because most people in this community won’t be buying season tickets. The stadium only holds 65,000 people and there’s more than 65,000 people in the community.
“But we want everyone to be Raiders fans and one way to do that is to become part of the community. I see this (the team headquarters and practice facility) as a vehicle to do that.”
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.