Las Vegas Stadium Authority will continue to work with Raiders
The Las Vegas Stadium Authority will continue to work with the Oakland Raiders to build a football stadium in Las Vegas that will be shared with UNLV, authority board Chairman Steve Hill said Wednesday.
Now that New York-based Goldman Sachs and Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., have withdrawn as the Raiders’ partners in the $1.9 billion stadium project, Hill said it’s up to the Raiders to secure financing in order to move forward.
“They feel strongly that they’ll be able to do that, and the Stadium Authority Board certainly will continue to work with them to make the project happen,” said Hill, who also serves as director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
Speaking at the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance’s third annual State of Economic Development, Hill said he is grateful for the time and effort the Adelson family put into bringing an NFL team to Las Vegas. The economic impact of such a stadium presents a real opportunity for the state, he said.
“The present prediction for the cost of simply replacing Sam Boyd Stadium is $580 million, so the ability to mitigate the need to build a standalone facility for UNLV football is a major reason that moving forward with an NFL stadium makes sense.”
The law at the foundation of the stadium project was written with a contingency if the project does not happen.
“We knew that before, and that’s still the case,” Hill said.
The Review-Journal is owned by the family of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson.
Contact Nicole Raz at nraz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JournalistNikki on Twitter.