Yes, you read that amount right. Las Vegas wants the NFL and the Oakland Raiders have said they want to move there. The key issue going forward is building a new stadium for the team. The Las Vegas Review-Journal sums up the current situation:
The $1.9 billion project would be funded by a public-private partnership that includes $750 million in Clark County hotel room taxes. The family of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, Majestic Realty and the NFL’s Oakland Raiders would fund the balance of the project and any cost overruns with private dollars. If a room tax increase is approved by the Nevada Legislature, the Raiders have promised to pursue relocation to Las Vegas.
Sandoval, who serves as chairman of the state transportation board, acknowledged that the stadium developers’ plan calls for setting aside $375 million to purchase the land and pay for infrastructure and site improvements.
“But I’m not sure how much you can nail it down in that short amount of time and define what we think those types of improvements would cost,” Sandoval said. “I know it would be helpful to me to get that.”
Public-private partnerships are nice and all but $750 million is an awful, awful, awful lot of public money to throw at a private business that would only play eight regular season games plus two preseason exhibitions a year in town.
