A’s Come Up Short on Las Vegas Stadium Parking Spaces

A land-use permit filed last week by the Athletics with Clark County for their proposed Las Vegas Strip baseball stadium has more than 5,000 shortcomings — all of which are parking spaces.

The A’s have allotted for only 2,470 parking spaces in plans for the $1.75 billion stadium, 100 of which are reserved for office staff. But the county says the plans must include 7,500 spaces (one for every four seats). Actually, we’re not sure where the county came up with its figure because, according to their own formula, 8,250 spaces are required if the A’s are to build the 33K seats their plans call for.

That would make the shortfall exactly 5,780 spaces.

Not Even in the Same Ballpark

The A’s argue that they should be entitled to build only 33% of the parking spaces required by the county, because fans in Las Vegas are more likely than in other places to take the other modes of transportation available on the Strip. These include rideshare, taxis, buses, the monorail and an eventual Vegas Loop stop.

However, the A’s are going to be Las Vegas’ home team. So shouldn’t at least half of its fans be expected to come from all around the Las Vegas Valley? Many locals live in areas where public transportation is either not available or prohibitively expensive.

Sports Illustrated writer Jason Burke on Monday suggested that this could all be a stalling tactic from A’s owner John Fisher.

“Fisher is known for his stall tactics (at least in Oakland) as a negotiating ploy,” the reporter wrote, reasoning that the billionaire is “waiting for interest rates to come down, or for a break in the market that would allow him to save a bit of money on the project, given how uncertain the costs of goods is from day today.

“He’s going to need a lot of steel, and China produces more than half of the world’s supply.”