Ever since the stadium financing deal went up for debate, the projection was that the Las Vegas A's would be playing baseball on The Strip in 2027.
That's now sounding more like 2028, as lawmakers scramble to finish work by the end of the Legislative Session on June 5th.
Members of the Joint Assembly Ways and Means Committee, along with the Senate Finance Committee are hearing from both sides of SB-509 to publicly fund 25 percent of the 1.5 billion dollar, 30,000-seat retractable domed stadium.
Part of the presentation - a timeline from A's consultant Jeremy Aguero.
"The expectation is that site construction will begin in 2024 and early 2025."
But instead of the opening in 2027 as previously projected -
"Construction is expected to be completed in 2028 and the first game expected to be played in spring of 2028," Aguero says.
A delay that Brodie Brazil with NBC Sports in California says is not a loss on A's fans who don't want to lose their team to Nevada.
"When you've got a baseball team that says they're under pressure and says they don't have time and says they're gonna run out of time in Oakland and now all the sudden their Las Vegas ballpark is a year behind - and it hasn't even been approved yet, you understand you're operating on somebody else's deadline, then it becomes a problem," he says.
The reason, according to State Senator Scott Hammond -
"I don't know if I'm 100% sure, as soon as we pass the bill that it's done, and they're certainly and certainly if it is on the trajectory to get done, there's still a lot of things that have to happen," Hammond says.
SB-509 is also under a legislative timeline before the session ends on June 5th.
Hammond says the bill needs to go through a similar procedure on the assembly side, but he's still confident lawmakers will get it finished.
As for the new 2028 estimates on completion, the A's lease in Oakland expires at the end of the 2024 season, so they could be baseball gypsies for three or four seasons.
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