A’s to foot bill for Las Vegas ballpark parking garage, utility plant

The Athletics have filed building permit applications to build a six-story parking garage and central utility plant for their Las Vegas Strip ballpark, elements originally to be built by Bally’s Corp. as part of its mixed-use resort around the stadium.

The permit applications filed Monday account for $45 million worth of work that will now be the A’s responsibility. It represents a 2.3 percent increase to the ballpark’s $2 billion budget.

Bally’s submitted updated project plans and submitted a permit application to build the first phase of a multilevel podium on the northwest corner of the 35-acre site that will ultimately include an underground parking garage and retail, food and beverage outlets, according to the permit application.

The permit application said the first phase will include podium foundations, retaining walls, concrete work and the first elevated level and underground utilities.

The A’s ballpark is set to take up 9 acres of the 35-acre site on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard South and Tropicana Avenue. The other 26 acres will include shared access space and a future Bally’s Las Vegas project.

The first phase of the podium project is estimated to cost $20 million, according to the application.

Bally’s Corp. Chairman Soo Kim told the Las Vegas Review-Journal this month that the company was close to securing the funding needed to build the first phase of the planned $1.19 billion project, which includes the podium.

“Still a few details to be worked out,” Kim said. “The good news is that we are close. We understand that it’s important that the podium be built in time for a spring 2028 opener, and we are in close dialogue with the A’s and the landlord GLPI to make sure that we will all be ready for it.”

Kim didn’t immediately respond this week to a request for comment on the building permit application filing.

In May, A’s vice chairman Sandy Dean said the team was prepared to open the ballpark without any of the Bally’s project completed and understood that they might have to build the parking garage and utility plant on their own. The permit application filings for the garage and utility plant are consistent with those previous comments.

“We talked about that Bally’s had determined that it was better to phase the utility plant infrastructure,” Dean said Wednesday. “We’ve come up with a way to do that by taking the very eastern portion of the garage and making that into its own utility plant that would service the A’s and maybe also provide some utilities to some of the early phasing for Bally’s. And similarly, we had concluded that with the resort likely following the ballpark, that the southeast garage would be phased with the first phase of 1,500 stalls. And so, the permit applications that have gone in are the follow-on to what we discussed in May.”

The team has said it would open the ballpark even without the podium, which would have led to a temporary plaza area on the northwest corner for pregame and postgame activities. The temporary plaza would have been 38 feet below the main entrance of the ballpark, leading to concerns from Las Vegas Stadium Authority chairman Steve Hill.

Dean said work by Clark County officials on the various permit applications throughout the project has been a big help keeping the ballpark’s construction on track for completion by Feb. 29, 2028.

“We really appreciated all of the engagement of the various departments at Clark County,” Dean said. “They’ve been working with us as we work to keep the project moving forward.”