Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

MGM concerned with parking plan for Las Vegas stadium

Raiders' Stadium Renderings

Courtesy

Raiders Las Vegas Stadium Rendering

Parking proposed for Raiders games at the new Las Vegas Stadium was met with concern from Las Vegas’ largest casino company at today’s Las Vegas Stadium Authority board meeting.

Bill Hornbuckle, president of MGM Resorts International, expressed worries that people attending games at the stadium would use the parking garages at nearby MGM properties — Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, MGM Grand and New York-New York — taking spaces away from the resorts’ customers. The stadium is being built across Interstate 15 in the vicinity of the properties.

“We’re petrified that we’re going to be choked out,” said Hornbuckle, who is a member of the authority. “Our company remains extremely concerned about where we are.”

The Raiders plan for the $1.8 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium includes up to 2,700 onsite parking spaces and almost 12,000 off-site parking spaces, located at four off-Strip satellite parking lots. Fans parking in offsite spaces would be shuttled to and from the stadium for an undetermined fee.

Parking garages at surrounding resorts are mentioned in the Raiders proposal, stating it is reasonable to assume those will be utilized on game days and would reduce demand for dedicated stadium parking.

Hornbuckle compared the stadium to when MGM helped open T-Mobile Arena on the Strip. From that experience, he told the authority that its initial parking plan lacked.

“When we opened at T-Mobile we also had a perimeter plan, where we had people parking at offsite locations and (people) were bused in,” he said. “Today, things continue to change, with the exception of a couple of pub crawls, we built the Excalibur garage because it didn’t work.”

Hornbuckle also aired his concern about the possible monorail extension to Mandalay Bay not progressing as quickly as hoped, saying it appears it won’t be completed in time for when the stadium opens in August 2020.

Raiders President Marc Badain said he was not surprised by MGM’s concerns, as the two sides have had similar conversations behind closed doors for the better part of the past year. The parking plan will continue to be worked on and modified even after the first kick off occurs in 2020, he said.

“We still have meetings about (parking) in Oakland, and we’ve been there for 25 years,” Badain said. “Parking is an important part of game day, and it will remain an important part of game day, and we’ll keep revising the plan to, make sure it provides the fans with what they want.”