Tropicana Could Be Demolished for Las Vegas A’s Ballpark

By Scott Roeben, on May 09 2023
3 min read 30 comments
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In the most recent chapter of the seemingly never-ending Oakland A’s relocation saga, the team now says it will build a ballpark on the site of the Tropicana resort.

Previously, it was announced the ballpark would go on the former Wild Wild West site. Now, not so much.

The Tropicana would presumably be demolished, and Bally’s Corp. would build a new resort next door. We trust the new casino resort would be called Bally’s Las Vegas. The former Bally’s is now Horseshoe. There will be a quiz.

Not the official Las Vegas A’s logo, just our official Las Vegas A’s logo.

A few days before this news, it was shared the A’s were back in discussions with Rio as a possible location for the team’s new stadium.

The Las Vegas Festival Grounds were out of the running awhile back, as we heard the owner, Phil Ruffin, was insisting he get the revenue from concessions and parking, which would be a serious no-go for an MLB team.

The Rio made a lot more sense than Tropicana for a lot of reasons (including the owners, Dreamscape, offered the land for $1).

But common sense doesn’t drive decisions in Nevada when it comes to professional sports. It’s professional sports!

Choosing the Tropicana site does significantly lower the amount of money the A’s would be asking for from taxpayers, so there’s that. They were previously looking for $500 million, now, it would be a mere $395 million. (Bally’s Corp. would rent the site, not sell it. The A’s would pay $10.5 million a year under a 50-year lease agreement, according to the Nevada Independent.)

Tropicana
It appears the Trop could finally be put out of its misery.

While it’s bittersweet Las Vegas could lose a classic casino relatively few people visit, the plan appears to be for Bally’s to build a new “1,500-room hotel-casino across from the stadium.” How it would be “across,” we have no idea. Excalibur is across from the Tropicana (across Las Vegas Blvd.), ditto MGM Grand (across Tropicana). We assume they mean on a portion of the Tropicana site, as was the plan at Rio.

The A’s say they’ll start building the ballpark in 2024, with a tentative completion date of 2027.

This all has a dog-chasing-its-own-tail vibe to it, but it appears the A’s have landed on an actual deal this time.

As with the Wild Wild West site deal, which was reported as “binding,” that term is used differently than most would interpret it. The deal with Red Rock Resorts was apparently contingent upon the A’s getting public funding, and we’re pretty sure they’d have that same out in the Tropicana deal.

We don’t care all that much about where the A’s end up, as long as they move to Las Vegas, because then our 2021 Tweet would be deemed prescient and we would be carried around on the shoulders of cheering sportsball fans.

Soon, Las Vegas will have all the sports (an NBA team is likely to go to the Oak View project in the works south of The Strip), other than having a professional croquet team, but we’re fairly sure somebody’s working on that, too.

As we are not a sports person, the more sports, the less interest we have in Las Vegas. Sports are pushing out the things that make Las Vegas Las Vegas, and Las Vegas social media streams are so full of live Tweeting sports, there’s hardly room for anything good.

We don’t begrudge sports fans their sports, we just wish they could enjoy it to themselves. Casinos need no sports zones, and no TV zones, and no high-fiving zones. It’s all fun and games until somebody puts an eye out.

Everyone seems excited for the Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas, except for people who actually pay attention to baseball and realize the team, and owner, we’re getting.

We asked a top executive of a major Las Vegas casino to share his thoughts, he said, “You can never have too many imaginary stadium sites.” He added, “The A’s are not particularly well run.”

Should this deal proceed, it appears the Trop’s days are numbered, so visit while you can. There’s been no date given for a potential closure of this Strip casino, but things move quickly in Vegas when sports are involved. (If you blinked, you may have missed the massive F1 headquarters being built.)

People lost their minds when Hard Rock said it would be dismantling the Mirage volcano. They really should be mourning the loss of that glorious stained glass ceiling above the casino floor at Trop.

Las Vegas is all about change. As long as we get a new casino, we’ll let the A’s move to town. Having a winning record would be a good thing, too, thanks.

 

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