Local group’s focus: ‘Build best stadium in the world’

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 | 9:38 a.m.

It would feature 100 luxury suites, 500 VIP seats behind home plate, 1,500 club seats on the field level and 5,000 in its mezzanine sections.

Those plush luxury boxes would begin just left of home and wrap around to the right, along the first base side of the field and roughly parallel to Harmon Avenue.

That setup will ensure optimal luxury-box viewing for other events, such as basketball games, boxing matches and concerts, and morph a $420 million Las Vegas baseball stadium into one of the country's most versatile entertainment venues.

Mike Shapiro, however, said he and the many players in an effort to lure the Montreal Expos to Las Vegas have had a much wider vision in designing a possible new home for the team.

"We're focused on building the best stadium in the world," Shapiro said, "and on providing a financial base that will guarantee that the team will be successful, no matter what."

Along with other details that had been kept confidential, Shapiro unveiled interior stadium designs to the Sun that, until Tuesday afternoon, had only been discussed in rough and general terms.

The portfolio showed a flexible stadium on 15 acres, behind Caesars Entertainment Inc. properties Bally's and Paris Las Vegas. Caesars would act only as a landlord in the project.

Many might view that area and wonder how a baseball stadium could fit on the land, but Shapiro said it's an optical illusion -- that the Caesars property actually extends into what looks like the Aladdin's backyard.

In the portfolio produced by HOK Sport, the well-known sports architectural firm in Kansas City, Mo., Koval Lane can be clearly seen along what is the right-field wall of the baseball stadium. Harmon is off to the left, and the Strip runs hundreds of yards beyond the third-base line.

According to Shapiro, the project could be completed without any additional parking requirements or road improvements.

"We have had parking and traffic studies completed," he said, "and we have identified parking availability that is both contiguous to the site and within a 1-mile radius. So we're very confident that there is ample parking with the area."

Still, Shapiro said those studies address measures that would ease traffic congestion and include other infrastructure improvements.

"We address what we would want to get from the public, in terms of support, some with a form of financial support and some that don't," Shapiro said. "We would not ask for anything that any other developers who would come to Las Vegas would otherwise ask for.

"We have done a lot of due diligence, about whether or not those sorts of resources would be available to us, and we're highly confident that they (would be) available to us."

Shapiro declined to offer specific details about what improvements, traffic or otherwise, would be available through city or county channels, or who would bear the burden of paying for the stadium.

A minor portion of the bill -- approximately $20 million -- has been proposed via a tax on tickets and concessions from stadium events. MLB desires a public financing element in stadium proposals.

But Shapiro said Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment (LVSE) LLC could pay for the building with 100 percent private financing, in part because the likely year-round use of the venue appeals to investors' bottom lines.

"It would be more diversified than any other baseball facility constructed to date," Shapiro said. "Our studies show that attendance, at the very least, would be at the current major league average (of 29,368).

"We also believe, with the unique nature of this market and the premium and VIP seats, and luxury suites, that those revenues will be higher than any other baseball franchise. That enhances the financial model immeasurably."

Montreal is averaging a baseball-worst 9,416 fans per home game this season, its second in a row in which a quarter of those games are being played in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Shapiro said "many" local corporations and casinos, which he could not name because of confidentiality agreements, have shown interest in buying season tickets.

"Obviously, that base is important," he said. "That base is one of the principal foundations of our strategy. There has to be a good, solid revenue stream driven off premier seating.

"We have successfully, I believe, convinced Major League Baseball that this is one of the great value drivers in our proposal, beyond the issue of population growth and tourism, both of which are outstanding value drives."

Shapiro was not shy about showing off his HOK portfolio.

For baseball, the stadium would seat 40,000 fans. For football, 44,500. For boxing, 31,000. For basketball, 30,000. It could also seat 29,500 for hockey games. He showed off renderings of the building in three and four levels.

"Las Vegas is very fortunate ... that it can support a largely privately financed (stadium)," Shapiro said. "A tremendous benefit to the community can come to them at virtually no cost. It's something Las Vegas should be very proud of."