Expos’ stadium could be raised by 2007

Thursday, May 27, 2004 | 9:15 a.m.

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If Major League Baseball awards the Montreal Expos to Las Vegas by mid-July, one of the proposed new baseball stadium's chief architects is certain the $420 million building would be finished for the 2007 season.

It might not be ready for the start of that season, according to HOK Sport senior principal architect Earl Santee, but the 40,000-seat, retractable-roof stadium most likely would be unveiled by the '07 All-Star break.

"April 1 or 14, or May 1 (of 2007), it all depends upon your point of view," Santee said Wednesday from Kansas City, Mo. "Clearly, a lot of decisions have to happen quickly ... again, is it April 2007? Well, maybe we'd delay the opener two weeks or a month, if you had to.

"I think there are some opportunities there, but I don't think it's a hurdle, right now, to the Las Vegas bid to get the Expos. Frankly, every city (trying to get the team) is either not as far along or in a similar situation."

Washington, D.C., several cities in Virginia and Portland, Ore., are among the suitors battling Las Vegas to land the Expos.

After baseball's annual spring meetings in New York last week, commissioner Bud Selig said no team was cut from the list of seven candidates and that no city was the favorite.

Land behind Paris Las Vegas and Bally's, both properties of Caesars Entertainment Inc., has been earmarked as a site for a Las Vegas baseball stadium, and Caesars would only act as a landlord.

Santee said HOK's projections are based on a 2007 opening, or a month or so into that season. "Our (timetable) isn't based on 2008," he said.

If Vegas hits the Expos jackpot, San Antonio and Monterrey, Mexico, are potential temporary homes, insiders said, for the team until the Las Vegas glass stadium is completed.

Santee said the outcome of state Legislature meetings in February, when it might debate the merits of a small portion of public stadium financing, wouldn't upset a Las Vegas stadium-construction timetable.

Public financing is mostly a symbolic gesture, because of MLB's insistence for each candidate city to include an element of public funds in its Expos proposal.

To Las Vegas, sources indicated, that public element would be approximately $20 million, to be repaid through taxes on tickets and concessions, for example, generated from events in the building.

The Las Vegas groups -- Teamscape and the Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment Co. (LVSE) -- have based nearly their entire proposal on private financing.

"The question will be the risk," Santee said. "If public financing doesn't come, who covers that? If any designer or construction company has 90 percent of the financing in place, you'll find that they'd probably start the project."

The first six months of a stadium's construction, Santee said, is spent almost entirely on the drawing board.

"It would be timely to start construction in April or May," he said. "Normally, you'd want to keep (construction) around 23, 24 months. That first six months, you design the building with architects and engineers, and you prepare to engage a construction company.

"That first six months really is a design time, where there's no construction. They need to know what they're going to build before they start. We're smart, but we're not that smart."

Perini Building Co. is one of two or three local construction companies that Santee said he has contacted about the potential need for hundreds of workers within the next year.

Phoenix-based Perini is nationally known. It built the Thomas & Mack Center and Cashman Center, where the Triple-A 51s play baseball, and has conducted business in Las Vegas for more than 30 years.

Perini and HOK were partners in the design and construction of Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix and in the NHL Coyotes' new home in Glendale, Ariz., which was completed in 18 months.

Perini chairman of business development Dick Rizzo, when reached Wednesday in Phoenix, called that "record time."

"When (HOK and Perini) were both aware of the interest in Las Vegas, we felt we were uniquely qualified to get involved," Rizzo said. "Having been there for some 30 years, I think we have the right credentials to at least be considered for construction.

"And (HOK) is probably the premier designer in the country for sports facilities. It would be a great deal, if they can pull it off. It would be wonderful. We certainly are in a position to move forward."

Rizzo figured Perini would employ about 800 workers on the project, reaching a peak of about 1,000 two-thirds of the way into it.

"That's when there's an intensity to finish," he said, "and you have to get systems in place."

Santee said the ultra-modern, mostly glass stadium and its roof would be mutually exclusive projects, so the roof wouldn't necessarily need to be completed to open the stadium.

That's a tribute to the usually pleasant weather in Las Vegas in April and May.

"The roof schedule wouldn't impact the schedule of the ballpark," Santee said. "Therefore, if the roof (construction) slips a little, you can still have a ballpark in April.

"It's really about getting a park, putting fans and press in it, where players can play. It's contingent upon how we design the building and the roof, and the construction process."

Year-round construction is another Las Vegas bonus.

"If we were in Boston, would we talk of this type of schedule? No," Santee said. "That's clear, and the fact that that's part of the (Vegas) culture. We're not changing the paradigm of how things are built in Las Vegas.

"It's kind of how you guys live and breathe, right?"

Rizzo agreed.

"We've done it before in Las Vegas, where everything that's done is fast," he said. "We're very accustomed to doing things in an accelerated manner."

Like he did last week, during his first public revelations of details of the stadium to the Sun, Santee cited HOK policy in not releasing current artistic drawings or renderings of the stadium.

"There are thousands of contractors in Las Vegas who have been doing work there for decades who would be resources for the project," Santee said. "From a labor standpoint, it would clearly have a very positive impact on the community."