Second round:
For players selected in the NBA draft’s second round, see Scoreboard,
LAS VEGAS — A day after Las Vegas won a bid for an NHL expansion team, a governor’s panel studying a proposed 65,000-seat domed stadium to lure the Raiders was greeted Thursday with a pep talk and changing financial figures.
“We are going to find a way to make this work,” declared Andy Abboud, a top executive at Las Vegas Sands, the casino company headed by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is pushing for the Raiders to move to the city.
With the football stadium now projected to cost at least $1.45 billion, committee members dug into projections about a rate of return for private investors including Adelson and the crucial question of where a stadium could be built.
No site has been selected, despite timelines showing NFL owners would need to approve a Raiders move in January if the team is to begin play in Las Vegas in 2020.
The committee is due to turn over its recommendations next month to Gov. Brian Sandoval, who has the power to call the Nevada Legislature into special session to approve any possible tax hikes connected to the effort.
The panel, along with representatives from the Raiders, developer Majestic Realty Co. and Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp., heard again that the project won’t cost the public more than $750 million.
Most of that would come from a 0.7 percent hike in the hotel-room tax at Las Vegas Strip properties and a 0.5 percent increase in hotel taxes in most of the rest of Clark County. The plan also would divert sales and payroll tax revenue generated at the venue back to stadium operators.
The Raiders remain committed to paying $500 million toward the project, Raiders President Marc Badain said.
Other costs, including possible overruns, would be borne by the private developers, Abboud said.
“I know there’s cynicism about subsidizing a billionaire, but you’re not,” Abboud said, acknowledging questions about the stadium benefiting Adelson, the owner of the Venetian and Palazzo resorts in Las Vegas and several resorts in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau.
In December, Adelson’s family bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state’s largest newspaper, which had been a longtime opponent of taxpayer funding for private projects. The paper declared in a January editorial that Las Vegas desperately needs a new stadium.
“This is not a get-richquick scheme,” Abboud told the 11-member committee made up of top elected and casino officials, including Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International. MGM Resorts is a joint owner of T-Mobile Arena, which will be home to the NHL team.
Adelson is “in a position where he feels that we can ensure financing for a stadium (and) for those cost overruns with as little impact on Nevada taxpayers as possible,” Abboud said, “with Sheldon assuming the risk.”
A Raiders relocation from Oakland would require support from three-quarters of NFL team owners, who have long resisted putting a team in Las Vegas.