Stadiums and Arenas

[The Kats Report]

As MGM’s new arena takes shape, plans come into focus

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The Las Vegas Arena will be larger than L.A. Live, home of Nokia Theater and the Staples Center.
Photo: Spencer Burton

Since when do you need to wait nine months to celebrate a new arrival? Wait. Maybe that question is, um, ill-conceived.

A nine-month timeline is in place for the birth of MGM Resorts arena, which the company has temporarily named the Las Vegas Arena until it announces a corporate title partnership. The 20,000-seat facility is skeletally evident on the west side of the Strip, between Monte Carlo and New York-New York. And any event that can fill those 20,000 seats is in play for a booking at the new venue.

“We’re planning what we’re calling an opening season that goes all the way from April through December,” MGM Resorts Vice President of Arenas Mark Prows said May 1, during the most recent media tour of the arena and its surrounding two-acre parcel. “This goes all the way from April through December, a full series of nine months of activity.”

A list of events was rattled off for Prows: NHL, boxing, UFC, concerts, production shows, college sports, Olympic sports. Which are in line for the new arena? “All of them,” he said. “Our goal is to try to find events that wouldn’t have come to Las Vegas if it wasn’t for our new arena. There are still quite a few of those.”

Prows was leading this tour a day before an event befitting the new venue was set for MGM Grand Garden Arena—the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao title bout. Clearly, the major boxing sanctioning bodies and UFC would obviously love to stage the first combat sporting event at the facility. But the most tantalizing, and lucrative, prospect is the possibility of an NHL expansion franchise being delivered to Las Vegas, of which Prows said, “My gut feeling is they will be able to procure a team, and that the NHL is feeling a lot more comfortable with that idea.”

Prows went on to say team owner Bill Foley would meet with NHL reps in June during the league’s meetings in Las Vegas (the NHL Awards show is set for June 24 at MGM Grand), and in September we might see some genuine movement toward league expansion in Las Vegas when the NHL Board of Governors meets to discuss league business. “The ownership group has a lot to discuss in June, and if they are comfortable they will probably be willing to make an action for a vote on expansion in September,” Prows said. “That’s what I’m hearing.”

Still, there is no verification of plans to formally discuss the Las Vegas NHL bid in September. The earliest the Las Vegas expansion team could begin play would be the 2017-2018 season.

Beyond pucks, Prows said he is confident the NCAA would seriously consider the new arena for a regional round of the NCAA hoops tournament. In the past, such talk has stalled at the topic of Las Vegas’ open sports books, which, of course, post NCAA basketball games.

“We have looked into that, and we are waiting for the NCAA to take their course and their path with it,” Prows said. “We are on their timing, but I think with the advent of the Pac-12 Tournament [at MGM Grand] and other basketball conferences holding their tournaments here, that has made the NCAA understand that this big, evil place of Las Vegas actually has a lot of big business and corporate compliance around it … They are starting to feel more comfortable, but that is just my opinion.”

The size and scope of the arena, and the adjacent eight-acre Park retail and entertainment promenade that will lead into the venue, will no doubt present a host of logistical challenges. MGM officials have not specified exactly how their parking plan is to be enacted, but have said that using the Monorail into the MGM Grand and the company’s trams on the west side of the Strip will be viable options. The nearby garages at Aria, Monte Carlo and New York-New York are the cornerstone of the arena’s parking blueprint. Expect a parking fee, only a recent phenomenon on the Strip, to be implemented during events at the arena.

“The New York-New York garage charged for the (Mayweather-Pacquiao) event,” Prows said, referring to the $20 fee charged per vehicle at New York-New York from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. on May 2. “And we will probably end up having some kind of paid component. But at the end of the day, we have the right parking capacity for the county requirements, and we will have the right traffic plan and traffic flow laid out.”

What we do have is a description of the MGM’s grand designs, dazzling with external LED screens and a pair of permanent stages near the front of the facility. The size surpasses that of L.A. Live, home of Nokia Theater and the Staples Center in LA.

Prows says the new arena is “better than anything we have put up in this city.” Maybe he’s gushing like a proud parent, but suffice to say everyone in the neighborhood is eager to get a look at this new kid on the block.

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