Don’t accuse the Raiders of not making sacrifices to move to Las Vegas.
Sure, Mark Davis landed one of the sweetest stadium deals in the history of stadium deals, but there will be compromise as the Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting the stadium site can only provide parking for 2,400 personal vehicles – with the quest continuing for another 14,000 parking spaces to be located away from the stadium site.
According to the Review-Journal, the Raiders are negotiating with parcel owners less than a mile north of the stadium site – an option that appears to be the best-case scenario at least in terms of distance from the stadium.
Once a location is found, the challenge for Davis will be to create a new variety of pre-game experience.
After all, it was Davis who said during negotiations with the city of Oakland, that pregame fanfare was “part of the gameday experience, and I just can’t give that up.”
$750 million in free public money later… maybe the Raiders’ owner is willing to bend just a little.
twitter: @raidersbeat
It seems peculiar to me that only 2,400 parking spaces were allotted to accompany the original stadium design on this reportedly substantial parcel of land! 2,400 is nowhere NEAR what the Raiders will require yo accommodate their estimated 72,000 seat venue! The informal rule-of-thumb is theoretically 1/4 of the seating capacity in parking spaces which translates to a necessity of 18,000 parking spaces; in other words just under 7X the existing allotment (explaining Davis’ pursuit of the additional 14,000 spaces on a nearby site).
I’m actually more than a little surprised that the stadium developers didn’t pursue a larger parcel of land in the first place that would include sufficient space to accommodate parking requirements in their entirety. I’m also worried that such a comparatively small parking lot will severely restrict critical pre-game tailgating festivities; an integral element in the entire game-day experience and one that typically takes place in the parking lot adjacent to the stadium, not in some overflow facility! I’m guessing the expectation was that the preponderance of the attending fan base would be comprised of visiting tourists rather than the primarily local support stream of most other stadiums. There’s also the issue of stationary tour bus parking; those that carry dozens of tailgating travel package passengers which oftentimes will open up their long baggage compartments to reveal long, enormous grilling devices that take up very nearly as much spece as their respective busses!
Needless to say, it appears that the situation was initially misjudged. Hopefully something more accommodating than 14,000 spots a mile away from the facility can be hammered out well in advance of the official ground breaking ceremony! If not, this could easily regress into one enormous & chaotic mess!
Why don’t they go upper level parking for 2,000 spots and lower level 2,000 spots + the 2400 they have on the ground level. That should be plenty parking. Considering about 25% to 50% of the people going to the game will be staying at local hotels with transportation to the game. I’m sure there will be lots of things that need to be ironed out.
I would think they could still put more spots on the property and dial back some on the landscaping, plus having another lot close by dedicated to tail-gating would be good to control access and ease parking of RVs/Trailers and set-up before games if it was a separate property. I would hope they would smart enough to run shuttles about 2 hours before game time.
Also, we need to remember than many of the hotels in the area where people will be staying coming from out-of-town will probably boost their hotel’s room books with free shuttle service to games. many of the larger hotels are in walking distance already, so there will be no need for them parking.