Allegiant Stadium Known Unknowns

Allegiant Stadium has turned out to be full of surprises. ``The Death Star” as Raiders’ owner Mark Davis calls the place was finally put to full use by Garth Brooks last weekend and, well, there were traffic snarls. Local handicapping personality KellyinVegas tweeted, “O/U 3 hours before I’m home. Wow.”

Before Garth hit the stage, she tweeted, “It’s not even football season and parking @AllegiantStadm is a shit show.”

The Las Vegas Review Journal put the mess in less graphic and less revealing terms, calling stadium traffic “sluggish” and a “learning experience.” There are advertisers to think about after all. Two billion dollars will buy you plenty of traffic and this shouldn’t have been a late-Donald Rumsfeld moment, er, “known unknown.”

Instead of getting the sweaty, intoxicated crowd home in under three hours, Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft told the LVRJ, “I think there were lots of departments and agencies that were taking notes and making sure that every situation was an opportunity to learn from.”

Excellent.

“Using the Hacienda bridge for pedestrian access to Allegiant Stadium is proving to be an effective and direct route for attendees from locations east of I-15, including the Las Vegas Blvd Resort Corridor,” said Theresa Gaisser, director of RTC’s Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation.

I was told by a concert attender who made that walk that it was “miserable.”

Last Saturday night was July in Las Vegas and evidently, that surprised some officials. Commissioner Naft said. “The biggest factor besides it being the first capacity event at the stadium was the heat. That played a significant factor, more so than anybody could have anticipated. There were quite a few people that were taken out of commission on the traffic enforcement and logistics side because of the heat.”

Honestly, “more than anyone could have anticipated?”

“We’ll make sure that they add more tents and water stations as well, particularly on those hot summer days,” (Captain Obvious) Naft said.

Of course, the UFC event and Bruno Mars concert were also that night, and have been blamed. But, isn’t that what Vegas is supposed to specialize in?

What happens when the Raiders, the Golden Knights, and the soon to be here A’s all play on the same night? Add NASCAR to that mix on the same day.

Well, it’s all a learning experience according to Naft. “Looking at what routes worked, what didn’t work, what needs to be adjusted and what wayfinding needs to be improved on,” Naft said. “We’ll make sure we continue to learn from every opportunity.”

The other learning experience is that when the town doesn’t have heads in beds or has to rent rooms pandemic cheap, bond payments on the Death Star can’t be made and money must be pulled from the reserve fund.

“I’m pleased to say [Clark County hotel rooms generated $3.1 million] is 20 times higher than the prior year,” Jeremy Aguero, principal with Applied Analysis, who serves as staff for the stadium authority, said at Tuesday’s stadium authority board meeting. “That is the best number we’ve seen post-COVID 19, so we’re pleased with the direction the revenues are headed.”

So far, $35.6 million of the reserve funds have been used to make bond payments, leaving $54.6 million in reserve before taxpayers are called upon.

Could that happen?

Megan Messerly of The Nevada Independent tweeted that Covid infections rose by 710 cases on July 15th and the positivity rate rose to 10.87 percent. “The variants that we're facing, which essentially dominate the field now, are your Olympian viruses,” Dr. Mark Pandori, head of the Nevada State Public Health Lab, told Messerly in an interview this week. “These are the ones that have competed and competed and competed and are now the most proficient at infecting people.”

Party on Garth. Party on Vegas.