What’s up with the work going on at the All Net Arena next to the SLS? There seems to be major excavation going on in preparation for something big.
VitalVegas blogger Scott Roeben paid a visit to the old Wet ’n Wild site and found a parade formation of 23 trucks and a few earth movers. “It’s likely All Net Arena’s developers are putting on a show to impress upon potential investors how viable the ‘full steam ahead’ project is,” he wrote. When contacted by LVA, he added, “The official word is they're building an underground parking garage and adding infrastructure.” As of early July, he said, the site work looked relatively superficial.
This shadowboxing has been going on since March, when the Las Vegas Review-Journal looked in on the status of the long-in-gestation arena project, the dream of NBA veteran Jackie Robinson. It reported much the same as Roeben, that the excavation on the site was to “build underground parking and install utilities.” Wrote the R-J’s Eli Seagall, “The site work does not guarantee that the delayed project will materialize. But it comes after a lawsuit over financing efforts was recently dismissed and, at the very least, is a rare visible sign of life at the project site.” It doesn’t sound like much has happened in the intervening months.
All Net’s history has been marked by starts and stops. Robinson doesn’t own the underlying land. That's the property of Archon Corp., which has made many attempts to monetize the 27 acres ever since it evicted the popular Wet ’n Wild water park and tore it down. The catch is a simple one: money. Robinson doesn’t have any equity in the project, forcing him to rely entirely on borrowed capital. A similar arrangement almost doomed the Cosmopolitan. Robinson’s situation has caused the project to be nicknamed the “All-Debt Arena.”
Among the many hurdles to be overcome is the absence of an anchor tenant for a sports arena. Robinson says that’s not a deal breaker and he can fill the venue with concerts and special events. His vision for the site, first unveiled in late 2013, includes the retractable-roof arena seating 22,000, a 500-room hotel, and 300,000 square feet of retail and dining amenities. The price tag is $1.4 billion. Had Robinson’s vision gone according to plan, it would have been finished by last December. Now he’s looking at a 2019 completion date.
Robinson is believed to have found new backers, though this is a difficult time to go to the capital markets.
Although the success of Lucky Dragon Casino has lifted some of the Eeyore-like doom and gloom from the North Strip, Robinson’s project is still hardly a sure thing. We hope he gets it built, not least because it would block the unfinished Fontainebleau garage from view. We’d consider that a public service.
