Elon Musk’s Boring Co. eyeing Park MGM/T-Mobile Vegas Loop station
The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop project could soon see tunneling toward a newly planned station at a Strip resort near one of the city’s major arenas.
A new tunnel from a parcel that Boring Co. owns at 4744 Paradise Road, located across University Center Drive from UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center, to Park MGM is being planned, according to permit applications filed this month with Clark County.
The application’s description notes plans are for two tunnels (one in each direction) linking to the two sites, to follow the alignment of Tompkins Avenue. The contract value of the planned work is pegged at $500,000, according to the application.
Tompkins is a small street that runs east-west, mainly behind 42 acres UNLV owns off Tropicana Avenue, which dead ends at Koval Lane, near MGM Grand.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Steve Hill said the new station will serve Park MGM and T-Mobile Arena.
“It would run from near Thomas & Mack over to where a station is going to be near a grassy area between Park MGM and T-Mobile,” Hill told the Review-Journal this month.
The area Hill noted is near the hotel’s porte cochere, located on the south side of the property, just across Park Avenue from T-Mobile Arena.
Work toward new stations
The Park MGM permit application comes after several others have been filed by Boring Co. in recent months. Those include tunnels and stations to land owned by Wynn next to the Fashion Show mall, Caesars Palace and near Harry Reid International Airport.
Work is also already well underway on the University Center Loop, which will run from the 4744 Paradise site north on Paradise, ultimately ending at the Westgate, where an existing station is in operation.
Stops are planned in between at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, a multifamily housing unit that Boring Co. plans to build, and other stops near Sphere, which will serve the immersive arena.
Plans also are in the works to add a station at Allegiant Stadium tentatively planned to be located in Lot B of the $2 billion facility.
Although several permits and plans have been submitted to the county, it’s unclear when any of the new tunnels and stations will see work begin on them.
Expansion expected to ramp up
The expansion of the Vegas Loop outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s footprint, where it has been operating since 2021, has been slow, as Clark County and the Boring Co. ironed out the permitting process and fire safety aspects of the project. The process took a bit of time because the Vegas Loop is a new transportation system, not seen anywhere else in the world.
“We think the Boring Company and the county have reached an agreement on all of the specifics around what it takes to get a permit and build, what it takes to get a permit and operate, so we anticipate that the permitting process will speed up,” Hill said.
The Vegas Loop has three offshoots from the convention center at Resorts World, Westgate and Encore.
Owned by Elon Musk, Boring Co. uses Tesla electric vehicles in underground tunnels in the private point-to-point Vegas Loop system. At full build-out, the Vegas Loop is expected to offer 68 miles of tunnels and 104 stations across the resort corridor, downtown Las Vegas and other places of interest including most Strip resorts, Allegiant Stadium, Chinatown and Reid airport.
The system is free for passengers using the system between the multiple expo halls at the convention center. As it continues to grow outside of the convention center, riders will be charged a flat fee, dependent on how far their destination is. The cost of a trip to or from one of the three resort stations that are in operation now are $4.25 for a single trip, $7 for a round trip and $12.50 for a day pass.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
