Development partners push to get Las Vegas on MLS short list

Major League Soccer wants to expand from 24 to 28 teams.

Las Vegas, which has made a pitch before for an expansion club, is not on the current short list.

Laus Abdo, Jason Ader and their development partners want to change that.

In recent months the Abdo-Ader group has been meeting with officials from the city of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority about converting downtown Cashman Field from a baseball park into a soccer stadium as a major step toward convincing Major League Soccer to award a franchise to Las Vegas.

This week, Abdo, president of Las Vegas-based real estate company AGP Capital, said talks are ongoing with the city and LVCVA about securing rights to the Cashman Center campus and ballpark in hopes of building a soccer stadium there.

They first unveiled their Cashman/soccer stadium plan publicly in an Aug. 11 letter to Deputy City Manager Scott Adams and City Economic and Urban Development Director Bill Arent.

The LVCVA runs the stadium and the attached theater and convention space on the 50-acre campus and owns the land, but the city retains a reversionary right to the site that returns the land to the city if the LVCVA ceases current use of the site.

"Once baseball is no longer played there, the site reverts back to the city," Abdo said.

In May 2014, the city and LVCVA agreed to a two-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that authorized the city to enter into an exclusive negotiation agreement with a qualified developer for the site.

"We're in constant discussions with the city about Cashman Field and about how to best manage securing Cashman Field," Abdo said. "Everyone seems to like the concept. It's a matter of getting them into position to do that."

But gaining rights to Cashman will not be easy. Abdo said the Las Vegas 51s minor league baseball team, a New York Mets Triple A affiliate renting Cashman Field from the LVCVA, has not told him when the ballclub plans to leave Cashman Field for Summerlin.

The 51s' owners, which include Howard Hughes Corp., Summerlin's developer, want to have a new baseball park built near Downtown Summerlin and Red Rock Resort. But there is no rush because the 51s have seven years left on a 10-year Cashman Field lease that runs through 2022.

The challenge is getting the 51s; the city, which is studying new potential uses for Cashman; and LVCVA, which runs the site; all on the same page for the deal.

"We have met with them and heard their ideas. As this is very preliminary, it would be premature for us to comment further," LVCVA spokesman Jeremy Handel said.

Howard Hughes spokesman Thomas Warden said, "We are aware of the soccer group's effort and believe that soccer would be an appropriate use for Cashman. On the 51s (stadium) nothing new at this point."

Abdo said he is hopeful about the Cashman site because he said the ballfield, when it was built in 1983, was designed to also accommodate soccer.

The proposal also calls for re-developing the Las Vegas Boulevard corridor between U.S. 95 and Cashman campus, with mixed-use housing and retail development. The development group is not asking for public money to build the soccer facility at Cashman.

"You have to create that walkability," in that corridor, Abdo said.

The targeted demographic is millennials because they like soccer, and prefer walking to driving more than previous generations, he said.

Ader and Abdo are teaming with Scott Watt and Bob Schulman of development company Watt Cos. to pitch the soccer concept at Cashman after the city tried partnering with Findlay Sports & Entertainment and Baltimore-based The Cordish Cos., to create a stadium project at Symphony Park and MLS team.

In February, the league crossed Las Vegas off its expansion list and ultimately picked Minneapolis. The Findlay/Cordish proposal included public funding for a new $200 million, 24,000-seat soccer stadium in Symphony Park, which proved politically volatile.

MLS is expanding in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minnesota and in Miami, where soccer star David Beckham told league officials that land has been secured for a stadium.

When MLS expands again, contending cities are Sacramento, Calif., San Diego and San Antonio.

— Contact reporter Alan Snel at asnel@reviewjournal.com. Follow him: @BicycleManSnel