Vegas 2020

Instead of focusing on the year that was, the Review-Journal will highlight the dramatic transformation that will alter the trajectory of our town. The storylines below will define historic progress over the next 12 months.

The Raiders are set to officially relocate from Oakland and arrive to their new palace: Allegiant Stadium, all $2 billion and 65,000 seats of it. Las Vegas will belong to a select group of 32 cities with an NFL team, and the stadium also will afford UNLV football a new home.

While the stadium’s completion is set for July 31, pro football will descend upon Las Vegas months earlier when the NFL draft is staged here April 23-25. Nashville welcomed an estimated 600,000 draft-goers across the three-day NFL event this past April. Las Vegas is expected to break that mark, one of many ways the city’s economy will also benefit from such substantial growth.

Other major milestones are coming in 2020.

Convention space will grow dramatically from downtown down the Strip in time for what’s expected to be the biggest meeting year in Las Vegas history. Circa, the integrated downtown resort on track to open in December of 2020, will include the world’s largest sportsbook. Ground should be broken on a long-envisioned high-speed train to California. New, major Strip hotels will move closer to completion.

It’s true: Progress is impossible without change. In 2020, the skyline that has illuminated Las Vegas for so long will forever be altered to an even bigger, brighter, more global representation of that which defines us.