Oak View bets on Las Vegas with $3B casino, hotel, arena plan

Entertainment hub and $1B sports, concerts arena to be built south of Las Vegas strip

Irving Azoff and Tim Leiweke with Oak View project slated for 25 acres between I-15 and Las Vegas boulevard (Getty, Google Maps)
Irving Azoff and Tim Leiweke with Oak View project slated for 25 acres between I-15 and Las Vegas boulevard (Getty, Google Maps)

A $3 billion casino, hotel and arena complex planned for Las Vegas would land miles south of its famous Strip.

Oak View Group, a global developer of sports arenas, plans to build a 25-acre entertainment hub for high rollers on Las Vegas Boulevard, four miles from the nearest Strip casino of Mandalay Bay, Bloomberg reported. Groundbreaking is set for next year and construction is expected to take three years.

The $3 billion entertainment campus would cater to people with enough cash to splurge on luxury fun.

The idea, according to Oak View, would be to sell customers one package for a hotel and live event, with hotel-key access to a private club at the 850,000-square-foot sports and concert arena, estimated to cost $1 billion.

It would include a casino, a hotel big enough to accommodate 2,000 guests and an amphitheater. The 20,000-seat arena would be large enough to serve as home to a pro sports tea or host concerts for major pop stars.

“We’re going to go after every big event that exists,” Tim Leiweke, CEO of Oak View, told Bloomberg. “It’s exclusive, it’s high-end and it will be built in a way where it’s the perfect experience for those willing to spend the money to have the greatest experience in live entertainment.”

The Los Angeles-based developer is seeking a partner to operate the hotel and casino. It will also look for partnerships with concert promoters and has had preliminary talks with Live Nation Entertainment, according to a person who spoke to Bloomberg. Live Nation declined to comment.

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Oak View, founded in 2015 by Leiweke and music honcho Irving Azoff, also shares an investor, Silver Lake, with Endeavor Group Holdings, owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which stages events in Las Vegas.

Leiweke is positioning the venue to serve as a home for events and professional sports teams that don’t yet come to Vegas.

The city has new professional hockey and football teams. It will host the Grammy Awards in April and the Super Bowl in 2024. The National Basketball Association would consider a Vegas team if its league expands.

“There is zero guarantee the NBA comes to Vegas; we are well aware of that,” Leiweke said. “But if the NBA does come to Vegas, this building will be an option. It will be built to the highest specifications of the NBA.”

The Oak View project would mirror the leapfrog development in the 1950s from Downtown to the Las Vegas Strip.

Its new hotel and casino/arena would be built along I-15 next to a planned Brightline high-speed rail station, miles closer to California than the historic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign that greets 13 million vehicles streaming into town each year.

[Bloomberg] – Dana Bartholomew

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