Stadium Renderings Stoke Excitement, But A’s Say They’re Garbage

The Oakland A’s used a series of stadium renderings to help land $380 million in public funding last month toward a new Las Vegas ballpark.

Now, the team says those images are literally trash.

Just weeks after landing Nevada state funding for a $1.5 billion stadium along the Las Vegas Strip, the A’s have told architectural firms that the initial renderings have no basis in the project’s future reality.

“We told the groups, ‘You saw the renderings in the newspaper, but wad those up for now,’” Brad Schrock, A’s director of design, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

It’s long been common knowledge in the business of sports that initial stadium and arena renderings frequently have marked differences from their finished versions. Early drawings are often used to generate public excitement and win political support and public dollars.

But the first Las Vegas drawings showed a particularly rushed effort, with many features simply unfeasible for the A’s project.

The renderings show a traditional retractable roof that would be all but impossible to build on the tight, 9-acre Tropicana Hotel site pegged for the project. Oakland’s MLB-leading foul territory — a product of the Oakland Coliseum’s 60-year-old design and not present in any modern ballpark — was also carried over to the Las Vegas drawings.

The A’s intend to pick a stadium architect in November.