test vegas 2020

Instead of focusing on the year that was, we at the Review-Journal want to make the one to come a focal point. It’s all about 2020, and each section of Sunday’s edition will highlight and chronicle specific storylines that will define major turning points for Las Vegas over the next 12 months.

A stated mission of the National Football League is to inspire and unify players, fans and communities and to make a positive, meaningful impact. You can’t do that without a team and stadium.

Las Vegas will have both in 2020, with the Raiders set to officially relocate from Oakland and arrive to their new palace. Yes, we’re about to belong to a select group of 32 cities calling the NFL home.

Allegiant Stadium, all $2 billion and 65,000 seats of it, will also play host to UNLV football.

The stadium’s completion is set for July 31, but pro football will arrive in Las Vegas months earlier when the NFL draft is staged here April 23-25.

The Linq Promenade and new Caesars Forum conference center will reportedly host what has become the NFL’s most popular offseason event, one that could double the number of folks who arrive here to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

For example, 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.

There is so much more. Circa, the integrated gaming resort that will include what CEO and developer Derek Stevens is calling the “world’s largest sportsbook,” is on track to open in December of 2020.

Downtown is also set to welcome a new convention center in June, a 315,000-square-foot facility that will provide exhibit space for the twice-a-year World Market as well as room for trade shows and those events displaced when Cashman Center closed in 2017.

The landscape of Las Vegas — literally and figuratively — will change dramatically in 2020. We’re growing up before the world’s eyes, more sophisticated than ever, ready to have a global spotlight shined directly on our town.