A’s show off model of future Strip ballpark, with green glow — PHOTOS
The Oakland Athletics gave a small glimpse of what their planned Las Vegas ballpark will look like with an illuminating model on display Friday.
A plain white spherical model sat on a table in The Club at Las Vegas Ballpark, with a Kelly green light emanating from it.
The Athletics are in town for Big League Weekend at the Aviators’ Triple-A stadium. The A’s play the Milwaukee Brewers at 1:05 p.m. Saturday.
The light made the design pop. Five pennant-shaped ribbons wrap around the exterior of the building, featuring four slivers of windows across the building’s roof, with a massive glass curtain wall located in the outfield of the ballpark, facing the Strip.
“We wanted a design that felt like you were outside, even though it’s an indoor stadium, so there’s all kinds of significant window openings,” A’s owner John Fisher told the Review-Journal. “A window opening that in the outfield is the largest window, a very thin glass structure. When you’re on the outside it’s going to feel like you can look right into the ballpark. When you’re on the inside looking out, you have the same feeling.”
The model wasn’t detailed, but it gave an idea of how the building will glow at night, fitting right in with the bright lights of the resorts that stretch up and down Las Vegas Boulevard.
Having a 360-degree view of the ballpark design also gave a better idea of how the sun will play a role. The strips of windows on the roof and the cable-net glass wall face north-northwest, away from the sun when it is behind the park to the east, not having a major impact on fans inside the stadium, but still allowing some natural light to enter.
“Opening up so you have all the soft-facing sunlight during the day and then you have essentially the power of the Strip at night,” Bjarke Ingels, lead designer on the ballpark, said. “You’ll have all the energy of the Strip coming, and you’ll also have all of the energy of the game coming out.”
The A’s are working toward getting construction underway in April 2025, with an about three-year time frame to be ready for the 2028 MLB season.
Then the stadium being showed off by the A’s won’t be a foot-tall model, it will be a 250-foot-tall ballpark ready to welcome Southern Nevada to the major leagues.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.