Venue News: Las Vegas Arena Takes Shape; San Diego Chargers Commit to Continuing Stadium Talks

Only four months ago, construction workers were boring holes 70 feet deep and preparing to pour concrete for a foundation. But on Thursday morning, the ovular skeleton of the $375 million, 20,000-seat arena on the Las Vegas Strip was taking shape, with the steel work even showing the first signs of the suite level, writes the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A construction visit shows how MGM-AEG is shoehorning the privately financed, 650,000-square-foot building into a site bordered by Frank Sinatra Drive on the west, Tropicana Avenue on the south, the New York-New York garage on the east and the CityCenter/Aria employee parking garage next to Monte Carlo on the north…

…On February 1st of every year since 2007, the Chargers have been eligible to terminate the team’s lease for Qualcomm Stadium, writes Mark Fabiani, Special Counsel to the President of the San Diego Chargers. And each year since 2007, the Chargers have announced that the team will not exercise the termination clause and instead continue to work toward a permanent stadium solution in San Diego. The Chargers recently made the same announcement that the team has made each year since 2007: The team will not be exercising the lease termination clause and will keep working to find a publicly acceptable way to build a Super-Bowl quality stadium in San Diego…

…Now that the Charlotte Hornets and the city of Charlotte have agreed to an arena renovation, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said it’s inevitable Charlotte will get an All-Star Game, according to the Charlotte Observer. The first available All-Star Game up for bid is in 2017. In all likelihood the 2017 and 2018 events will be awarded simultaneously, but there’s no set date for when those games will be awarded,. The city agreed to pay for $33.5 million toward what would be more than $40 million in renovations and upgrades to Time Warner Cable Arena…

… The first venues for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics will be completed by August or September next year, writes Yahoo! Sports. Amid the bustle of lorries and cranes that whip up clouds of dust and in sweltering heat, the site at Barra da Tijuca has come on considerably in recent months, although most of the infrastructure will not be in place until only a few weeks before the Games, which will run from August 5 to 21, 2016. Construction of the stands at the tennis venue is almost finished and the roof of Carioca Arena 3, which will host taekwondo, fencing and paralympic judo, is being installed…

…With the excitement surrounding the team’s third straight bowl appearance in three seasons under the direction of head coach Hugh Freeze, writes WTVA, Monday was a milestone day in the Forward Together campaign, as Ole Miss moved one step closer to making the master plan for Vaught-Hemingway Stadium a reality. Launched in the fall of 2011, the Forward Together Campaign has now reached $125 million in total cash and pledges, and between the ongoing construction of The Pavilion at Ole Miss and the parking garage, the front door for Ole Miss is beginning to take shape…

…Billionaire media mogul Phil Anschutz has held early stage talks to buy Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, according to the New York Post. Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns or operates arenas around the world, last month held talks with Forest City Enterprises, which owns 55 percent of the two-year-old arena, sources said.
The No. 2 concert promoter in the country behind Live Nation is expected to make a decision on whether to proceed with talks — or walk away — before Dec. 31, sources said.