With new Las Vegas arena comes a new era of paid parking

Las Vegas fans, get ready for a new pay-to-park era.

Beginning with Wednesday’s gala opening of the new T-Mobile Arena, visitors seeking the closest parking spaces will have to pay.

An MGM Resorts executive confirmed that preferred spaces in garages at the Aria, Monte Carlo and New York-New York hotel-casinos will cost $10 on event nights.

People who want to valet park at Monte Carlo or New York-New York will have to pay $30. The valet charge won’t apply to registered hotel guests.

As part of an infrastructure upgrade, MGM Resorts in Las Vegas is installing LED lighting in its garages, with green lights directing drivers to empty spaces.

(Jay Jones / For The Times)

Gordon Absher, MGM Resorts’ vice president of corporate communications, said the revenue generated will help pay the salaries of those deployed to keep traffic flowing as smoothly as possible in what is a very confined space surrounding the arena.

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FOR THE RECORD

April 5, 1:30 p.m.: The article states that Gordon Absher, MGM Resorts’ vice president of corporate communications, said revenues from parking would be used to pay traffic staff. He said that traffic control, not revenue to pay workers, is the goal of the charge.

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“We are going to have an army of staff, which will include Metro Police officers,” Absher said, acknowledging that officers may well direct out-of-town visitors onto unfamiliar roads as they exit.

The fees will be in effect from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. on event nights.

Here’s how the parking system is to work: After someone buys a ticket for an arena event, he or she is directed to a separate website to purchase reserved event parking. The receipt will include a pass to display on the dashboard.

“There are tens of thousands of free parking spaces within easy walking distance of the arena,” Absher said. But most of those free spaces will evaporate once MGM Resorts begins charging for self- and valet parking within the next three months.

As announced in mid-January, the conversion from free to paid parking will take place sometime before the end of June. The specific date hasn’t been announced.

No other owners of resorts along the Strip have followed suit with plans to charge guests to park.

“A lot of people view this as Las Vegas is selling out,” Absher said. “I would pose it differently and say that Las Vegas is the last holdout. Every other city in the U.S. has gone to paid parking far ahead of us.”

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