Las Vegas Dusts Off Plans for Spring Training Site

Forgive Don Logan if he seems a tad cynical. The president and general manager of the Las Vegas Stars, the triple-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres, has been down this road before.

He saw his vision of turning Las Vegas into a major league baseball spring training haven snuffed out less than three years ago. So he gets a little sensitive when he hears his town mentioned as a possible new spring home for some wayward major league club.

But even Logan perks up a bit when he hears the latest gossip, that the Dodgers will ditch Dodgertown at Vero Beach, Fla., for Las Vegas. The Dodgers will headline a six-team meeting in the gambling mecca Monday that reportedly will include such other Grapefruit League teams as the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros, Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays.

“I’ve talked to people [in their organization] and it’s like, ‘They can’t wait to get the hell out of [Florida]. They want you to get the deal done,’ ” Logan said recently.

“Well, sure, everybody likes to come to Vegas. But that’s not what’s going to make the deal happen. It’s got to make sense for us and it’s got to make sense for the community.

“The Dodgers make it better for the community. It’s a better project.”

An inquiring Logan called the Dodgers just after talks with the Fort McDowell Indian Community in Arizona broke down last year. Bob Wymbs, the Dodgers’ director of ticket marketing, was in Las Vegas on personal business about that time and joined Logan on a quick tour of the site in suburban Henderson that was to have been a four-team spring training facility by the turn of the century.

“They were cordial,” Logan said. “The guy [Wymbs] was nice. I don’t think he knew, frankly, what the opportunity in Vegas was. But it was just real casual, friendly conversation.”

Wymbs declined to comment for this story.

But Bob Graziano, the reinstated Dodger president and chief operating officer, also has visited potential sites in southern Nevada.

“Our reaction is that it’s real, it’s doable and we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least take a look at it,” Graziano said. “They spent an awful lot of time planning it out before, so it is a real alternative. It is an option. But so is Vero Beach. The state of Florida is trying to make Vero Beach a much more viable option.

“But we are not intent on leaving Vero Beach. We just have to compare the alternatives.”

The Dodgers have called Vero Beach home each spring since 1948 and are the only major league club that owns its spring training facility, operating it year-round and absorbing the resultant costs. They also are the only West Coast club operating in Florida and have openly considered moving west since Fox took over the Dodgers.

If Las Vegas and the Dodgers are willing to discuss the possibility of setting up shop in southern Nevada for six weeks each spring, however, Logan and Graziano agree that it is too early to think about specific details, such as potential partner teams and packages. At Monday’s meeting, the Dodgers intend to look at the Las Vegas blueprints from before and see how they might fit into them.

Logan hatched a plan in 1994 that would have had four teams--reportedly the Astros, Rangers, Cincinnati Reds and Kansas City Royals--move their spring operations from Florida to Henderson by 1999.

The teams were to share a 220-acre, 24-field complex with four clubhouses and a 5,000-seat stadium while playing spring training games in Arizona’s Cactus League, competing against each other in southern Nevada and crossing state lines for other exhibition games.

The project involved the city of Henderson, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the minor league Stars.

Henderson bought 135 acres of land for $8.24 million and the LVCVA put away $50 million in bonds to finance the construction of the facility. The Stars would have maintained day-to-day operations.

But the teams and the southern Nevada conglomerate could not agree on what would happen next.

The teams each wanted about $1-million guarantees and the facility built before signing a deal. The three-headed Nevada effort wanted the teams to sign on before construction. Nobody blinked.

Plus, Logan wanted improvements on 10,000-seat Cashman Field, the Stars’ stadium in downtown Las Vegas that also would have hosted spring training games. Luxury boxes and other amenities would have made spring training a profitable venture for the Stars, he said.

But such upgrades would have gone over the $50-million cap by about $9 million.

In September 1997, the 12-member LVCVA board voted down the idea, 9-3, as a poor investment of tourism dollars, saying the project’s bill of nearly $60 million was too much to pay for what was seen as an insignificant boost to tourism at that time of year.

So why has the LVCVA put out a rambling news release claiming it is now interested in such a project?

“The whole market has changed,” said Rob Dondero of R&R; Events, which handles advertising and marketing for the LVCVA. “There are more rooms, new properties and the town is diversifying like never before.”

Indeed, with Las Vegas changing its image from Sin City to Disneyland for Adults, Mayor Oscar Goodman is trying to lure franchises from both the NBA and NHL with a proposal of building a state-of-the-art arena downtown. He already has talked with NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Dondero also said that the LVCVA’s board has a different, friendlier makeup than before.

“We’d like for major league baseball to say, ‘Build it and here’s our guarantee that we’ll come,’ ” Dondero said. “So hopefully, someone throws out that first ball and from there we can get busy.”

Logan said that the mere mention of the Dodgers as possible tenants breathes new life into the project.

“Vegas is a suburb of L.A., basically,” he said. “Any baseball is better than not having it. Any team is better than none. But the reality is that those markets that were left [the Astros, Rangers, Reds and Royals] weren’t real [appealing]. They just didn’t have that snap.

“You need something to tie it together. Honestly, the Dodgers being in the mix, if there really is an opportunity, if they are in fact interested in relocating spring training and we have a chance of doing it, then that makes it all worth doing.”

Terry Zerkle, Henderson’s assistant city manager, said his town still owns the unused land, which sits between Interstate 515 and Boulder Highway near Sam Boyd Stadium and has views of majestic Sunrise Mountain to the north and the kitschy Sunset Station Hotel and Casino to the south.

“It’s a perfect location, since the land is adjacent to the freeway,” said Zerkle, who also was the city manager of Tempe, Ariz., when the Angels moved their spring training operations from Palm Springs. “It just makes sense for Dodger fans to be able to take part in the spring training experience.”

But just how thrilled would the Dodgers and major league baseball be with subjecting its players--especially its minor leaguers--to so much free time in a city of excess?

“It’s a much different place now. It’s more of a family destination,” Graziano said. “But if it did happen, we would have to be sensitive to those issues. A spring training facility would have to stand on its own, not linked to any gaming aspect.”

Sandy Alderson, major league baseball’s executive vice president for baseball operations, said that gambling would be a consideration.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that would keep it from happening,” he said. “With any proposed extensive spring training in Las Vegas, it is, in fact, an issue that we would have to look at.”

The Oakland Athletics, in Alderson’s days as general manager, played six regular-season games at Las Vegas’ Cashman Field in 1996 while the Oakland Coliseum underwent renovations.

And Logan pointed out that besides the Stars having called Las Vegas home since 1983, they have hosted the successful “Big League Weekend,” a series of exhibition games between Cactus League clubs the weekend before opening day.

“If you want to get in trouble, you’re going to get in trouble,” Logan said. “It’s probably harder here because [gambling] is regulated.”

The Stars’ affiliation with the Padres ends after this season. And although it’s pure speculation, it does seem that a deal with the Dodgers could be worked out much easier if the Dodgers took on the Stars as an affiliate. Especially since the Dodgers’ current triple-A affiliate, the Albuquerque Dukes, recently was purchased by a group from Portland, Ore.

It makes sense, at least for Southern California Dodger fans wishing to see their team in the spring. They now must plan a full vacation before heading cross-country to Florida. Las Vegas, meanwhile, is a four- or five-hour drive, or an hour’s flight from L.A.

“There are so many different factors,” Graziano said. “If we were out here, then it would be easier for our L.A.-based fans to come out. But it would also eliminate our East Coast presence. There are a lot of factors.

“There’s the issue of how many other teams would be involved and who those teams would be.”

According to Derrick Hall, the Dodgers’ senior vice president for communications, the Dodgers already have had informal talks with the Rangers about being partners in a Las Vegas venture. The Rangers train in Port Charlotte, Fla., and their lease expires after spring training next year.

Said Logan, “We don’t even know if the construction costs are the same. The real time for discussion is once the dust settles. There’s just no time between now and the beginning of the season to get anything substantial done.”

But Monday’s meeting in the gaming capital should shed some light.

“It always comes up, especially since we did that study,” Logan said. “But we haven’t done anything. It would be relatively easy to do, since we have all the plans in order, but we haven’t updated the information in three years.”

And the Dodgers?

“I hope the interest is legitimate,” Logan said. “We’re going to look into it certainly, when the time is right.”

That time may be Monday.