Oakland Raiders Las Vegas NFL Stadium Traffic Study Reveals New Architect, Same $1 Billion Cost

On Thursday, Clark County, Nevada officials revealed the completion of a new traffic study for the planned Oakland Raiders Las Vegas NFL Stadium. But when the Las Vegas mainstream print media published the news, it deliberately left out the 15-page executive summary of the study issued by the consultant Kimley Horn and Associates. Moreover, the document was not included on the Las Vegas Stadium Authority website.

But a little internet research by this blogger dug it up, and so I placed it on my Scribd account here. And embedded below.

What’s notable about the study, aside from its ratification of the 2016 Nevada Department of Transportation Las Vegas NFL Stadium Traffic Study (here below at bottom), and that only 14.7 percent of the required 16,250 spaces will be on the stadium site (leaving 13,850 parking spaces not accounted for right now) is the quiet mention of the architecture firm HNTB, the same organization that produced the design of the refurbished Oakland Coliseum Stadium for the return of the Raiders to Oakland from Los Angeles.

Before I continue, it’s worth reviewing the May 18th Meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority because the parking problem was first revealed there:

A Side Story On The Oakland Coliseum And Drawings

I know about HNTB Architects all too well, and because a man named Monir Hablu was one of the HNTB Architects who worked on the Oakland Coliseum for the return of the Raiders to Oakland from L.A. back in 1994 (the other firm working with HNTB was Ellerbe Becket, which is now called AECOM). And I know that because I needed to recover the drawings for the Oakland Coliseum and for my Super Bowl: Oakland Bid Plan in 1999 – and he had them.

Between 1999 and 2001, I started from scratch and ran the Oakland-Alameda County Sports Commission and the Super Bowl XXXIX Bidding Committee – I did this as a special consultant to the City of Oakland under then-Mayor Jerry Brown, and after having served as Economic Advisor to Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris. Oakland was trying to get the Super Bowl that San Francisco lost because the 49ers made a mistake on the construction cost of the planned new stadium that was to be built for the 2003 Super Bowl.

A game was being played against me by Sally Roach, who was the Manager of The Oakland Coliseum on behalf of SMG at the time. At my first presentation of my plan for Super Bowl Oakland, on Monday, April 11th, 1999 at 2 PM in the office of then-Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb, I brought a man named Steve McFadden in as my initial stadium advisor (I would later hire Anderson Consulting Team). Mr. McFadden was Vice President of the former Oakland Coliseum staff and the resident architect; SMG replaced that staff after the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda elected to privatize the operation of the sports facility.

Anyway, Ms. Roach and Deena McClain had a side conversation in that meeting that I overheard: Roach and McClain then told then-Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb that McFadden “stole the Coliseum drawings”, which was completely nuts, because he told me he didn’t have them and was visibly upset that they were blaming him for drawings they claimed were missing.

I called Robert Bobb and told him I didn’t believe Sally for one minute and that I would find the drawings. I had good reason for this because Ms. Roach was proving to be hard to work with for me in general. At that same meeting, she claimed that my estimate of a budget of $3 million to $5 million for a Super Bowl Host Committee was wrong. (Remember, that was 1999; now in 2017 it’s about $30 million to $50 million.).

So she gets on the conference call with, of all people, her boss Glen Mon from SMG’s Pittsburgh headquarters, and says “Glen, this estimate by Zennie can’t be right, can it?” To which Glen, on the speaker phone, cleared his voice and said “Well, actually, Zennie is right.” Sally turned three shades of red. And that was in a large meeting attended by, among others, my friends Michael Silver and Monte Poole, then of Sports Illustrated and the Oakland Tribune, respectively.

So, Sally was already on my watch list of people not to trust. What her motives were, I don’t know to this day, and I hope she’s in a good place. But I pressed on.

I made calls to any person I could think of. Remember, this was when the Internet was at its comparative infancy, and so phone numbers and emails and documents were not a click away. I had to read the Yellow Pages, call anyone that may have worked on the Oakland Coliseum, and then call someone else.

Finally, I received a call from Mr. Hablu, who lived in Sonoma, County. The message he left made me fly in the air “Hi Zennie. I’m Monir Hablu, and I understand you are working on the Super Bowl for Oakland and are looking for the Coliseum drawings – well, I have them for you.” I immediately called Robert Bobb and left a message with him explaining the news. I was on Cloud 9. I was right.

Then, about four hours later that same day, Mr. Hablu called back and said “I can’t send you the drawings (which were on a disk) because Sally Roach says you have to go through her to get them.”

I went from being on Cloud 9 to royally pissed off in one second.

I called Mr. Bobb (as I call him to this day) and the first words out of my mouth went like this: “YOU NEED TO FIRE SALLY ROACH, ASAP! She’s blocking me from getting the drawings I need for the Super Bowl Bid!

So, Mr. Bobb convined another meeting, and put me offically in charge of the Oakland Super Bowl Bid. In 2000, Oakland was named one of three finalist NFL cities competing for the 2005 Super Bowl: Miami and Jacksonville were the other two. We lost to Jacksonville, and after a three ballot battle held November 1st at the 2000 Fall NFL Owners Meeting at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.

Back To The Present Story About HNTB Architects, MANICA, and The Traffic Study

In an effort to learn more about the new architect for the Las Vegas NFL Stadium, I copy-pasted “HNTB Architects” with “Las Vegas”, and “Raiders” and found mention in the Sports Business Daily that a “source” told reporter Don Muret that HNTB Architects was teaming up with MANICA Architecture to make the design and construction drawings for the stadium – and we now find the Kimley Horn and Associates study confirms the Sports Business Daily report.

It was HNTB that hired Kimley Horn and Associates to produce the study, not MANICA.

Why?

Well, MANICA Architecture is more of a design, and not an engineering, architecture firm, whereas HNTB Architects is more of an engineering architecture firm. HNTB is the company that makes MANICA’s designs buildable. But the fact that HNTB’s being brought in now, rather than earlier in the process, indicates that the entire schedule toward the eventual completion of the planned home for the Oakland Raiders in Las Vegas may be behind schedule. If one aspect of MANICA’s plans has to be reformed for some reason because of construction complications, that adds time, and money, to the project. But that news was discovered because of the mention of HNTB Architects in the traffic study.

Which leads us back to the executive summary by Kimley Horn and Associates.

What’s notable about the executive summary is that the off-site traffic handling improvements called for basically echo those identified in the controversial October 10th 2016 Las Vegas NFL Stadium Traffic Improvements Study by the Nevada Department of Transportation – the same one that pegged the total off-site improvements at $900 million. All of that, and yet, Clark County officials say they can’t peg a cost to the Kimley Horn and Associates study? Yeah. Right.

The other notable news is this, from the study: “The stadium site provides for approximately 2,400 on-site parking spaces directly adjacent to the stadium facilities. Clark County Parking Code requires 16,250 spaces for the proposed stadium size (65,000 attendees x 0.25 spaces per attendee). The location of parking directly effects vehicle arrival and departure patterns, trip distribution, and traffic assignment. At the time this preliminary entitlement traffic study was prepared, no specific off-site parking areas have been finalized for the Stadium project. Based on the findings of this study, a Stadium off-site parking plan is recommended to be finalized with parking options provided throughout the Las Vegas Valley.”

That basically means the new off-site parking requirements will cause new traffic from bus and shuttle operation taking fans to the stadium and then back to the parking lots or structures, “throughout the Las Vegas Valley.”

From the Kimley Horn and Associates study, we can determine two things: first, the list of upgrades and installations required for traffic generated by the NFL stadium according to the Kimley Horn and Associates study, matches that identfied by the NDOT study, and so we’re back to the fact that we’re looking a traffic mitigation cost of almost $1 billion.

Second, the Las Vegas Valley is expected to shoulder the burden of handling parking needs for the stadium, on top of the new traffic demand that is far beyond the current capability of the streets and roads to handle.

No wonder that executive summary was so hard to find.

Stay tuned.

Kimley Horn and Associates Las Vegas NFL Stadium Traffic Study Executive Summary:

Oakland Raiders Las Vegas NFL Stadium Traffic Study Executive Summary by Zennie Abraham on Scribd

NDOT Report:

Nevada Department Of Transportation NDOT Las Vegas NFL Stadium Traffic Assessment Study by Zennie Abraham on Scribd