LAS VEGAS (AP) — Athletics owner John Fisher and his family will invest $1 billion into the construction of a stadium in Las Vegas and U.S. Bank and Goldman Sachs will offer a $300 million loan, club executive Sandy Dean said Thursday.
Dean made his remarks to a special meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board.
Dean said four letters will be presented at the Dec. 5 authority meeting asserting construction details and financing will be in place. Final approvals are expected to be made at that meeting to allow construction of the $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat domed ballpark with a capacity for up to 33,000 fans.
“We feel like we're on the right path and it will become clearer in the months ahead,” Dean told the board.
Construction is expected to begin in the spring with a targeted opening before the 2028 season. As much as $380 million in public funding will go into building the stadium, which will be on the Las Vegas Strip on the site of where the recently demolished Tropicana stood.
Dean said Fisher is still pursuing partners in the Las Vegas area who can purchase stakes in the franchise, which in turn goes toward paying for the stadium.
“We've been consistent in saying it would be good coming to Las Vegas to have outside partners from Las Vegas,” Dean said after the meeting. “That process has just begun. The ability to finance the stadium is independent of that.”
As for the financing, the four letters that will be presented at the December meeting will better address that.
The first is the loan commitment from U.S. Bank and Goldman Sachs. Dean said it probably would be a five-year term “that would be replaced by a permanent loan once construction is done.”
Another letter, Dean said, asserts the Fisher and his family have the ability to meet their financial commitment. Dean said the third letter from U.S. Bank will show that through a review of the owner's finances that it “concludes the Fisher family has more than sufficient resources to fund the equity investment that's required to build the stadium.”
The fourth laid out the commitments to Athletics StadCo LLC, an entity created to handle the private capital investment.
Also, the draft lease agreement and deed were presented to the board.
“We feel like these documents are on track for the schedule that we have been talking about for a number of months,” said Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “We feel like there's a real possibility we'll be able to reach a conclusion on all of them on Dec. 5.”
Dean said an updated construction budget will be presented at that day's meeting, and he acknowledged the final cost likely will rise “by something.”
Hill said documents would be made public several days before the December meeting and he didn't anticipate any issues regarding approval.
“There are a couple of places where we need to get the language right, but we've had enough of a conversation to understand that everybody understands what the outcome is intended to be," Hill said.
He cited ensuring details regarding parking as an example of getting all the proper wording in place.
The A's will play at least the next three seasons in West Sacramento, California. The club announced it will play 60 of its 81 home games next season at night, tying the 1968 A's for the most in their history. That includes 25 of 28 games at night in June and July when temperatures are often 100 degrees (37.8 Celsius) or hotter.
Their first game in Sacramento is March 31 against the Chicago Cubs.
The A's played their last of 57 seasons in Oakland, California.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB
FILE - Sutter Health Park, home of the Triple A team Sacramento River Cats, is shown in West Sacramento, Calif., April 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel said Sunday that the body of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found after he was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident.”
The UAE's Interior Ministry later said authorities arrested three suspects involved in the killing of Zvi Kogan.
The statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Israel “will act with all means to seek justice with the criminals responsible for his death.” Israeli authorities did not say how they determined the killing of Kogan was a terror attack and offered no additional details.
Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
The agreement has held through more than a year of soaring regional tensions unleashed by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel. But Israel's devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the Hezbollah militant group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the the UAE.
Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also been threatening to retaliate against Israel after a wave of airstrikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack. Iran’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi denied Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s slaying.
The Emirati government did not respond to a request for comment. However, senior Emirati diplomat Anwer Gargash wrote on the social platform X in Arabic on Sunday that “the UAE will remain a home of safety, an oasis of stability, a society of tolerance and coexistence and a beacon of development, pride and advancement.”
Early on Sunday, the UAE’s state-run WAM news agency acknowledged Kogan’s disappearance but pointedly did not acknowledge he held Israeli citizenship, referring to him only as being Moldovan. The Emirati Interior Ministry described Kogan as being “missing and out of contact.”
“Specialized authorities immediately began search and investigation operations upon receiving the report,” the Interior Ministry said.
The ministry later said that three “perpetrators” had been arrested “in record time” without giving additional details.
Netanyahu told a regular Cabinet meeting later Sunday that he was “deeply shocked” by Kogan's disappearance and death. He said he appreciated the cooperation of the UAE in the investigation and that ties between the two countries would continue to be strengthened.
Israel's largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the killing and thanked Emirati authorities for "their swift action." He said he trusts they “will work tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Israel also again warned against all nonessential travel to the Emirates after Kogan's killing.
“There is concern that there is still a threat against Israelis and Jews in the area,” a government warning issued Sunday said.
Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City. It said he would be buried in Israel.
“The targeting of Rabbi Kogan was an attempt to destroy the sacred Jewish values that he represented: light, goodness and kindness,” the movement said. “No country, no community, no society can afford the loss of these sustaining values.”
The UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.
The Rimon Market, a kosher grocery store that Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was shut Sunday. As the wars have roiled the region, the store has been the target of online protests by supporters of the Palestinians. Mezuzahs on the front and back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press journalist stopped by on Sunday.
Kogan’s wife, Rivky, is a U.S. citizen who lived with him in the UAE. She is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
In a statement, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett called Kogan's killing “a horrific crime against all those who stand for peace, tolerance, and coexistence.”
“We condemn in the strongest terms the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the UAE and our prayers are with his family, the Chabad-Lubavitch community, the broader Jewish community, and all who are mourning his loss,” Savett said.
The UAE is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Local Jewish officials in the UAE declined to comment.
While the Israeli statement did not mention Iran, Iranian intelligence services have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE.
Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.
Iran is suspected of kidnapping and later killing British Iranian national Abbas Yazdi in Dubai in 2013, though Tehran has denied involvement. Iran also kidnapped Iranian German national Jamshid Sharmahd in 2020 from Dubai, taking him back to Tehran, where he was executed in October.
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
A man walks past Rimon Market, a Kosher grocery store managed by the late Rabbi Zvi Kogan, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)
