In Oakland A’s Las Vegas Ballpark News Update Can Stadium 51 Architect Ben Garcia, BIG, And HNTB’s Crazy Design Rival Las Vegas Sphere, Let Alone Beat Gensler?
Las Vegas (Special to ZennieReport.com) – In a matter of days, we will know what the new ballpark for the Oakland A’s in Las Vegas will really look like. But at this point, this vlogger can report that one of the teams includes Ben Garcia, who’s early “Stadium 51” Ballpark Design captured the imagination of many A’s fans, and national sports media, and observers.
Ben Garcia, who’s pathbreaking Stadium 51” Ballpark design work (website: https://ben-garcia.com/stadium-51) was featured at Zennie62Media Inc.’s Zennie62 YouTube Channel and Oakland News Now Blog, now works for HNTB (the same firm that designed the East Side of The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Stadium).
In turn, HNTB is the architect of record in the team that includes BIG aka Bjarke Ingels Group and is up against Gensler, the firm Ben Garcia previously worked for. A well-placed source told Zennie62Media, Inc. that the BIG, HNTB, Garcia design is “crazy”, and the source hasn’t “seen a ballpark stadium quite like this.”
So, let’s speculate just what the design might look like, now that we know Stadium 51 creator Ben Garcia’s involved.
Ben Garcia’s Stadium 51 Design Was First To Provide A Vision Of An A’s Ballpark In Las Vegas
Young Los Angeles Architect Ben Garcia’s concept was unofficially introduced via a tweet of his website back in late November of 2021. But shockingly, no media outlet or individual on Twitter bothered to tell the name of the designer of the website, and that included ESPN, which seemed to think it was some kind of joke.
This vlogger saw it differently, believing that it could be the right design for the A’s ballpark objectives in Las Vegas, and concerned about someone stealing the unidentified design and claiming it as their own, contacted the owner of the Stadium 51 website, architect Ben Garcia, then invited him on the Zennie62 YouTube Livestream Show for a live interview. That was December 17th, 2021, here:
By the time Ben Garcia and I talked, he developed not one, but two designs for the Las Vegas Strip. The first one Ben called ‘Vegas Death Star” and with the words “You can’t have a Death Star without the Starfighter, referring to the X-wing spacecraft in Star Wars, and the fact that Oakland / Las Vegas Raiders Owner (and owner of the back-to-back WNBA Champion Las Vegas Aces) Mark Davis called Raiders home venue Allegiant Stadium “The Death Star”.
In our talk, Ben said of the failure of ESPN mention him as the designer, “In in my opinion I just saw my image out there. I mean yeah it was.. I was a little bit bummed out that, you know, I wasn’t tagged in it. But nonetheless, you know, it’s just cool that you know it was being shared.”
Ben created the design because he was laid off from work due to the Pandemic and has time to play around with architectural concepts. Garcia decided to take what he learned from his previous work and apply it to baseball stadiums. In our talk about his design, Ben said “I’d, I felt like, you know, it had to be something ‘out there ‘. If you’re going to go crazy, why not do it in Vegas, right? It just fits the vibe.”
The Stadium 51 (think “Area 51”) creation is a retractable-roof affair designed to fit on a 10-acre plot of land, and that’s racy – a kind of shell that looks part like an armadillo, and the other part like a sports convertible, and the third part, a ballpark. But the whole point is that it’s “Las Vegas” and it says “Here, I am, come in and visit and have fun.”
But, to be sure, the Stadium 51 website didn’t have just one design rendering, but a dizzying array of configurations, testing variations on the design theme. It even has a place where Ben overlayed it on the Tropicana Hotel Site, and it fit, with about the same amount of room to spare that the Tropicana owners actually needed.
Ben’s second Las Vegas Ballpark design was even wilder, and has a replica of a baseball which formed the top, or dome, of the ballpark. But it was not a completed design, and the Stadium 51 website has newer variations of the first Stadium 51 Design, including a version with 30,000 seats.
When Ben and I sat down to talk about Stadium 51 in late 2021, only then was it evident the A’s were planning a move from Oakland to Las Vegas; Ben had not been in contact with the Oakland A’s at that time. After our interview, all of that changed, and via a process of events that leads us to today.
But Who’s Ben Garcia?
Based in L.A., Ben Garcia is the 2019 graduate of Woodbury University with a B.A. in Architecture, according to his Stadium 51 website, which reads: “He is a big baseball fan, and his conversations on his designs are peppered with views that show he has a gift for forming a building around the unique patterns of play, rules, and conventions of the sport. He’s able to take that basic approach, and fuse it with a take that mixes pop-culture with technical practicality.”
So What To Expect From The Design Team? Something That Sets “The Las Vegas Sphere Test”
So, what kind of “crazy” design will the HNTB / Garcia / BIG / Team come up with. Well, how ever it looks, one thing’s for certain, it’s certain to pass “The Las Vegas Sphere Test”. What is that?
“The Las Vegas Sphere Test” says can a new design for sports and entertainment be so out of this world that it captures the attention of the world, and raises the visibility of its owners? “The Las Vegas Sphere Test” refers to the $2.3 billion giant Las Vegas Sphere, where it’s LED exterior forms some of the most incredible images ever seen in human history. The exterior itself has become a tourist attraction, as much as people want to see the U2 or Postcards From Earth shows inside it.
The other question is what will Gensler come up with? And the final question is will the Oakland A’s select a design that does for ballparks what Las Vegas Sphere does for entertainment venues?
We shall find out soon.