The A's Third Truss Arch Is Up — the Tallest One Yet, and the Vegas Ballpark Finally Looks Like a Stadium

LAS VEGAS — Drive past the old Tropicana site right now and the thing that hits you isn't the cranes anymore — it's the roof. The Athletics announced Thursday that crews have finished installing the third and tallest steel truss arch at the future Las Vegas ballpark, checking off what the Athletics themselves called "another major milestone" in the team's Oct. 8 post on X. This is the one that sets the building's highest point: the steel skeleton of the stadium's signature pennant-shaped roof is now fully formed over what used to be one of the Strip's most famous properties.

The third truss didn't go up all at once. Construction watchers tracked the lift piece by piece over the past month — the first truss went in back in the summer, the second followed, and the third began rising in September with the final center pieces lifted into place this week, completing the arch. One widely followed construction tracker has reported that the third truss establishes the ballpark's highest point at roughly 290 feet, which means the stadium's roofline is now the defining feature of that stretch of the Strip skyline.

Here's the project in one breath: roughly $2 billion, about 33,000 seats, nine acres between Tropicana Avenue and Reno Avenue, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group — the Copenhagen-founded architecture firm behind some of the world's most photographed buildings — in partnership with HNTB. The roof is five overlapping shell structures meant to look like baseball pennants unfurled over the field. And in a city where a building is also a billboard, the exterior is designed to integrate with the Strip rather than stand apart from it — metal cladding that reflects daylight and the city's nighttime lighting, plus a huge cable-net glass wall with panoramic views of the skyline and the surrounding resorts.

The update that matters most to the skeptics — and there are still plenty in this town — is the boring one: the project is on schedule for a 2028 opening. ClutchPoints reported that construction for the $2 billion project remains on track while the Athletics continue playing their home games at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento until the move is complete. That temp-home arrangement runs through the 2027 season, which means this truss milestone lands right in the middle of the countdown: about a year and a half of steel, glass, and fit-out between now and first pitch in Las Vegas.

The funding story behind all that steel is worth remembering, because it's the reason the building exists here at all. In 2023, Nevada approved a public funding package capped at $380 million through Senate Bill 1, clearing the final path for the relocation after the franchise spent years failing to land a replacement for the aging Oakland Coliseum. The rest is private money. However anyone felt about the deal at the time, the math now is concrete: the state's share is capped, the cranes are up, and the tallest truss is the tallest thing on the site.

And while the ironworkers were finishing the arch, the business office was busy too. Ballpark Digest reported that Circa — Derek Stevens' downtown property, home to the city's largest sportsbook — has been named one of 10 to 12 ballpark founding partners. According to Ballpark Digest, the sponsorship deems Circa the "Official Resort and Sportsbook of the Las Vegas Athletics" — a delicious little detail given that the ballpark itself will be physically connected to a Bally's hotel and casino. Stevens is a former owner of the Las Vegas 51s, the city's old Triple-A club, so this is a full-circle Vegas baseball story: the guy who used to own minor-league ball in this town now has his name on the big-league building.

The Circa deal comes with real estate attached: 22 seats in the Circa Dugout Club directly next to a dugout, plus a 28-person entertainment area in the outfield. It's part of a premium strategy that's clearly working. The team also announced The Athletic Club, a high-end all-inclusive steakhouse, supper club, and lounge behind home plate with a private entrance and a speakeasy theme — 290 seats, open only to top-tier season-ticket holders and their guests. Those season tickets are already sold out for the 2028 ballpark debut, and Athletics president Marc Badain put the demand in perspective: "What stands out most about the response to the Athletic Club is not just that it sold out, but also who is buying it. Three out of every four buyers are from Southern Nevada, and nearly 70% are individuals rather than businesses," Badain said. The Diamond Club — a slightly less exclusive all-inclusive space on the club level — is reportedly close to selling out too.

The design details keep coming, and they read like a building that knows exactly what city it's in. Designers modeled portions of the concept after classic parks like Fenway and Wrigley rather than another cookie-cutter retro bowl. Instead of blasting cold air from the ceiling the old-fashioned way, the stadium will distribute cooling closer to the seating areas — a meaningful detail for a domed park that has to keep 33,000 people comfortable in August. And the team is positioning it as a year-round entertainment destination, not just a baseball venue — the same playbook that turned the surrounding Bally's development into a multi-billion-dollar question mark of its own, with casino towers rising on a separate, later timeline around the ballpark.

What's next is the long middle of the project: steel topping out is slated for 2027, with the certificate of occupancy targeted for early 2028. If that holds — and nothing in this week's milestone suggests otherwise — the roof that's taking shape over the old Trop footprint is the last thing standing between Las Vegas and its first Major League Baseball opening day. The Allegiant Stadium era taught this city what a new building does to a sports town; the A's are betting the ballpark does it again, this time with pennants for a roof.