(Matthew Kleiner – Temple University Rome) – Last week, reporters from the Las Vegas Review–Journal shared updates from their tour of the construction site at Las Vegas Stadium. The state-of-the-art domed arena is slated to open in 2020, in time for the Raiders franchise to make the move from Oakland to Las Vegas before the NFL season kicks off.

A 400-ton steel truss was misplaced by a third of a centimeter earlier this month and had to be taken down, delaying progress on the roof canopy by several weeks. At the same time, the building crew is ahead of schedule on the field tray, an innovative technology that will allow the stadium’s natural grass field to grow outside in the sun, before sliding back indoors for games. Workers are currently installing the 13 rails on which the tray, complete with irrigation and drainage systems, can travel at about three meters per minute for a round-trip journey of three hours.

The Raiders will be just the second major sports team to call Sin City home, after the NHL’s Golden Knights arrived in 2017. Their $1.8 billion stadium, just across the road from the famous Mandalay Bay resort, will also host the University of Nevada Rebels football team, as well as big-ticket concerts and other events. Directors believe that the arena’s quartet of locker rooms (one each for the Raiders, the Rebels, and their opponents), together with the removable field tray, would make Las Vegas Stadium an ideal location for an edition of the NCAA Final Four college basketball tournament.