The first steel roof truss was installed early Monday at the Athletics’ Las Vegas ballpark, marking a major milestone on the $2 billion project.
The massive truss, which weighs about 200 tons, was attached to a buttress on the east side of the stadium. Other pieces of truss are set to be attached to a buttress on the opposite side of the stadium to create a single span arching over the ballpark’s playing field.
The June 1 milestone has been on the construction calendar for months now and hitting mark on the specific day it was scheduled took a large undertaking, A’s President Marc Badain said.
“The fact that it went off this morning on schedule without a hitch, the plan that’s been put in place, the team of people that have been working on it for months, the thousands of hours of coordination to get to that moment and then to watch the workforce actually complete it this morning, the coordination was so impressive,” Badain told the Review-Journal Monday.
There are six buttresses around the perimeter of the ballpark providing anchors for the stadium’s roof structure.
The pieces won’t be fully extended from buttress to buttress immediately. The trusses will be built in steps, supported by several shoring towers that have been erected inside the stadium until they are fully installed. The trusses vary in size, mainly weighing between 150 and 200 tons, with the heaviest weighing in at 500 tons.
Once the roof structure is complete, the shoring towers will be removed.
The trusses are built on the ground and hoisted into place by cranes positioned inside and outside the ballpark, and workers are suspended in the air to install trusses that aren’t directly attached to a buttress. The crane inside the stadium can lift up to 1,200 tons, and the two cranes outside the ballpark can lift up to 600 tons.
The height of the stadium will become more noticeable as the truss installation process continues, topping out at about 290 feet over the playing field. The stadium will be about the same height as the MGM Grand across Tropicana Avenue.
Truss installations to other buttresses, which work similar to Monday’s, will take place over the next four to five months, Badain said.
Outside of the roof truss progress, crews have continued steelwork that began on March 4 to form the seating areas, including the third and fourth levels of the ballpark. The steelwork has progressed around more than half of the spaces where seating and suites will be located.
A second truss was later attached to the initial truss on Monday as several other construction tasks were also occurring on the 9-acre site.
“We were up watching the connectivity of the two trusses and at the same time… there’s also 450 other craft workers working on the rest of the project, as well,” Badain said. “If you look around, they’re still pouring concrete. They’re still finishing some of the work on the fourth deck, and so there’s just so much work going on all at the same time while this incredible engineering feat is going on. It was a really impressive day and it was the culmination of probably four to five months worth of planning just to get to that.”
The A’s ballpark remains on budget and on time for a scheduled Feb. 29, 2028 completion.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
