After sharing it with a Minor League Baseball team last year, Las Vegas Lights FC are preparing to have Cashman Field to themselves and could make some facility changes.
Backed by owner Brett Lashbrook, the Lights began play in 2018 as an expansion club in Division II USL (now branded as USL Championship). The club plays its home matches at Cashman Field, a facility in downtown Las Vegas that originally opened in 1983 and is primarily designed as a Triple-A Pacific Coast League ballpark. The Lights shared Cashman Field last year with the PCL’s 51s–now known as the Aviators–but will soon have the facility to themselves with this spring’s opening of Las Vegas Ballpark in Downtown Summerlin.
Technically, the Aviators continue to lease Cashman Field as its primary tenant, a contingency in case they need to return for the early part of the 2019 season. That will prevent the Lights from making immediate drastic changes as the 2019 campaign gets underway, but the club has made a few tweaks to the facility and could take additional steps down the road to make Cashman Field more conducive to soccer. More from the Las Vegas Sun (story originally appeared in the Las Vegas Weekly):
The full conversion to soccer stadium won’t occur until the longtime Triple-A baseball tenants, now known as the Las Vegas Aviators, complete a move to their new stadium in Summerlin, but that’s imminent. The Aviators planned to be out by the start of the season but could push back the timetable if construction at the new park is delayed.
They’re still the primary tenants of Cashman for now, and that means the Lights’ corporate offices consist of some fold-out tables in a conference room under the stadium, with other signs of baseball—foul poles, for instance—still noticeably visible.
But the Lights have already taken over the locker rooms, painting them the team’s fluorescent colors of pink, yellow and light blue, and signs around the stadium have already been updated for the new tenants.
For more on how the Lights could reshape Cashman Field for professional soccer, see the interview our own Jon Bruning did with Lashbrook last April. The Lights will play their 2019 home opener on March 9, squaring off against expansion Austin Bold FC.
Images from April 27, 2018 home match by L.E. Baskow / Lights FC
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