Bay Area investors still working to keep Raiders in Oakland
SAN FRANCISCO — Oakland civic leaders and deeppocketed investors fighting to keep the Raiders from moving insist they are still in the game despite team owner Mark Davis formally applying to the NFL to relocate to Las Vegas.
A local investment group that includes Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott said Thursday they continue to negotiate with government officials, the team and the NFL to build a $1.25 billion, 55,000-seat stadium in Oakland.
“We are in this game and we are playing to win,” Lott’s group said in a statement. The statement said the Raiders’ filing Thursday was expected and done to “keep its options open in Las Vegas.”
The Raiders have been seeking to replace their dilapidated home for years. The Coliseum has suffered from sewage backups and other infrastructure problems. It’s also the only remaining NFL stadium to also be home to a baseball team — the Athletics — and lacks many of the modern, money-making features of new stadiums.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has been negotiating with Davis and investors to find a new home for the team in the city, but has said public financing is not an option.
Schaaf didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday. The city and Alameda County still owe a combined $100 million for upgrades made to the stadium in 1995 to lure the Raiders back to Oakland after the team spent the 14 previous years playing in Los Angeles. The city and county were left holding the bag after personal seat licenses failed to cover the cost of the $220 million renovation that added more than 10,000 seats and luxury boxes.
The city is willing to give the team 60 acres of land on the Coliseum site to build a new stadium.
The local investors are competing with a Las Vegas plan that calls for $750 million in hotel room tax revenue, $650 million from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson’s company and $500 million from the Raiders and the NFL.
League owners are expected to vote on the proposed move in March.
Local boosters argue that Oakland offers a better football venue than Las Vegas, a transient tourist town with no professional football history. They say the San Francisco Bay Area’s television market dwarves the Las Vegas region’s and that it will cost the team $500 million to relocate.
“I think we continue to offer a far superior deal,” said Scott Haggerty, president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Haggerty is also on the board that manages the Coliseum.