A’s, Oakland mayor agree to exclusive negotiating agreement

OAKLAND — Mayor Libby Schaaf is asking local leaders to approve an agreement to give the Oakland A’s exclusive rights to negotiate stadium deals at the Coliseum and Howard Terminal, seemingly the team’s last site options in town.

Schaaf said Wednesday she supports agreements to at least temporarily give the team first dibs to pitch stadium proposals at either site, while keeping the A’s in the city they’ve called home for 50 years.

“It doubles our chances of getting a great ballpark that keeps the A’s ‘rooted in Oakland’ while still being responsible to our taxpayers,” the mayor said.

Schaaf made the announcement alongside team President Dave Kaval while hoisting an A’s flag above Oakland City Hall, a day ahead of the team’s home opener. It signaled the mayor and Kaval are on the same page, a departure from last year when Kaval announced the team wanted to build near Laney College and the two held separate news conferences.

On Sunday, Kaval sent Schaaf a letter with a proposal to purchase the city and county-owned Coliseum land for $135 million, which would cover the debt from renovations in the 1990s at the stadium and Oracle Arena.

Kaval wants to secure the 120-acre East Oakland property while analyzing Howard Terminal. To build on the estuary west of Jack London Square, the A’s need to study environmental issues and pedestrian access across railroad tracks.

“It’s parallel paths,” Kaval said inside City Hall on Wednesday. “What you’ve seen here, especially with the letter and the offer, is the community coming together with the A’s to solve this ballpark development question that’s been going on too long. I think everyone recognizes that, and it’s good to see the traction we are getting.”

The “exclusive negotiating agreement” for the Coliseum needs Oakland City Council approval; Port of Oakland commissioners must sign off on the Howard Terminal agreement. Schaaf is urging each board to do so, and is requesting Alameda County to join as a co-signer.

Exclusive negotiating agreements are nothing new for Oakland. They have been used at the former Oakland Army Base and in previous attempts to build stadiums. For example, one such deal occurred in 2015 during developer Floyd Kephart’s failed “Coliseum City” plan to buy 90 acres of the Coliseum complex for $116 million and build a new stadium, homes, a shopping center, office buildings and a hotel.

NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and his investment group entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city and county in 2016 in a lastditch attempt to keep the Raiders from moving to Las Vegas, and set aside acres for a new baseball stadium as well. Schaaf initially resisted the agreement, because she did not want to dissuade other proposals, but eventually saw it as key to keeping the team.

“By definition they haven’t worked for stadiums because there are no new stadiums,” said Dan Lindheim, an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Policy. But the former Oakland city administrator who once negotiated stadium deals said the no-cost option will allow deeper negotiations. “It gives the holder of the ENA time to try and cut a deal. Worse comes to worst, they walk away.”