Raiders advance toward Vegas
Paperwork filed to relocate team; NFL vote is next
The Oakland Raiders have made good on a threat that loomed over hometown fans for months, filing paperwork Thursday to move the National Football League team to Las Vegas.
Nevada politicians unleashed gloating tweets as soon as NFL officials confirmed the team’s application, but the news wasn’t well received in Oakland.
“Today we have moved one step closer to having an NFL team to call our own,” Clark County (Nev.) Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said in a statement following the league’s announcement Thursday. Sisolak, who served on an 11-member panel convened by Gov. Brian Sandoval to analyze the Las Vegas stadium project, said he is “optimistically looking forward” to the meeting in March of NFL team owners, who will decide whether to approve the Raiders move.
In San Leandro, Raiders fans at Ricky’s Sports Theatre and Grill — which is chock full of team memorabilia — oscillated between dejection and grudging acceptance.
“We’ve been living on the edge for quite a while now,” said the bar’s owner, Ricky Ricardo, deeming the application filing just one more twist in an ongoing saga.
Yet Ricardo also expressed hope that the Raiders might stay in town — whether by obligation, or because of a change of heart.
“If you give up, you give up,” he said. “But I don’t think Raiders fans want to give up.”
The news was downplayed by the would-be developers of a football stadium in Oakland.
“This action is not unexpected,” said Sam Singer, spokesman for the Fortress Investment Group and Oakland City Pro Football Group LLC, a development team led by former 49ers and Raiders safety Ronnie Lott.
“The team is doing what it needs to do to keep its options open in Las Vegas,” Singer said. Even so, he added, “the Fortress and Lott groups remain diligently focused on providing a turn-key solution to keep the Raiders in Oakland.”
He insisted that Oakland is the best home for the Raiders, weeks after the City Council and Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved a nonbinding term sheet for a $1.3 billion stadium to replace the aging Coliseum. The new stadium would sit on a major transit hub where BART connects with several bus lines abutting the 880 freeway.
“We believe it could become the best mixed-use sports complex in the U.S.,” Singer said.
The Raiders’ application will be reviewed in the coming weeks by the league’s stadium and finance committees, with team owners voting yea or nay in March. The Raiders will need a green light from 24 owners — three-fourths of the league — in order to move.
Questions about the team’s future have been building for a year, ever since Raiders owner Mark Davis began negotiations with Nevada casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to finance a $1.9 billion stadium — the most expensive in league history — off the Las Vegas strip.
In October, the Nevada Senate approved a plan to spend $750 million in public funds on the Las Vegas stadium project. The money would come from bonds that lawmakers planned to repay with revenue raised from a hotel tax. It’s now uncertain whether Adelson will be part of the final plan. Davis told the Las Vegas Stadium Authority that the team has secured enough financing from Goldman Sachs to move the project forward without Adelson.
Oakland City Council President Larry Reid said the proposed relocation, and the political support behind it, is a big slap in the face. He said Oakland’s current term sheet with Fortress and the Lott group — which has the city and county chipping in 105 acres of land at the Coliseum site, plus $200 million for infrastructure — meets all the criteria laid out by the league’s Executive Vice President Eric Grubman, who is in charge of team relocations.
“We certainly hope the league will do a side-by-side comparison between our deal and the one the Raiders have proposed with Goldman Sachs — or even the one they were trying to work out with Adelson,” Reid said. “We hope they’ll come to the conclusion that our deal is better, and treat us fairly.”
Mayor Libby Schaaf echoed those sentiments in a statement Thursday.
“I look forward to the league giving our team a chance to compete,” Schaaf said
Grubman, who traveled to Oakland in September to meet with business leaders, city officials and state legislators has previously expressed support for keeping the Raiders in Oakland. But in December he criticized the city and county’s plans with the Lott group.
Davis, for his part, has kept mum about Oakland’s new plans, and did not return phone calls Thursday. The team’s president, Marc Badain, declined to comment on the relocation filing. Chronicle staff writer Vic Tafur
contributed to this report.