A’s rolling — will it have any impact on new stadium?
Team president said choice would be made by end of 2018, but ...
OAKLAND >> The Oakland A’s are surging on the field and eyeing the playoffs for the first time in five years — perfect timing for the team to announce where it will build its new ballpark.
As October baseball nears, however, the team is no closer to deciding whether that new stadium will rise at the site of the club’s current home, the city- and county-owned Coliseum, or at the Howard Terminal, owned by the Port of Oakland.
The team is pursuing stadium developments at both locations, but A’s President Dave Kaval said in a recent interview that while discussions with the port are moving along, Oakland officials have been slower to release information to the team about the Coliseum. Kaval has repeatedly said the team would choose between the two by the end of 2018. Now, he is using the word “optimistic” when talking about fulfilling the commitment.
The A’s had selected a site near Laney College as their desired stadium last year, but the Peralta College district’s board of trustees in December balked at the idea under pressure from neighbors. Out of luck, the team this past spring entered agreements with the port and the city to evaluate the Coliseum and the waterfront Howard Terminal site near Jack London Square.
But there’s been scant progress with the city over the Coliseum since the parties signed an exclusive negotiating agreement in May, Kaval said. Earlier this year, he offered to purchase the 120-plus acres there for $136 million, which could cover the remaining debt stemming from renovations at the stadium
and Oracle Arena in the 1990s, but the city hasn’t told him what price they are seeking.
“Without it, it’s impossible” to move forward, the team president said. “If you are going to buy two cars you have to know how much they cost before you choose.”
Over more than a decade, the A’s have looked to build everywhere from the Coliseum to Fremont to San Jose under former owner Lew Wolff. Dealing with more than one entity — the city, the county and the joint powers authority — proved difficult for previous development proposals at the Coliseum for the Raiders and the A’s. This time, the county wants to sell its share of the land to the city, but Mayor Libby Schaaf, in a report last month, said the city did not have the money to purchase the county’s 50 percent stake, the latest possible setback.
Deputy City Administrator Betsy Lake, who is the lead city negotiator on the stadium talks, was not available Friday for comment. City spokeswoman Karen Boyd on Thursday said officials would not discuss negotiations, calling them confidential.
Further delay in gathering information from the city could push past the team’s self-imposed 2018 calendar deadline.
“I am optimistic that we are going to get an economic deal by the end of the year,” Kaval said. “But we need to work on a quicker pace.”
The state Legislature also passed a bill to keep the A’s on track to open at Howard Terminal in 2023, if it is the selected location. AB 734 requires that any environmental or other complaints about the waterfront site be resolved
within 270 days. Because of Howard Terminal’s location near the estuary, railroad tracks and industry, an environmental review of that site is a greater undertaking than the Coliseum, where a review is already completed.
Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who has been critical of the City Administrator’s Office, expressed concern over a slowdown in working with the team.
“The administration is overall having huge problems of hiring delays and turnover of major positions without any advance planning to transfer responsibilities when key people leave,” Kaplan said. In the past year, the office lost longtime administrator Claudia Cappio, who led negotiations with the Oakland Raiders and A’s, and Assistant City Administrator Christine Daniel. The Raiders are leaving the city for Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Danish architecture firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group is moving forward on designs for both locations, said Kaval, who had planned to meet with the architects in New York this past week. BIG has never designed a baseball stadium but is known for innovative developments around water. Kaval envisions the Coliseum design to incorporate more connectivity with Damon Slough and San Leandro Bay, which sits across Interstate 880.
Former A’s executive Andy Dolich said delaying a stadium announcement until next year would miss an opportunity to build on the A’s on-field momentum. With the best record in baseball since June 16, the team is defying preseason predictions by making a run at the playoffs.
“This has been an incredible season,” Dolich said. “How do you not take advantage of that? That would be like taking a spike and slamming it into a kid’s balloon with a sledgehammer.”