County’s Coliseum sale to A’s halted

Judge issues temporary restraining order, sets hearing for Nov. 14

OAKLAND » A judge on Tuesday temporarily barred Alameda County from selling its ownership share of the Coliseum Complex to the Oakland A’s, in response to a city of Oakland lawsuit alleging the sale would be illegal.

Alameda Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch issued a temporary restraining order against the sale and set a hearing Nov. 14 for the city to argue why the county should not be allowed to sell its share to the A’s as negotiated over the past six months. At that hearing, Roesch can either keep the restraining order in place or scrap it.

Roesch also decided negotiations between the county and A’s can continue while the restraining order is in place.

The A’s intend to redevelop the Coliseum site in East Oakland into a mixeduse complex that would include housing, office and retail space, a park with sports facilities, restaurants and possibly a tech campus while simultaneously building a 35,000-seat ballpark at the 50-acre Howard Terminal site along the estuary near Jack London Square.

City Attorney Barbara Parker filed the lawsuit Friday at the direction of the City Council. The lawsuit leans on the state’s Surplus Lands Act, which requires publicly owned land that is up for sale to first be offered for affordable housing, parks or open space. The lawsuit says the county has “made no efforts” to do that while negotiating selling its 50 percent share of the stadium to the Oakland A’s. The other 50 percent is owned by the city.

A’s president Dave Kaval, during a news conference Tuesday, said A’s officials were “absolutely dumbfounded” to learn of the lawsuit Monday. The team had been in talks with both the city and the county as recently as Friday about its proposal to purchase and develop the land, he said, adding he thought the talks were going well.

“From our perspective, having a lawsuit is usually the last resort when you’re in negotiations and trying to get to a solution, so I think it’s unfortunate that this was brought out so quickly,” he said.

Mayor Libby Schaaf, who has supported the A’s proposal to build a new ballpark at Howard Terminal, said she too was surprised by the City Council’s decision.

She knew the lawsuit was a possibility, but felt as though the “timing was a bit unfortunate” — the A’s are playing their first game in the playoffs Wednesday. She also felt that “taxpayers would be best served” if the city and the county were to work “collaboratively” to negotiate with the A’s rather than separately.

“Governments should be working together and not fighting each other,” Schaaf said.

The city has been trying to buy the county’s shares since 2015. In August, Oakland council members Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid sent a letter to county supervisors urging them to reconsider selling the share to Oakland; they said they were concerned about the property being sold to the A’s “not for the purpose of a ballpark development, and without clarity of what the development would include or what community benefits would be involved.”

Reid said then it makes better sense for the city to be negotiating with the A’s because the county has no “economic jurisdiction” over the site.

Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan said in a phone interview Tuesday the county all along has preferred to sell its share of the Coliseum site to the city and was also surprised by the lawsuit. Although the lawsuit alleges the sale of the county’s share was “imminent,” Chan said the county and the A’s weren’t quite there.

In a letter sent to Kaplan and Reid in August, Board of Supervisors President Richard Valle noted it was the city that broke off talks with the county to buy its shares months ago.

Parker, in a statement, said the lawsuit is not intended to kill the proposed ballpark project at Howard Terminal but rather to preserve the city’s rights to negotiate a good-faith offer to purchase the county’s share.

“Negotiating a deal that maximizes the highest and best public use for the public good is in the interest of both the city and the county, and allows both entities to meet their responsibilities as public stewards of the land,” Parker said.

This story is developing. Check back for more information.