Alameda County supes to discuss pivotal funding issue for A’s Howard Terminal ballpark project
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will discuss on Oct. 26 the Oakland A's $12 billion plan to build a waterfront ballpark and development at Howard Terminal near Jack London Square, according to a letter obtained by The Chronicle.
The city of Oakland asked Alameda County in May to opt into a tax district to help with infrastructure costs; a few weeks later, supervisors said the earliest they could vote would be in September. But in August, the county administrator sent a letter to the city stating that the board could not vote in September since the project's terms had not yet been agreed upon with the team, and asked the city to provide additional information. Since then, city and county staff have met to go over project details.
The planned discussion among supervisors is a key step to advancing the project as the A's continue studying alternate sites in Las Vegas. The city has said that without county help on the infrastructure financing district, the project cannot work. At stake are thousands of homes, scores of new jobs and economic development that Oakland is hungry for. If the A's leave, they'd be the third professional sports team to depart the city in recent years.
But the county might not be as eager to make a deal. If the county decides to opt into the tax district, it would be giving up a portion of its property taxes on the stadium site to help fund infrastructure costs.
Still, if the stadium gets built, the county stands to benefit. Currently, the county receives about $70,000 per year from property taxes from the proposed ballpark site. If the ballpark project is built today, the county would receive about $10.7 million in property taxes per year, according to Century Urban, the city's consultant that has been studying the project.
The board's Oct. 26 agenda won't be publicly available until Oct. 21, according to the county. It's unclear if the county will actually vote that day to join the infrastructure financing district or merely discuss it.
On Sept. 27, Keith Carson, the president of the Board of Supervisors, sent a letter to Liz Ortega-toro of the Alameda Labor Council and Andreas Cluver of the Alameda County Building & Construction Trades Council.
Carson said the board will
“place further discussion” of the proposed waterfront ballpark project on the agenda for its last scheduled October meeting. In his letter, he said city staff and the A's have had more than a year to study the project's details, and county staff “are still working 24 hours a day, seven days a week attempting to address all the challenges” of the pandemic.
“Given the magnitude of this issue and the fact that it has been stated many times publicly by the A's representative that a final decision date on this project is December,” Carson wrote that the earliest the supervisors could discuss the ballpark is Oct. 26.
“Even then this will be taking valuable time and attention away from the daily/weekly decisions that are required to address the ongoing challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency on Alameda County residents,” Carson wrote.
The A's did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In September, Dave Kaval said the team plans to narrow its list of potential new stadium sites in the Las Vegas area by early November. The A's said they are pursuing “parallel paths” in Oakland and Las Vegas for a new ballpark.
Ortega-toro, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, told The Chronicle that her group is thankful the board will take up the discussion later this month.
“The Howard Terminal ballpark project is critical for working families, the city has weighed in with a `yes' vote, and we are appreciative of the work that our county supervisors are putting in to help keep the A's in Oakland at our beautiful Jack London waterfront,” she said.
The A's project includes a $1 billion privately financed, 35,000seat waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal, 3,000 residential units, up to 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, up to 270,000 square feet for retail, an indoor 3,500-seat performance center, 400 hotel rooms and up to 18 acres of publicly accessible open space.
The city hopes to have a final environmental review, development agreement and planning commission approvals ready for a vote by the City Council by the end of the year.
In July, the Oakland City Council voted to approve a non-binding term sheet with the A's that called for the creation of a single tax district with county involvement. That went against the wishes of the team, which had sought two special tax districts.