A’s, Oakland solution: A new Coliseum

For A’s fans discouraged by ownership’s ways of doing business — and that means just about every fan — it’s panic time once again. The Laney College ballpark site seems to be a long shot now, thanks to the Peralta Community College District board’s order to halt negotiations, raising all sorts of harrowing possibilities.

Would the A’s really trudge back to the Coliseum? Will invisible owner John Fisher grow exasperated with his limited options and look into selling the club to out-of-town interests? At the very least, does this setback mean the A’s stay in that familiar, unload-the-young-talent mode?

The first thing to know is that negotiations can be exasperating, but subject to radical changes of heart. The door remains open, if only by a crack, to renewing the A’s plan. It sounds as if it’s going to cost them even more money now, and that’s a smart play by the Peralta/Laney people.

But let’s say it does fall through. Simply renovating the Coliseum won’t work in any sense. The concourses are way too small. The field-level seats are too far from the diamond. There are ongoing sewage problems. Negativity abounds. “Hey, we’re sprucing up the old place” won’t get anyone excited, nor will it help attendance or the A’s value in general. That place has to be torn down, to the sounds of hearty applause.

So what happens then? The first move is to clear the Raiders out of Oakland at the soonest opportunity. Make no mistake, I despise the whole Las Vegas thing, but it’s going to happen. There’s a possibility the team can’t actually play in Vegas until the 2021 season, but its contract with the Coliseum authority lasts only through next year. Let the Raiders share Levi’s Stadium with the 49ers while the A’s go about the business of leveling their old haunts. Perhaps the Raiders could play a game or two at Cal or Stanford.

So where would the A’s play in the meantime? That’s another tricky proposition: sharing AT&T Park with the Giants. Neither team is wild about the idea, for understandable reasons. But there’s a greater mission at hand here, all about the dignity of the Bay Area’s sports landscape. Keeping the A’s in Oakland is something everyone should get behind, petty disagreements aside. A sparkling new park at the Coliseum site, designed to the A’s exact specifications, isn’t such a bad proposition.