When the Oakland city council voted last month to provide $495 million worth of future city and county tax kickbacks for a new A’s stadium but no more, everyone figured the next step would be Alameda County voting on the new tax increment financing district in the fall. As it turns out, nope:
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will not vote in September on the Oakland A’s $12 billion plan to build a waterfront ballpark and development at Howard Terminal in Jack London Square — causing what the team says is a “potentially insurmountable” financial gap in getting the project done in Oakland…
In a letter sent on Aug. 5, [Alameda County Administrator Susan] Muranishi said the Board of Supervisors could not take a vote in September since the project’s terms had not yet been agreed on and asked for the city to provide any additional information on a final deal. She doubled down in a second letter sent on Friday to city leadership.
“The current status is too speculative and uncertain for the County to move forward now and commit limited staff and financial resources on a costly independent analysis,” Muranishi wrote.
Well! The board of supervisors apparently isn’t interested in voting on a plan that requires it to chip in future tax money without first making clear where the other $360 million the A’s owners are seeking would come from — there’s been talk of using state money, or maybe federal money, but none of that is close to finalized, so it’s understandable if the county supervisors would rather not show their money before knowing who else will. Or, maybe they just hate the entire tax subsidy deal, and are using the uncertainty to kick the ball back into the city’s court. Either way, the A’s stadium plan status just went from “questionable” to “slamming on the brakes.”
What happens next is not immediately clear. A’s president Dave Kaval issued a statement saying, “Without the county, there is increasing concern on our side that the financial gap is potentially insurmountable” and also warning that “we need to see real material progress, and I think the league feels the same way” and mentioning the team’s “momentum” with Las Vegas, which is pretty much what he says no matter what’s happening. (For the record, there is still no sign of forward progress on a stadium in Las Vegas beyond Kaval visiting there a lot to look around, though it’s always possible there have been productive talks he’s keeping hush-hush, even while running his mouth about absolutely everything else.) Before the county’s statement there were two big steps remaining for the A’s to move ahead with their stadium project as planned — get the county to sign off on the tax kickback district, and find another $360 million somewhere — and that’s still the case, just apparently it will be in a different order than expected.
If there’s a downside, from the perspective of those not wanting to see a billionaire siphon off close to a billion dollars in tax money, it’s that this makes it all the more clear that the conversation has perhaps irrevocably shifted from should John Fisher get a huge pile of public dollars? to who should provide John Fisher with his giant pile of public dollars? It’s possible that every level of government will simply point at each other and no one will ever reach for their wallets; more commonly in situations like this, though, eventually someone caves in order to rescue the project. Whether Fisher could build a stadium with only $495 million in tax money — or $295 million, or $5 million — seems not to be a question anyone is interested in asking, which means that no matter how much Kaval complains about not having won the war, he has won an incredibly important battle.
NdM,
I’ll go with ALCo hating the entire tax subsidy deal. They sold their half of the Coli property to the A’s to finally get out of the sports business, and now poor @$$ Oakland wants them back in to help fund their boondoggle of a ballpark plan?!
Kaval fed himself to the wolves by crying wolf
Instead of the Tampa/Montreal plan, how about a Tampa/Oakland Plan The teams switch ball parks at the halfway point of the season. It’s just as dumb as Tampa/Montreal, but if there was a plan for two ball parks for Tampa, why not help Oakland out? No relocation necessary. When mid year hits and the teams switch ballparks, trade one roster for the other.
If that doesn’t work, still do the two ball park thing, let the A’s go where they want and the Rays can replace them on Oakland half the year.
In all seriousness, I really want to see what happens when all cities start saying no the giving teams free money. You would be amazed how fast teams find money to build ballparks on their own.
This is entirely the appropriate answer from Alameda county. They are being asked to commit significant funding to a plan that does not actually exist.
Who would do that?
I would like to see the A’s stay in Oakland. But neither the paying fans nor other Oakland residents really control that. It is up to MLB and the team ownership.
There is no “bridge” needed in funding (I note they have not called it a gap, I assume for obvious reasons… they’d have to pay Fisher a licensing fee to do that). Mr. Fisher needs to decide whether he wants to own an MLB team in Oakland or somewhere else. The one thing that may have changed is that MLB seems more willing to consider a relocation now than they did when Wolff was running point on a stadium.
If a new ballpark is so “necessary” economically, he can surely build it himself (and can even do so on land he already owns at the coliseum site). If it generates an extra $30-35m a year in revenue, he can pay for a $400-500m (approx) ballpark using that extra revenue.
If it won’t generate that amount of new revenue, then he should not build a new ballpark (in Oakland or elsewhere).
In terms of revenue to city coffers, the car dealer across from the ballpark/arena site probably brings in more over the course of a year to Oakland than the A’s do. Did the taxpayers pay for their building?
It is not the taxpayers of Oakland’s fault that John Fisher does not own the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers or Cubs.
I see what you did there….”gap”.
Touche