The city of Oakland announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement to sell its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to the group of developers it had more than a year ago designated its preferred developer for the site. The city will get $105 million, which is slightly more than the $92 million the developers offered back in 2021; the developers, the extremely on-the-nose-named African American Sports & Entertainment Group, will get the right to try to arm-twist A’s owner John Fisher into selling them his half of the site, or at least letting them build what they want there.
For Oakland, this seems like a no-brainer: Fisher agreed to pay $85 million to the county for its half of the site in 2019, though as of last year he still owed a few payments, so $105 million is likely to be pretty close to full market price for the city’s half, especially since it comes with having to deal with John Fisher. Oakland gets to add that to its cash-strapped budget over the next two years, and, importantly, getting the Coliseum into private hands means it’s back on the property tax rolls, so will begin generating public revenues on an annual basis as well.
As for AASEG, their plans for the site have included everything from an NFL stadium (as soon as they get an NFL team, none of which are immediately available) to a WNBA arena (except the Bay Area’s new WNBA team is now set to play in the Golden State Warriors‘ arena in San Francisco) to housing, restaurants, and a new convention center. Whether any of that eventually happens — and whether AASEG ends up being the developer or just packaging it to another real estate interest while serving as the African American face of the project — and whether this means the Coliseum is torn down, and if so when — is all extremely TBD at this point. But at least Oakland got something for its unused property, and got out of having to provide $495 million in property tax kickbacks for the A’s doomed Howard Terminal project. Sure, the city loses the A’s, but it also potentially gets rid of John Fisher, so that has to be considered at least a win-win-lose-win.
Doesn’t the city also keep Howard Terminal as a working port along with the now vacated $495m in tax breaks that would have gone with it? I would say that is a significant benefit as well, given what the Failson’s dreams were for the working port.
Its not like the city saves $495m (or earns it) through eliminating those tax breaks, because the building and property tax assessments wouldn’t happen without the development, obviously.
But it’s still a good day for Oakland. I could argue that PAYING $105m to be rid of John Fisher is a good deal. Actually getting $105m and having the non-dynamic duo shipped out of town is just a huge bonus.
I would looove to know how the ownership structure – on what was once effectively a non-titled parcel controlled by two governments under a JPA – has been/is going to be set up for the 155 acre parcel.
I thought the city might hang on to their share to make squeezing Fisher out easier, but they don’t really have to. They can impose some fairly draconian development and tax rules on this parcel now whether they own a portion of it or not. AASEG is unlikely to complain, especially if they know the reason the city is taking the hard line will make their own lives much easier within a few years.
The city saves on having a whole new neighborhood and no tax proceeds to pay for schools, fire and police services, etc., for it. And still retains the possibility of redeveloping Howard Terminal one day without spending so much on infrastructure, since you don’t need nearly so many shuttle buses and such if there’s no baseball stadium. I don’t know whether that’s worth $495m exactly, but it’s worth more than zero.
One of the points, and perhaps the only point, on which I firmly agree with Marine Layer over at Newballpark.org is that Oakland has far too often dragged random third parties into the redevelopment process at the Coliseum. This one last time does have the benefit of pushing Fisher towards permanently hitting the road, but we’re not there yet. Hopefully Fisher’s need for cashflow wins out and AASEG and Fisher’s crew can quietly negotiate a deal behind closed doors, but I fear there’s still the possibility of litigation here. As John notes, what’s the deal with establishing title? At least if it comes to that, the city is sharing court costs with AASEG and not fighting a silly battle entirely on the back of public servants’ salaries.
I think Fisher’s entitled, bull-in-china-shop mentality starting with Laney College pretty much guaranteed Oakland would not want him around as a development partner long-term. It would have always been, “this is what I want, get out of the way and pay my ancillary costs while I do it,” even and especially with stupid ideas like the gondola. (Remember the gondola?) For better or worse, that’s just not how the East Bay works.
And, it always raises the question, what is John Fisher’s track record as a commercial/residential real estate developer? Sure, he apparently runs some nebulous family office “investment firm,” but that doesn’t mean he’s the day-to-day decision maker who actually gets shit done. Bally’s should have been asking this question too, but, uh, I don’t think they got where they are by asking the important questions.
The Coliseum is an interesting site. It’s right off the 880, has a BART station, and is a huge amount of land in one of the richest real estate markets in America. But it also is in a bad part of an already rough town (it abuts the notorious “Vill” housing projects, aka Lockwood Gardens), and nearby is mostly industrial. The biggest non-sporting or live entertainment business the site hosts is arguably the Coliseum Swap-Meet. It works as a sequestered site for a stadium and “sports village” that’s segregated off from the rest of its neighborhood (similar to Nationals Park and its surrounding Southeast DC/Anacostia community), but making it a profitable non-sporting major commercial development is going to be a challenge.
My guess is that AASE tries to squeeze out Fisher so they have sole control of the site, which they could leverage to get an ownership stake in a hopeful future sports team. Due to the aforementioned and the realities of trying to build a mega-project like a stadium in the East Bay, the most straightforward/simplest use of the Coliseum site is to host another sporting venue (note I didn’t say best use of the land, because lol like anyone with power in California gives a shit about that) and the best site for putting a sporting venue in the area will be the Coliseum. Maybe an MLB expansion team, maybe a dedicated facility for the Oakland Roots, maybe the Golden Seals return when the NHL expands to 40 teams. But I suspect that both AASE and city leadership will try to exhaust every option of getting a major pro team to come back to that parcel of land before converting it into something else. For better or worse, once that site gets converted to some other residential or commercial purposes, that’s probably the end of any possibility for major sports to return to Oakland.
I will never understand what Fisher’s blockage was about building in place. He obviously liked the site well enough to want to own it, and the fact that he intended it for some nebulous residential/commercial mixed-use development suggests he wasn’t too squeamish about the roughness of the surrounding neighborhood. I hold out slim hope that some day we will hear the full story about Dave Stewart’s time fronting an investment group interested in the Coliseum neighborhood, but he’s already held his tongue at least once, and he’s too much of a pro to do a tell-all.
The site was intentionally designed to be accessible via a number of different transport modes… I beat this drum constantly, but the simple truth is that if they played Moneyball with actual money while casting a wider regional marketing net (just like the Giants do!), it would be easy to outdraw the Giants. But it has never been about operating the baseball team as a baseball team, it has always been about using the baseball team as an accessory in some other harebrained cash-grab scheme.
One factor I do worry about with developing the site for a minor league team, whether that’s the Roots or anyone else… if it remains as a sports complex and one of the major leagues does come sniffing around again in a few years, does the minor league team in place then get the shaft? Or do we watch the interested parties once again go through the whole ridiculous multi-party musical-chairs negotiations that led to this failure in the first place?
The minor league team would probably get the shaft. Just like they did in San Diego.
I always assumed the site was the real money maker in this whole deal. Because clearly Fisher felt there was more money there than you’d ever earn from a stadium.
Oakland!? did you know that most of this stadium black mail extortion basically was created there? Al Davis didn’t start all of this but he did help or start “Franchise free agency”! were cities are threatened, extorted or pressured into giving teams money to build new stadium get threatened/ risk losing losing them to other cities/ parts of their city.
He changed pro sports for owners by suing the NFL and others to move the Raiders to other cities. The NFL fought and punished him but he usually won against them. The Raiders moved to L.A. from Oakland and it was outrageous to move from a city where you were winning and Al was made a trouble maker for it. But it was Dallas’ Schram, Miami’s Robbie and L.A Rams’ owners who started “Franchise free agency” in the late 70s’ and they moved their teams or got their stadiums they may have had other reasons to move but it seems it was mostly about making more money.
Al helped make the NFL wealthier by showing owners how to threaten/ pressure cities or to move their teams. He did this in Oakland, Now, a city that pro sports doesn’t want to play in anymore. It was the place Al decided to leave but he showed owners how to pressure cities or sue to move or get new stadiums.
Oakland IS one of the best sports towns in the world and it also is a place were some of the biggest decisions or ideas were started and have helped others get wealthier or learn how to solve problems for them and their teams.
Franchise relocation was a big deal in the 50s. The A’s (Philadelphia to KC), Braves (Boston to Milwaukee), Browns, Dodgers, and Giants all moved. NFL Cardinals moved from Chicago to St Louis.
A lot of teams moved in the 50s because there were a bunch of teams sharing markets and a bunch of growing markets without teams.
So those were all fairly rational.
I don’t know when it became common to threaten irrational moves just to get leverage over the existing city.
I believe Jerry Reinsdorf faking a move of the White Sox to St. Petersburg in 1988 was the first true leverage scam.
So I’ll ask this again. How do we know he was faking a move and not faking that he never intended to move. He did lead the push for Tampa to get a team in the later expansion.
Does Cubs to Schaumburg count?
They didn’t get a new stadium, but they did get the right to install lights and an easing of the restrictions on night games/other events in Lakeview/Wrigleyville.
Tampa Bay got an expansion team because they threatened to sue over MLB not letting the Giants move there.
As for Reinsdorf, he himself said he never intended to move. I suppose he could be claiming that to make himself look like a good guy in Chicago — but also, moving from an enormous market to a Tampa Bay never made sense.
Correct but this applies to Oakland as well. You could say that Davis was just doing what AL St. Louis, AL Philadelphia and NL Boston were doing. Moving from a market where the region already has a more popular team in the opposing baseball league
My bad. In Davis’ case, it was moving from a market where there is a more popular NFL team. Still, same idea. He wasn’t leaving a market abandoned. Same with Fisher
In 1980 when the move to LA was announced, the Raiders were more popular than the woebegone 49ers. In ’95 when they moved back, the Rams had already announced they were moving to StL. The only move fleeing second-banana status was the one to Vegas.
Sportsball Franchise Roulette was going on long before Al Davis sued the NFL. In the 1970s, Robert Irsay took the Baltimore Colts on preseason road shows for the purpose of getting a government-funded stadium. That didn’t get Irsay what he wanted right away, though it did set the stage for Tampa getting an NFL club of its own.
Bottom line: Al Davis should not have been able to vacate Oakland untill the bond issue to enlarge the stadium was paid off.
Al Davis was dead by the time this became an issue, but point well made. Mark Davis should have hung his bowl-cut in shame, but there’s no shame in football, just like there’s no crying in baseball.
It’s hard to be humble when you drive a ’97 Grand Voyager. Not everyone can.
Agreed but just another fumble by the city of Oakland. They agreed to the 20 year lease regardless of whether the bond was paid off or not
Agreed Dave.
However, in the many fumbles and missteps involved, I would argue that spending nearly $200m to ruin a decent baseball stadium when they could have (at the time) built a dedicated football stadium in the parking lot for about that same amount (Raymond James Stadium opened two years later and cost about $170m – albeit in a non-earthquake zone) is among the biggest.
There should have been no-one more familiar with what any deal with someone like Al Davis is going to involve than the city of Oakland. No-one.
That was more of a cost-overrun problem (caused in part by a particularly wet winter which necessitated pumping water out of the below-sea-level field much more than expected). A $100 million expansion paid for by PSLs wouldn’t have been nearly thr bone headed move that a $200 million one was.
Maybe Oakland should have made the term of lease coincide with the term of the bonds
Bond debt is a sunk cost. In fiscal terms, it doesn’t matter one whit whether the bonds are paid off before or after the lease expires.
No Ian, “Franchise free agency” started in the late 80s’! Al was the main one behind this game!
Tex Schram, Lady owner of the L.A. Rams and Joe Robbie started it all in the late 70s’! But Al took it to a higher level because owners used to threaten cities into helping renovate/ build new stadiums but he added law suits to the game and got it on a run / made it helpful for owners now its’ just plain sad.
Colts from Baltimore to Indy
Oilers from Houston to Tennessee
Raiders from Oakland to L.A. and L.A. to Oakland
Browns from Cleveland to Baltimore
Rams from L.A. to St. Louis
This is just the 80s’ and 90s’!
Very few of those moves had anything to do with Al Davis’s lawsuit. That just set a precedent that the NFL couldn’t outright block franchise relocations for any reason it chose, but in those cases the owners moving had the league’s backing anyway.
That Al Davis must be really powerful.
The Rams moved from Cleveland to LA in the 1940s. Al was still in high school then – where he warmed the bench for a Jr. Varsity team. Who can’t relate to that?
The Dodgers and Giants abandoned NY for the west coast in the late 1950s – before the AFL even existed and while Al was a recruiter for USC. The St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore a few years before the great (MLB) migration west.
Man, that guy must have had amazing influence.
In reality, Davis ‘created’ nothing. He took advantage of what he saw as a loophole in the league’s regulations/constitution. After the courts proved him technically right, those loopholes were closed.
He also saw an opportunity to take advantage of cities that were weak and incompetently run. Nothing original in that either.
And Joe Robbie privately funded his new stadium – more or less in the same city his team had always played in. I don’t see the connection there either.
What does Joe Robbie have to do with this? When the team was created they moved into an existing stadium and then 20 years later they built one that they paid for themselves
I think the league probably would have blocked the Colts’ move if not for the Raiders’ court victory (with Irsay being Football John Fisher with an alcohol problem). Same with the Browns to Baltimore. As for the Cardinals, Oilers, and Rams, who knows? Rozelle had set a precedent for being anti-move for the good of the league, as he saw that fan loyalty was one of the most valuable commodities the NFL held.
And Pete Rozelle was forced out of the NFL in 1989, five years too late IMHO. Clubs hopscotching all throughout the 1980s was one of the reasons why.
I’ve read that the sale of Alameda County’s half to the A’s has yet to be completed, and the inevitable lawsuits have/will be filed for a Fall trial.
Neil, can you venture forth an opinion on if this may be a real roadblock, or more posturing?
I’ve both read that it’s yet to be completed and that it was finally completed last week. Couldn’t tell you about the lawsuits.
Aquib, in about ’78 or ’79 Mr. Robbie was very unhappy with the Dolphins’ stadium and he wanted it renovated/ a new stadium and he threatened to move.
Well, the Dolphins moved to another site-, I don’t know if the city renovated the old site first and then they moved or if the city helped pay for a new stadium at another site but the Dolphins did move to another site.
It was his Mr. Robbie, Mr. Schram and the Rams’ lady owner who got Al the idea/ motivation to ask Coliseum politicians/ managers and city politicians/ leaders for a new stadium.
Two problems with that line of thinking:
(1) Carroll Rosenbloom owned the Rams when they set about leaving the Coliseum for the Angels’ baseball park in Orange County. The Rams didn’t officially move until 1980, well after his widow Georgia Frontiere inherited them.
(2) What is now the Hard Rock Stadium was built in Miami Gardens, which in the 1980s was an unincorporated section of northern Dade County. Miami Gardens wasn’t incorporated as a city until 2003.
Al Davis if you didn’t already know:
was the 4th owner to move but the only one to move to another city(Rams, Dolphins, did the Cowboys move too?).
He worked with other owners in the 2000’s to sue to have the right to make big personal deals with corporations. Now, NFL teams have to share with the NFL when they make big private deals.
He sued the city of Oakland and won, sued to move from Oakland to L.A., he sued the Buccaneers and he sued the city of L.A.
He moved the Raiders from L.A. back to Oakland.
They say Art Model was the main reason for the NFL’s t.v. contracts but some say it was Al that got those big t.v. NFL deals.
He helped the NFL stop a player’s strike twice 90’s and
He helped the players stand up to the NFL and protest/ say “no” to their new CBA.
He worked with Gene Upshaw and ex-player and Pres. of the NFLPA.
He voted against the owners’ new CBA in the 2000s’
He always gave cities time to get their offers together before moving whereas some of these pro teams will move no matter how much money a city offers them to stay(Chargers, Rams, Warriors, A’s).
* After he won lawsuits against the NFL, other teams-, the Colts, Oilers and Browns tried/ started to move their teams to other cities so he was the main reason these teams moved because now they had advantage/ leverage! makes sense doesn’t it? Its’ kind’a funny because most of them voted against Al moving to L.A!
Using your logic of moves – the Giants and Jets moves to East Rutherford and the Washington football team moving to Maryland would be included.
And please take the time to use Google to find Georgia’s name instead of using the sexist term “lady owner”.