BANG’s Matthew Artz reports that Scott McKibben will be the next Coliseum Authority Executive Director, filling a position that had been vacant for over six years. JPA counsel Deena McClain has been the JPA’s interim executive director since 2008, when Ann Haley left. Zennie Abraham notes that the vote was unanimous.
McKibben says his goal is to “keep the A’s and Raiders in Oakland.” Having someone with sports experience not limited to negotiating leases is important for the Coliseum’s future.
Andy Dolich endorsed the hire, and McKibben apparently had several recommendations, far above and beyond the previous candidate, the controversial former Assemblyman Guy Houston.
Having McKibben in place will allow the JPA to move forward in concert with the City of Oakland and Alameda County, the partners in the JPA which have been at cross purposes throughout the Coliseum City process for the last three years. If McKibben can lead a team including McClain and the City and County working on the deal terms, they’ll have a much better chance at success. It’s a much better situation than a year ago.
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More interesting is a tidbit from Steven Tavares at East Bay Citizen, referring to AlCo Supervisor Scott Haggerty:
However, Haggerty made it clear Raiders ownership does not favor an extension of the ENA. Over a lengthy lunch recently with Raiders owner Mark Davis, Haggerty said, the team lobbied for the county to vote against the extension with New City. Progress is being made, though, added Haggerty.
Why would the Raiders want to kill the ENA? They wanted to provide a competing bid at the last minute, which may indicate that they already have a developer on board for whatever they’re planning. If the Raiders (like the A’s) now want little to do with Coliseum City and New City Development, it would make sense to cut the middleman out altogether, though that would open up a lot of questions about how to steer redevelopment of the Coliseum. The EIR and Specific Plan are moving forward, and the latter piece is valuable to Oakland for planning purposes. But the feasibility studies that have been done on Coliseum City to date would be lost. New applicants like the A’s and Raiders would commission their own supporting work. It’s almost moot at this point since the ENA is set to be extended again, yet from now on it’s worth questioning the value of New City’s place in all of this if both teams would rather go it alone.
If the teams would prefer to not work with the Coliseum City team, it’ll be up to McKibben and the JPA to figure out a way to bring the teams together. In all likelihood, both teams will provide competing visions with little-to-no room for each other. How the two visions can be merged to both sides’ satisfaction along as the City/County – well, that’s not like scaling Mt. Davis. It’s more like trying to climb Mt. Everest.
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P.S. – Remember those shady looking campaign contributions from Lew Wolff to Rebecca Kaplan during last year’s mayoral campaign? Turns out they were legal. Oh well.
P.P.S. – The Orange County Register reports that Mark Davis teamed up with an investment firm last September in order to buy the Hollywood Park site. That attempt failed.
P.P.P.S. – Mark Purdy has a different telling of the ENA situation.
Did Haggerty interpret the talks wrong, or is someone from the Raiders covering something up?
newballpark.org 
queue Floyd Kephart calling you an idiot…
Okay, this sounds like good news.
Make sure to read the postscripts at the bottom.
I’d love to see the Oakland-only zealots for both football and baseball address that p.p.s.
I’m not an Oakland-only zealot, but Davis showing interest in buying Hollywood might’ve just been about leverage and protecting his interests. If he had owned that site, he could’ve prevented other teams from buying and building there. He wouldn’t have been rich enough to build a football stadium there himself, but he’d be making it harder for anyone else to.
I think he’s going to end up having to decide whether he’d rather be the 2nd team in a new Rams stadium in Inglewood in 2018, or the 2nd team in Santa Clara.
I generally agree. I would say however that pursuing a plan to buy the HP land in relative secret comes off more as planning for oneself than as simply trying to gain public leverage.
It’s always about leverage/hedging your bets which any successful business person does- I don’t Faust Davis for pursuing HP- I do fault his flat out lies- aNd that no one in the Bay Area calls bullshit on him- “We’re not using any other place, city or whatever, as leverage,” Davis said at head coach Jack Del Rio’s introductory press conference earlier this month. “It’s not that way. It’s known that no matter what we do here, it will not be as valuable or economically as great for the Raiders as if we went somewhere else. That’s known. But we still want to be here.”
…now we know why mark davis is focused on Oakland…because he didn’t win the Hollywood Park sweepstakes. What is going to be fascinating is when oakland has to kick out the Raiders so LW can begin developing the Coli site- ironic how local Bay Area media don’t even question what davis does- makes me think the raider nation is pretty weak these days- not a lot of people seem to care where they play next.
“…when Oakland has to kick out the Raiders so LW can begin developing the Coli site…” That was hilarious GoA’s!!
This sh#t is crazy. I guess we all know why Davis interest in Oakland and the C.C. area picked up a bit in recent months. And by recent months I mean after September.
Wolff looks to buy San Jose site 30 miles from existing Coliseum site: Horrors!! Worst owner in history!
Davis looks to buy LA site: sshhhh. See no evil, hear no evil. He’s shown he wants to stay in Oakland
Is there a worst kind of ignorance than willful ignorance?
I have no problem with what Purdy reported (tweeted), but I find it difficult to believe that Haggerty, just misunderstood the Raiders. (Davis) I guess it would make sense Kephart seems to be somewhat of a middle man for development purposes (if Raiders have their own developer), and even as a consultant or negotiator. The JPA has Mckiibben on board, and of course if Wolff ever gets involved with, or without the Raiders he has already said he would have to have control of the project, from a development standpoint. There are already too many hands in the pot without New City, whatever purpose they served it may have passed, not to mention the fact that the city has yet to assemble its own negotiating team.
One year ago this week, McKibben was touting that the A11FL had a “TV deal” with ESPN, which in reality was not a contract, but brokered airtime. That turned out well.
If McKibben gets the job, there is no reason for me to believe he will be successful in keeping either team.
Source this Source that. Why can’t the raiders or the cure haircut himself correct the wrong on the record? release an official statement. I got to believe this is pretty important stuff they are working on. Instead, we have secret sauces from all involved. Just BS all around.