Category Archives: Coliseum

10.22.22
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Autumn: #DiscontentSZN

Play the audio while you read the following post

I suppose I can ask now: Was the A’s tanking in the second half of 2021 and all of 2022 worth it if a Howard Terminal deal happened? Seemed like a lot of fans were hoping for exactly that to occur.

What’s that? There is no deal? Well, that complicates matters a bit. City staffers and the mayor finally conceded in the last few weeks that no deal is coming this year, barring a miracle.Any deal would have to be consummated in 2023 at the earliest, with no assurances that would happen given the changing political and economic landscape, along with the deal’s increasing complexity and cost.

I wrote in July that Oakland pols were mostly motivated by the fear of being blamed for the last major pro sports team leaving, and to that end they mostly succeeded. The unenviable responsibility will fall to the next Mayor and City Council, to be decided in two weeks. While some of the media try to position this as a sort of baton-passing exercise, anyone paying attention knows that a different mayor, with a different city council, is bound to have priorities that stray away from a $12 Billion mega-development project. Though perhaps it’s not that far off. Vice Mayor/CM Rebecca Kaplan posted a slide from a poll taken by the Mayor’s office on Oakland’s priorities. Look at where Howard Terminal lands in there.

Among Oakland initiatives, Howard Terminal comes EIGHTH in urgency

Whatever happens, Oakland’s looking at some serious regime change when 2023 rolls around (mayor, 2-3 council members), and no one should expect business as usual on the Howard Terminal front. Then again, Kaplan’s slide shows that HT doesn’t have the juice that outgoing Mayor Libby Schaaf liked to project. Perhaps following the script of pushing for incremental movement while hoping for a big breakthrough is staying the course, because what choice does Oakland have at this stage? What might change is the messaging. The Oakland populace has felt largely ignored by the mayor in her second term. A return to a more realistic approach may be in order, which may mean putting Howard Terminal on the back burner. At this point, who can really say? The building trades unions are certainly pumping enough money into this election to expect some sort of ROI. But the unexpected can and sometimes does happen in Oakland’s ranked choice elections. Maybe Ignacio De La Fuente will somehow sneak in.

The City of Oakland continues to make its procedural push, a double-edged sword which thankfully is not paid for by taxpayers but is being bankrolled by the A’s, creating its own apparent conflict of interest. Again, what choice does Oakland have? This is the game. Oakland chose to play it.

Now if you want a fully delusional view, I give you @As_Fan_Radio’s tweet from the summer, in which whichever account runner was working promoted FIVE teams in Oakland: the A’s, the return of the NFL to the Coliseum property, a WNBA team, plus the Roots and the Oakland Soul, a women’s pro soccer franchise owned by Roots ownership. Think about that for a moment. A city which 50 years ago made its name by being an easy-to-work-with landing spot for sports franchises spent the last decade running them out of town, yet still dreams it can easily retain or attract new ones. Sadly, they’re blind to two things: it’s harder to get things built now, and Oakland has been surpassed by many competing markets. Oakland is no longer a soft landing spot.

Looks a lot more like daydreaming than foresight
Renaissance? Perhaps trying to maintain relevance is a more achievable goal

Obviously, the NFL is in no hurry to come back to Oakland since the City’s Hail Mary lawsuit against the league was recently dismissed by the US Supreme Court. Oakland, like St. Louis, argued for monetary damages because of the way it lost its NFL team for the second time. Unlike St. Louis’s successful lawsuit, the Court didn’t buy that the NFL hurt Oakland on antitrust grounds. STL actually produced a funded stadium option for the Rams, which Stan Kroenke and the NFL ignored as their sights were focused on re-entry to the LA market. Oakland, which had an EIR in place for Coliseum City (sound familiar?), didn’t have a funding plan in place. STL took the Rams/NFL to court first in 2015, Oakland later in 2018. Despite regular defeats on the bench, ambulance chasing law firms kept taking Oakland’s case on contingency.

On the other hand, WNBA could happen in Oakland since there’s already an excellent modern – though expensive to operate – venue in the Coliseum Arena. The issue there, as is the case for most WNBA franchises, is a matter of who’s going to pick up the operating costs. I argued previously that it was curious that Joe Lacob, who gained credibility in the pro sports world via his foray in the ABL, so far has only teased his involvement with a WNBA franchise. If the argument against has to do with defraying operating costs, I have to point out that the Warriors’ luxury tax bill will run into the nine figures for the next several seasons thanks to upcoming contract extensions. If anyone can afford the freight of running a WNBA team and its piddly $1 million annual payroll, it’s Joe Lacob and his partners, though chances are he’d prefer to play most of the games in the arena he runs across the Bay.

As for the Roots/Soul, they’re using the same playbook the A’s briefly (and successfully until it became unsustainable) used when the Raiders left. Despite the Roots’ recent success in North American second-tier league USL Championship, there’s still a way to go to establishing a permanent home away from Laney College, where the football stadium is being rented. The franchise is in talks to build a stadium on the Malibu lot next to the Coliseum, which is City-owned and not subject to City/County/JPA co-ownership stakes. If the HomeBase lot is included, the total land is about 20 acres -more than enough for the stadium and some ancillary development. The requirements for USL Championship (10,000-person stadium capacity) is roughly half that of MLS (20,000). One thing you have to keep in mind for these fledgling franchises is that their plans have to manage growth. They can’t simply build a 5k or 10k stadium and call it a day unless they don’t plan to bring in more fans than that on a regular basis. If their plan is to eventually build something attractive for promotion to MLS, that’s a completely different set of requirements or challenges.

Look, if you’ve been reading this far and reading my posts for some time, you know I’m not a person to provide easy answers or empty rah-rah homerism. I care about the deal and how it gets done, who wins and who loses. I didn’t care much about how the EIR and related approvals came through because I knew those proceedings had limited impact and had tons of strings attached. If the A’s announce they’re leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow, it’s not like whatever tentative approvals are in place at HT can be transferred to a hypothetical new MLB team, a soccer team, or god forbid, a NBA or NFL team. What people fail to understand about Oakland’s plight is that none of these leagues are going to wait too long for Oakland to get its shit together, only as long as a team is bound to a lease. The leagues allowed two Oakland teams to find better options outside of city limits, the same way they allowed the A’s to do “Parallel Paths.” If you believe MLB or anyone will exercise a great deal of patience for Oakland to come up with a perfect deal (Opening Day 2027, hello?), history shows that strategy doesn’t pay off for The Town. Which is somewhat ironic, because as Oakland loses team after team and fades from relevance on the national stage (I didn’t forget that Mills College merged with Northeastern University), “The Town” may be a more apt nickname than anything an overpaid consulting firm could come up with.

There’s always next year. Until then…

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P.S. – In the summer of 2021 there was an arbitrary deadline to get a deal done between the A’s and the City. They made fundamentally different proposals and agreed to work on them, punting the deadline TBD. Early this year, the EIR and BCDC decisions were also pitched as critical. November’s election, and the end of the year, are similarly sold. Now that these dates have elapsed, what are the consequences for miscalculating the impact? Do the HT proponents tire of buying these arbitrary deadlines whole? Healthy skepticism never hurt anyone, especially when so much money is on the line.

07.20.21
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7/20 #oakmtg Live Thread

Oakland’s City Council passed the City’s term sheet on Howard Terminal (6 ayes, 1 no, 1 abstention). With that the A’s braintrust is off to Vegas while they and MLB decide what to do next.

You didn’t really think this would magically come together in the last few weeks, did you?

Tweet-by-tweet coverage

… and a snap poll for good measure:

There’s a baseball game on today. In Oakland. Enjoy it. I’ll provide feedback on the meeting later today.

06.02.21
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Ghost of Blue Ribbon Panel Speaks Out in Favor of… The Coliseum

Former Giants VP Corey Busch, who was part of Bud Selig’s Blue Ribbon Panel to study the A’s future in Oakland (and San Jose) a decade ago, was interviewed by the Merc’s Shayna Rubin yesterday. And boy, did Busch had some thoughts.

The big reveal was Busch’s belief that former Giants owner Bob Lurie was never going to ship the team to Florida. Selling the team was, as Busch recounted, merely a ruse to motivate a local buyer for the franchise, which eventually happened when Peter Magowan stepped up. That’s not to discount the tremendous amount of drama at the end of Lurie’s ownership tenure, which involved St. Petersburg and dalliances with San Jose and Santa Clara. Exploration of the South Bay included A’s owner Walter Haas agreeing to cede Santa Clara County to the Giants, which was previously an unassigned territory for MLB’s purposes. The South Bay is now and forever San Francisco Giants territory, even though they will probably never play a game there.

Busch also went out of his way to defend the Coliseum, decrying A’s ownership’s desire for a downtown ballpark – and only a downtown ballpark – at Howard Terminal.

Busch determined the Coliseum site was viable in 2014 on Selig’s blue-ribbon committee to explore ballpark options. He still attests the A’s can build the ballpark village of their dreams around the site. MLB and the A’s declared this month that the Coliseum site “not viable” as a location for a new park.

“The notion that the Coliseum, if properly developed in its totality, is not acceptable is kind of silly. It’s nonsense,” Busch said. “I know for a fact there are people in the commissioner’s office who know the Coliseum site is a good site.”

All Bay Collective’s 2018 Estuary Commons concept (Coliseum/Airport area)

Right now the Coliseum is not in the conversation due to the stubbornness of ownership. At some point it will re-enter the picture, unless everything from this point forward falls in line for Howard Terminal. For all their posturing, the A’s still continue to attempt to buy the City’s half of the Coliseum. And even though Dave Kaval announced the A’s were on “parallel tracks” with Oakland and Las Vegas (I thought there was no “Plan B”?), it’s not hard to see a third path, one that brings them back home.

05.27.21
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Brodie Brazil captured how I’ve felt this month

Just watch Brodie Brazil from NBC Sports California, dissecting the A’s relocation drama point by point, including some historical references. It’s excellent.

I’ll have more to say later today or tomorrow.

05.14.21
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Three Oakland City Council Members Respond to A’s Demands

UPDATE 4:40 PM – A synopsis

UPDATE 3:30 PM: The squeaky wheel always gets the grease. Council vote on 7/20.

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I’ll preface the following (from KRON) by pointing out that the three signatories to the letter are the most ardent skeptics of Howard Terminal. Read what you will into the letter.

The questions are fair. It reminds me of two bits of fairly recent A’s history.

..and…

In 2015 the City of Oakland released a Coliseum Area Specific Plan. Amazingly, it had real estimates for various types of required infrastructure. Imagine what could happen if the A’s let Howard Terminal goes through a full, proper planning process instead of rushing it.

There’s a lot of additional City-owned land to throw into the pot if they want to sweeten a Howard Terminal deal or nudge the team back to the Coliseum

Ongoing talks over whether the City will sell its half of the Coliseum complex to the A’s are scheduled for May 20. I had a response to that as well:

12.04.20
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Howard Terminal EIR maybe in early ’21

Sometime before Thanksgiving, I reached out to Peterson Vollman, the City of Oakland’s planner overseeing the Howard Terminal ballpark project. I asked if there were any updates on the project. Vollman’s response:

We are anticipating publishing the DEIR in Q1 of 2021 pending AB734 Certification by the Governor.

Just so we’re clear, that’s the first quarter of 2021 for the Draft version of the document, pending the certification through AB734.

Anyway, those of you still on the HT bandwagon have the patience of saints.

Thankgiving also happened to be my birthday. Somehow I managed to get presents, including this:

Coliseum pint glass
Pint glass from @welltolddesign

I would like to carry this pint glass everywhere I go, thank you very much.

03.20.20
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One Horse Town

Say goodbye to the bad guy.

Over at NBC Sports Bay Area, Scott Bair reported yesterday that the Raiders, who had an option to play at the Coliseum in 2020 just in case Allegiant Stadium didn’t get completed in time, recently declined the option. They had until April 1 to renew.

With the Raiders leaving Oakland behind, we can officially leave behind silly concepts like this:

Or this:

And especially this:

It was never going to end well. At least one team had to leave which grew to two. There are lessons to be learned. Memories to savor. Once we get through the current crisis, Oakland can get back to what it was like when baseball ruled the town.

October 3, 2012

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When the dust settles, the A’s and A’s fans will have to pick up the pieces. What world will we live in? What restrictions will be placed on our movement, or on limits to assembled crowds? It’s more than a little ironic that the cavernous Coliseum could work in an era of social distancing – at least if the crowds are limited to 20,000 or less.

MLB is saying for now that the start of the season is postponed until mid-May at the earliest. Until then confusion reigns, as teams are deciding where to set up camp for the season. A’s staff and players have it relatively easy, since they can easily shuttle between Oakland and Mesa. Players often have offseason homes in Arizona. Other teams have more complicated logistics. Take always-an-Athletic Sean Doolittle and Eireann Dolan, who described their living arrangements, which included the specter of dual concurrent leases.

Whenever the season starts, it will be truncated and condensed. You might see many more doubleheaders (hooray!) and expanded rosters, perhaps six-man rotations. Gotta get the games in somehow. Fortunately, there won’t be anymore $250k baseball-to-football-to-baseball Coliseum conversations to plan this year, maybe forever. There is also the matter of the Raiders locker rooms. The A’s will have about two months between now and the start of the season. Should the team choose to keep all their training in Mesa, they can continue to use the old cramped clubhouses with few complaints. If they choose to move more of the team to Oakland before the official start of 2020 season, they’ll need the extra space. And while a scant two months is a tough timeline to hit, that should be enough to make sure the plumbing works, install new carpeting, and slap a new green-and-gold paint job on the joint.

Modern NFL locker rooms are vast, perhaps overkill for the A’s (photo: Flickr user rocor)

The benefits would be enormous. It’s a larger space to house the entire 40-man roster and camp invitees if needed. The facilities on that level are newer and more functional than the old baseball clubhouses (insert plumbing joke here). The team will still run the shuttle between Oakland and Mesa as needed. Parts of each football locker room could be cordoned off for press use or other functions. And outside on the field, Clay Wood and his stalwart crew can focus on keeping the turf and infield as pristine as possible without much worry about divots, dealing with the gridiron, or 300-lb. dudes trampling everything.

It’s no vaccine for the coronavirus. It could help the team be more competitive with the rest of the American League, and if the theme this year is to strike while the iron is hot, I can’t think of a better way to prepare for this season.

12.16.19
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Next Stop: Sin City

Another East Bay legend once said it best:

So take the photographs and still-frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while

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.

.

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Sooooooo…… when can the A’s claim the soon-to-be-vacated locker rooms?

10.17.19
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The Adult Conversation, Aborted

I never intended to create a series of posts titled “Adult Conversation,” yet here they are:

…plus there are other related posts that had to do with Coliseum City in 2015:

What happened since then? Besides the the Warriors leaving for SF and the Raiders’ announcement of their exodus to Vegas, not that much.

Now that the City and County are embroiled in a lawsuit over the sale of the County’s share of the Coliseum to the A’s, we’re stuck in a state of utter confusion. Quick recap: City sued County two weeks ago. Rob Manfred stepped in and threatened to move the A’s to Vegas if City doesn’t back down. This week, County threatens to stop negotiations on the Coliseum if City doesn’t back down.

Hold on a sec. Does anyone really know what the two sides are arguing about?

Remaining debt payments on the Coliseum after 2012 refinancing

According to the City of Oakland, Alameda County went and took the offer from the A’s without seeking a counteroffer from the City. The previous working plan was that the County would pay off the debt, and the City would pay back the County over time to regain control of the entire complex, allowing the County to exit the sports venue business. That was the essence of the adult conversation. The City didn’t (and reportedly still doesn’t) have the money to pay for their share and pay back the County, so that went nowhere.

However, the City is now revealing a different wrinkle to the A’s deal. According to City Council member Larry Reid, the County is allowing the A’s to pay off the County’s remaining debt installments, a pitch that the County didn’t in turn make to the City. That sounds a lot like what the City wanted, right? This is what doesn’t make sense to me. The City wasn’t able to take over the debt, yet they say the County didn’t give City the option to try? (As far as I know, neither City nor County have the option to accelerate the payments to pay off their share early.)

Either the City or County is interpreting the terms of the arrangement wrong. And that is what I find most disappointing about all of this. The two sides, after back and forth periods of acrimony and harmony, literally had years to iron out the details of the Coliseum’s dissolution. That is what was supposed to be the eventual product of the adult conversation. Perhaps they got distracted by the pipe dream that was Coliseum City. There were certainly other more pressing civic priorities over the years. But the important takeaway from all of this is that the Coliseum JPA is about to get out of all of this without going broke in the process, though they certainly got close. Whether the land is sold back to the City or is sold to the A’s, both City and County will be made whole, instead of incurring even more enormous debt via a new complex of stadia as they were ready to incur.

That all said, part of me is hoping for the November hearing to go as currently scheduled, as it could finally put the matter to rest. The two sides are having closed-door talks right now to settle out of court. Maybe that’ll finally result in something. They had a chance to settle for years. What should cause them to strike a deal now, after all this time? Sometimes, the only thing you know is litigation.

10.04.19
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City of Oakland gets Temporary Restraining Order against A’s-Coliseum sale

Original Coliseum pamphlet provided by Peerless Coffee’s George Vukasin, Jr.

Do you remember the name Egbert Perry?

No?

Perry was the money-partner with Ronnie Lott for a short-lived 2016 offer to buy the Coliseum complex, including both the stadium and arena, plus the additional parcels purchased extending to Hegenberger. Then just like that, the City of Oakland nixed the offer. Vegas interests and the Nevada continued to work with the Raiders on site plans for the football franchise’s move, and the Raiders have been running out the clock in Oakland ever since.

The A’s weren’t part of the Lott-Perry plan, which may have spurred the City’s decision. The offer was for $167.3 million and was made prior to a reappraisal of the complex, completed later in 2016. It was that appraisal that provides the basis for the A’s offer on the Coliseum property, a half-interest (Alameda County) for $85 million. Do the math to buy out the City’s share, and you have $170 million, remarkably close to the old appraisal. A mere two weeks after the offer was made, the offer was retracted and Perry was out after a purported double-cross.

Previously, Floyd Kephart’s New City group offered $116 million in 2015. That also didn’t get far. Which makes the news that the City is suing the County over the sale of the County’s half-interest of the Coliseum land not surprising in the least. Let’s be honest about this. Modern politics in Oakland has been shaped – for the worse – by frequent, almost constant litigation. It’s practically the only way the City knows how to operate. As reported by the Chronicle’s Phil Matier:

The suit took on added significance Tuesday when Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch issued a temporary restraining order on the sale and set a Nov. 14 hearing on the lawsuit.

“We were very close. This will put a chilling effect on us being able to close the deal,” Kaval said following the judge’s order.

A’s CEO Dave Kaval expressed shock at the lawsuit. In his professional and personal time in the Bay Area, he surely learned some local political history, especially about Oakland and California as a whole. Kaval is the last person that should be surprised by this. Kaval (and John Fisher) were shocked by the Peralta blowback. You’d think they would’ve braced themselves for City-County political tensions. After all, Oakland and Alameda County spent the better part of the last 40 years mired in tensions. Everything you see, from the original Coliseum to Mount Davis, is a product of those tensions, along with the truly unquenchable thirst for pro sports that keeps being displayed.

Now that the A’s (and MLB) have Oakland to themselves, they can start squeezing. So it was on the day of the AL Wild Card game that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred started the squeeze. I opined at the time that I didn’t expect him to start this early. Manfred, via the Chronicle’s Susan Slusser:

“I made it clear that it’s time for the city of Oakland to show concrete progress on the stadium effort,” Manfred said. “It’s gone on too long, and things need to fall into place to get a new stadium here. The fans here, as demonstrated by the 55,000 here tonight, are great fans and deserve a major-league quality facility.”

We’ve seen this movie before. If the City folds on the lawsuit, Manfred will back sometime in February to praise City leaders for “coming to their senses.” If the City keeps on, we’ll start hearing louder murmurs about Portland. Or Nashville, Charlotte, Las Vegas, or maybe Salt Lake City or Sacramento. Probably not San Jose, as that ship has sailed. But don’t put it past Manfred to tighten the squeeze on Oakland, even if MLB’s apparent leverage is debatable. I wouldn’t discount the concept of Manfred taking over negotiations from Kaval and Fisher, using a team of negotiators to do the dirty work. Or Manfred could go the same route as he did with the Rays. In that case he started by granting the ability for the Rays to look at the City of Tampa/Hillsborough County. That resulted in the Ybor City domed ballpark plan, unveiled in June 2018 and dead by the end of the year. That was followed by the announcement of a potential split season situation, half in St. Petersburg and the other half in Montreal. Montreal backer Stephen Bronfman even showed up in Oakland last night, the better to get the Tampa denizens thinking.

Here’s the tough part. Oakland has barely stepped onto the legal battlefield. The EIR is supposed to be released before the end of this month, and that will bring its own lawsuit. Whether it’s from port operators, transportation companies, or Schnitzer Steel – or all three – it’s almost guaranteed to tie things up. Fortunately, the exemption the A’s lobbied for in Sacramento limits lawsuits to 270 days prior to certification. From the perspective of the A’s, it makes sense for them to prepare for that particular legal onslaught.

But the City getting on the same page with the County? They probably figured they had that in the bag. In May 2018, I saw a lot of remarks about how so many key figures were in the same room singing praises of the A’s plans.

The problems, as I pointed out back then, relate to the complexity of the projects. That’s right, projects – plural. As you know by now, there is the Howard Terminal part, the actual ballpark, located on the waterfront near Jack London Square. Then there’s the Coliseum, which will keep its arena (if anyone can afford to run it) and an amphitheater where the old stadium currently stands. Around that redone complex are a sizable urban park, commercial and residential development, plus some additional community facilities. It’s a way to throw a bone to East Oakland for leaving.

The plans also provide for some amount of affordable housing to be built and either or both locations. Just how much is the big topic of negotiation, as City Council President Rebecca Kaplan cited the state’s Surplus Lands Act in trying to put the kibosh on the sale. The main issue is the percentage and number of affordable housing units to be built:

…if the disposed land will be used for residential development, at least 25% of the total number of units in the development must have rents or sale prices that are affordable for persons and families of low- or moderate-income.

Of course, over the post-recession period, the Bay Area has been plagued by an inability to build affordable housing. Call it a perfect storm of rising construction costs, the ridiculous never-ending seller’s market, and the loss of decades-long affordable housing subsidies when former governor Jerry Brown killed redevelopment. There are perfectly reasonable arguments to be made on both sides of the debate. From the City’s angle, surplus land is an extremely limited resource that shouldn’t be handed out without a competitive bidding process. For developers including the A’s, having to bake in an allowance to accommodate a greater amount of affordable housing will undoubtedly cut into the profitability of the project. In the A’s case, it could impact the feasibility of both projects, though the A’s launched their own PR offensive to counter such notions.

Thing is, the A’s haven’t done a very good job of explaining how the two projects aren’t connected. They did a media tour of Howard Terminal a couple weeks to reaffirm their stance. From reading the Community Engagement document available at the A’s Ballpark site, the two efforts appear to be directly related, if not joined at the hip. That’s a tough position to be in, because once you decouple the two projects, it’s easier to argue that one doesn’t need the other.

The explanation is not that difficult. If the A’s are approved to build at Howard Terminal, they plan to build the ballpark in the first phase, hoping for a 2023 Opening Day. The ancillary development at Howard Terminal, whatever form it takes, will take place after the ballpark opens and will take perhaps decades to complete. That makes the A’s ballpark village next to Jack London Square part of the long tail. Meanwhile, the Coliseum is already approved for some 3,000 housing units right now. That makes the Coliseum a sort of bridge financing for the ballpark. Fisher and Lew Wolff employed this to success at the separate Avaya Stadium and iStar developments in San Jose, the latter helping the finance the former. What’s being attempted in Oakland is the same thing on steroids, except for one big difference. iStar, located in South San Jose near where IBM built the first disc drive, was largely undeveloped in its previous form. To date, Avaya Stadium is in its fourth year of operation near SJC Airport after breaking ground in 2012. Some commercial and residential development has been done at the iStar site, though we’re coming to the end of 2019 and not one single-family home has been completed. In San Jose, they built a stadium and a separate subdivision on separate parcels miles apart. In Oakland, they want to do something similar, except that they’ll move the sports-related jobs from the Coliseum to Howard Terminal in the process.

The sales pitch for the Avaya Stadium/iStar package didn’t arouse much debate in San Jose. The stadium was set to replace a former military vehicle manufacturing plant. San Jose’s historic sprawl had plenty of room for 25 acres of new housing, especially after the recession brought construction to a halt. Ten years later, the housing crunch is far more acute, reaching every part of the Bay Area. Collectively, local governments did a poor job of planning to add to the housing stock, including forecasting and accommodating affordable housing. If Oakland officials want to take nearly 200 acres in two high-profile locations and hand it to the A’s to finish the job, they and the A’s should prepare themselves for the lengthy debate to follow. Manfred, who played the nice guy until Wednesday, now gets to play the heavy.

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P.S. – Please don’t tell me how no developers want any part of East Oakland. Besides the A’s interest, the JPA had two unsolicited bids for the land in 2018, Tesla and a group trying to build a soccer complex and stadium at the complex. What developers want is Bay Area land for relatively cheap. Interest from previous developers for Coliseum City, the 2018 bids, and the eventual exclusive negotiating agreements for the A’s shows how much people want to take advantage of the Coliseum. It doesn’t hurt that the land has freeways and a transit hub right next to it. East Oakland has no potential? Perhaps if you’re stuck with a 1968 mindset.

P.P.S. – Read J.K. Dineen’s piece in the Chronicle for an extensive description of one property owner’s CEQA-related shakedown and how it affected both San Francisco and Oakland. Then take a look at that Community Engagement document and try to understand what kinds of partnerships are being forged, and what remains to make a similar one with the City. Keeping any sports team in Oakland is/was going to cost something. The City is thankfully over direct subsidies, but the ambitious nature of these two projects has me thinking that the final price tag will approach eleven figures including cleanup, community commitments, and new infrastructure. That might be what it takes. No one is publicly talking about costs yet. That’s what truly concerns me.

P.P.P.S. – None of the oft-mentioned relocation candidates deserve more than a cursory look unless they approve or start building a major league-ready ballpark. These days that might mean 30,000 seats or less. It probably also means those 30,000 seats will be quite swanky with pricing and amenities to match. The new AAA parks in Las Vegas and Nashville are exactly as advertised – nice AAA parks. They’re not meant to handle MLB crowds temporarily given the greater requirements these days. If someone wants to ink a deal with Henderson, Nevada for a billion-dollar domed ballpark 10 miles from the Strip, good luck.