‘A’s’ miss Oakland bus; keep Vegas plans open

Article posted by Coliseum, October 11^th, 2022

Image: RingCentral Coliseum & Oakland Arena

A key deadline to keep hope alive for Oakland officials and the Major League Baseball (MLB) team Oakland Athletics (US) to reach agreement on a new Bay Area ballpark by year’s end has come and gone.

‘Las Vegas Review-Journal’ stated that could be good news for Southern Nevada as the ‘A’s’ are still discussing potential ballpark sites in Las Vegas (US) should the Oakland plan fail and the team pursues relocation.

The Oakland Athletics are an American professional baseball team based in Oakland, California, US. The Athletics compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League West division. The team plays its home games at the Oakland Coliseum.

The 63,132-capacity Oakland Coliseum, currently branded as RingCentral Coliseum, is a stadium in Oakland, California, US. It is part of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Complex, with the adjacent Oakland Arena, near Interstate 880. The Coliseum is the home ballpark of the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball.

The ‘A’s’ new venue plans include creating mixed-use development with up to 3,000 residential units, up to 1.5 million square feet of offices and up to 270,000 square feet of retail uses. The proposed development at the Port of Oakland’s Howard Terminal includes plans for a $12 billion mixed-use project built around a $1 billion, 30,000-seat waterfront ballpark.

‘Las Vegas Review-Journal’ further stated that the Oakland City Administrator Ed Reiskin said last month that the City and the ‘A’s’ needed to finalize a development agreement for a proposed $12 billion Howard Terminal project – including a $1 billion waterfront ballpark – by last week. Without that, he said a binding vote this year by the Oakland City Council would be all but out of the question.

Reiskin cited a tight timeline of other necessary reviews that would have followed between this month and early December as the reason for the deadline.

Now that Reiskin’s deadline has passed, it appears the project will creep into 2023. The team has a lease agreement to play at the aging RingCentral Coliseum through 2024 and has set a goal of having a new stadium project in motion by then.

Remarked Justin Berton, City of Oakland spokesman, “Negotiations on the proposed development are active and positive,” but did not address if the missed deadline meant a binding vote on the project this year was in jeopardy.

Not having a deal done this year is significant since the Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf is restricted from serving after this year because of term limits and the November election could bring other changes to the City Council. That means negotiations on the project would have to all but start over with a new administration.

Both the ‘A’s’ and Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Rob Manfred have noted the urgency for the team to figure out its future ballpark plans. Manfred gave the ‘A’s’ the ‘OK’ to explore relocation in 2021 due to the condition the Coliseum is in.

In late June, ‘A’s’ President Dave Kaval said that if the ballpark efforts in Oakland were pushed into 2023 that it could “doom our efforts in Oakland”.

The A’s declined to comment on the missed deadline and Manfred said he didn’t have anything to say about the matter “right now”.

In Las Vegas, the ‘A’s’ are in negotiations on a pair of potential sites where they could relocate and build a $1 billion ballpark if Oakland doesn’t pan out.

The team is in discussion with casino magnate Phil Ruffin on the 38-acre Las Vegas Festival Grounds site on the North Strip. The two sides have met multiple times in Oakland and Las Vegas to discuss the site’s potential for a MLB stadium, according to sources.

Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom last month called the talks between Ruffin and the ‘A’s’ “very high level”, and said a ballpark project is “doable” on the site.

Talks are also being had with Bally’s Corp., which owns the Tropicana. Bally’s saw its $148 million acquisition of the Tropicana’s non-land assets from Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc. finalized last week. Bally’s will lease the land the hotel-casino sits on from Gaming and Leisure Properties for $10.5 million annually.

Bally’s Chairman Soohyung Kim said this year that the company would “almost certainly” look to redevelop the 35-acre site. One of those possibilities is demolishing the Tropicana and building an MLB ballpark on the South Strip.

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