What is Fisher’s plan?
It is never a good sign for a businessperson when a mayor of a city says why don’t you go back to your old city. That is what has happened in Las Vegas where Mayor Carolyn Goodman expressed the thought that the owner of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics franchise, John Fisher, should just go back to the Bay Area in an interview with Front Office Sports. Goodman is skeptical about Fisher’s intentions to the point where she thinks that Fisher was trying to get an Oakland stadium built by using Las Vegas as a leverage point.
“Mr. Fisher and Dave Kaval have been here innumerable times,” Goodman said. “I know in the back of both of their minds is the thought, ‘If we can just get Oakland to go ahead and build what we need here.’ Dave Kaval is the Oakland franchise president and apparently the chief negotiator on behalf of Fisher. “We had entertained them down here. We have a very large complex, probably 60 acres, and we could’ve cobbled together more land to possibly have 100 acres. It is in the historic old part of town, which is where all major interstate highways come together. We have seven access points to it and it is in an opportunity zone. There are all these benefits, so when they said no, I thought, ‘This doesn’t make sense. This is a great site and they can get a great price on it because it is owned by the city.’ And yet no, they wanted to get close to the Strip with all the congestion and I thought, ‘This does not make sense. So why is it happening? Well, because they really want to stay in Oakland.” Goodman’s interview probably will not play well in the MLB world. A mayor rejecting MLB is unheard of.
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