Land not baseball.
Governmental procedures during May could be quite critical for the Oakland Athletics ownership in its quest to build a baseball park on a piece of Oakland’s waterfront. The California state legislature is looking at two bills that would make it easier for the baseball team’s ownership to build a ballpark along with housing and businesses. A’s ownership is also hopeful that a deal can be finalized with the Port of Oakland which would allow the team to get the land needed for the stadium-village project. Additionally, A’s ownership is trying to buy a piece of the property where the Oakland Coliseum and Arena sit from Alameda County. A’s owners would develop that property but there is a long way to go before the deal is completed. The waterfront property is the ownership’s first preference for a stadium. The present Oakland Coliseum parcel seems to be a fallback option. There are a myriad of questions that need answers from funding to environmental impact, to traffic patterns and whether a gondola can be used to get people to go to the park.
The A’s ownership wants a modern stadium with all of the money revenue gadgets that teams, such as the San Francisco Giants ownership have on the other side of the San Francisco Bay, have. Various A’s owners have spent the past four decades looking for a new ballpark. Charlie Finley sold the team to Denver interests about four decades ago but the deal fell through. A’s owners looked at San Jose for a solution but that is San Francisco Giants territory even though Oakland is closer to San Francisco than San Jose and a court upheld the Giants territorial rights because of the 1922 Supreme Court Of the United States decision that gave baseball an antitrust exemption. A stadium proposal in Fremont fell through. It is Oakland or bust.
