OAKLAND - RingCentral Coliseum (63,132)

To recap: Raiders want land, parking, no development, all stadium revenue, AND a free $400M from Oakland with no way for city to pay for it.

Based on those terms, safe to say Raiders attempts to stay in Oakland is either complete charade or disgusting attempt to fleece taxpayers.

Find it hilarious & sad national writers still point finger at Oakland ($100M in debt, being asked for $400M more) for lack of Raiders deal.

As a Raiders fan its hard to admit it, but its becoming pretty clear Oakland will be better off as a city without the NFL.

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The National Football League could step in as the developer of a new Oakland Raiders stadium and surrounding development in a plan under discussion by the league and Oakland city officials.

The plan, first reported by Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal, could help Oakland hit a Dec. 28 deadline that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell set last week for Oakland, San Diego and St. Louis to deliver plans to keep NFL teams in their current cities or risk seeing them move.

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The Raiders are using cups taped to the ceiling for Coliseum leaks.

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The Oakland A's are being pitched several potential ballpark sites in and around the city center, as the team continues exploring options for a new East Bay home.

A 21-page city report submitted to team officials last month and obtained by this newspaper identified five potentially viable ballpark sites, including two on the campus of Laney College and one at a U.S. Postal Service facility in West Oakland.

A's co-owner Lew Wolff declined to discuss the sites Tuesday. In an email, Wolff said the ballclub was continuing to take a second look at possible stadium locations within its East Bay territory and that there was no timetable for completing its review.

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Oakland A’s to make new stadium announcement this year

The A’s president Dave Kaval said the team will make an announcement regarding a new ballpark within the next year.

Kaval made the announcement around 11 a.m. at the Fan Fest event in Oakland.

He says the official stadium announcement will include the site and timeline for building the new stadium.

However Kaval did not say when exactly the announcement will come this year.

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A’s President Dave Kaval Offers the Inside Scoop on Team’s New Stadium

When asked about his vision and priorites for the new stadium and when he will announce the team’s plans, he was fairly definitive…

This year we will announce the location and the timeline, and the timeline will include when we’re going to break ground. I was hopeful we could even make the announcement today, but we just haven’t done all the work necessary to make sure that we make the right decision, and to make sure that we get all the feedback from the community…In terms of design, I think the over-arching theme is intimacy. We want a ballpark that’s intimate, where you’re close to the action – think more like Wrigley or Fenway than Yankee Stadium or some of the bigger stadiums…The thing is we want somewhere where, even if you’re in the upper deck, you’re close to the action and every seat is a good seat. And if you come to Avaya Stadium, which we built for the Earthquakes, we have that, and it’s been so well received…It also creates an amazing fan experience – it’s loud, it’s raucous, it’s somewhere that we could take the Oakland fans and energize them and actually create a home-field advantage for our club…The other thing that I think is really important when you do a ballpark is you want to celebrate the history of the organization. So we want to go back all the way to Philadelphia. We’re looking at the possibility of putting in a museum that celebrates the actual history of the Athletics, all the way back to 1901 with the Philadelphia A’s, as well as our Kansas City period, then obviously here in Oakland – that’s a really important piece of the puzzle…And then I think you need to create neighborhoods – places in the ballpark where fans can gather and congregate and have a shared experience around the sport. And that could include things like we did at Avaya with the scoreboard bar. It could include an amazing bleacher section, with old-school bleachers. They might be wood – maybe we get reclaimed redwood and have a totally new thing, something that people actually appreciate and take pride in, because we want to have the people with the bed sheets and the signs. We don’t want to lose any of that with the new ballpark, because that’s how you give a building a soul, and that’s something that’s really important to us.

Asked what sites, besides the Coliseum and Howard Terminal, are currently being considered and what some of the major considerations are, Kaval provided more details about the team’s thinking and also revealed that some new technology had been deployed at FanFest…

The other two sites are in and around the Lake Merritt area…We’re trying to evaluate each one of those opportunities independently so we make a good decision…I think one thing about that location is that we kind of look at it as areas in and around the Lake Merritt BART station, because that’s a really important transit hub for the community. I think here, on this site at Howard [Terminal], some of the challenges are just around transit and making sure you can get people here. That’s the nice thing about having this event today…so we can understand how this site would even work. And actually, we’re flying a drone above us right now – it’s looking at where people go and patterns and all that stuff.

When asked what A’s fans can expect on the stadium front in the coming months, Kaval seemed eager to get the show on the road…

This year, as soon as possible, we’re going to announce where we’re going to build the ballpark. And this is as important – it’s one thing to just pick a site, but we’re actually going to announce the roadmap to opening day…There’s different pros and cons or challenges and opportunities with every site. And I think, at the end of the day, we want to shoot for something that can really be transformative. We want to make sure that we have a vibrant ballpark experience around the actual location and people are living there and there are bars and restaurants and it can be a place to be. That’s what these ballparks can do, and that’s our mission.

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The Oakland Raiders owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking revenue to the Coliseum stadium authority, which puts them in default on their lease and could jeopardize the team’s ability to keep playing at the Coliseum.

The stunning revelation came at Wednesday’s Oakland-Alameda County Authority board meeting.

Board members expect the team to resolve the dispute and continue playing at the Coliseum in 2017. But if they don’t pay up, Reid said he will not agree to exercise the Raiders’ option to play in Oakland for the 2018 season.

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A’s Ownership Wants To Buy The Coliseum

The Oakland A’s owners have sent a letter to Mayor Libby Schaaf and the City Council expressing the team’s desire to assume control of the Oakland Coliseum complex in exchange for paying more than $135 million in debt currently owed by the city and Alameda County at the site.

Schaaf responded to the letter Monday morning that the city has reviewing the offer.

“I’m excited to work with the A’s in their commitment to stay in Oakland and build a privately financed ballpark,” said Schaaf in a release. “We look forward to reviewing, analyzing, and considering the offer.”

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USL East Bay owner Mark D. Hall submits an offer letter to Oakland Mayor and City Council describing a multi-stadium project for professional baseball, professional soccer and youth sports at the Oakland Coliseum Complex.

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Oakland lining up lawsuit against Raiders, so team threatens to leave town early

The Oakland City Council has authorized a multimillion-dollar, antitrust lawsuit against the NFL and the Raiders over the team’s impending move to Las Vegas — legal action that Coliseum officials said could result in the team leaving Oakland at the end of the upcoming season.

Oakland Councilman Noel Gallo said Tuesday that the lawsuit is expected to be filed and announced within days, probably before the Raiders’ home opener at the Coliseum on Monday night against the Los Angeles Rams.

A second City Hall source told us the city attorney’s office was preparing to file the antitrust suit, and is awaiting contract language sign-offs from three outside law firms that will handle the litigation.

The outside attorneys have agreed to cover all the up-front costs of the suit, which will likely seek millions of dollars in damages for the team’s exit. In exchange, the outside firms would collect a portion of whatever dollar damages they are able to extract from the Raiders and the National Football League.

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The Oakland A’s are set to unveil a “bigger than baseball” mega-ballpark deal that includes a “jewel box” waterfront stadium at Howard Terminal on the city’s waterfront.

The plan would also turn the current Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum site into a tech and housing hub that would keep the Oracle Arena as is, while stripping the massive stadium there down to a low-rise sports park and amphitheater.

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Judge issues order to stop Oakland A's from buying Coliseum land from Alameda County

A judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the County of Alameda, prohibiting it from entering into a contract to sell its half of the Oakland Coliseum property to the Oakland A's.

"We are disappointed the temporary restraining order was granted," said A's Team President Dave Kaval after the brief court hearing in downtown Oakland. "It's obviously another complication in terms of moving ahead with the project in East Oakland."

The A's and Alameda County supervisors had agreed on a non-binding term sheet for the county to sell its share of the coliseum land to the team for $85 million.

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Judge has set next court day for Nov 14. @AlamedaCounty attorney argued that the proposed sale of its 1/2 of coliseum property not subject to “Surplus Land” Act as #Oakland city attorney argues. Judge wants both sides to brief issues and return next month.

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Alameda County agrees to sell its share of Oakland Coliseum to A’s

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted Monday afternoon to sell its ownership in the 155-acre Coliseum arena complex to the Oakland A’s.

The vote comes after months of fighting with the city of Oakland over whether the county should be allowed to sell its share of the stadium site, which is jointly owned by the county and the city. The city filed a lawsuit in September to block the sale but has since dropped the suit.

The A’s, who have shared the Coliseum with the Raiders, hope to redevelop the area into a “multisports facility” that would include affordable housing and parks. The city, which will remain the co-owner of the site, would have to approve future plans.

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