OAKLAND - RingCentral Coliseum (63,132)

Raiders stadium site preference could hasten A's exit

OAKLAND -- The Raiders and A's have thrown a new monkey wrench into Oakland's efforts to keep both teams.

Despite their home field being surrounded by acres of parking lot, the Raiders want to build a football-only stadium at the exact location of the current Coliseum, officials said. That would leave the A's with no home field -- not that the A's, who are still eager to move to San Jose, would mind.

"We would not inhibit someone from building a brand-new football stadium if that is what they want to do," A's co-owner Lew Wolff said. When asked where the A's would play if the Coliseum became a construction site, Wolff replied, "That's our business."

City and county leaders have been surprised by the Raiders' stadium site preference and its potential to push the A's out of town. "I can't say why the Raiders would like to have the facility built on the existing footprint," said Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, who sits on the board that oversees the Coliseum complex. "That would interfere with the A's ability to stay there."

Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid, who also sits on the board, said the Raiders' stadium preference would give the A's added leverage in the team's bid for permission to move to San Jose. "Lew Wolff would be happy if that was the scenario that played out," Reid said. "He could tell Major League Baseball, 'See, they didn't want us. Look what they're doing for the Raiders.'"

The Raiders declined to comment Friday on their stadium plans or where they would play while a new stadium is constructed other than to reiterate in a prepared statement that the team and city are determining the viability of a stadium project and that "there is a real sense of urgency for both parties."

Of the three teams that play at the Coliseum complex, the Raiders are the only one that has stated a preference for staying, although team owner Mark Davis has said he's also discussing potential stadium deals in Los Angeles. The team's lease in Oakland expires at the end of this season.

The A's are negotiating a new lease at the Coliseum that would have an out clause depending on the Raiders stadium plans. Oakland has proposed the Coliseum parking lot and a former shipping terminal near Jack London Square as viable sites for a new ballpark, but Wolff, who would have to finance the construction, has repeatedly said neither is feasible.

A football-only Raiders stadium also might not pencil out in Oakland. The Coliseum's oversight board was informed in July that a 56,500-seat Raiders stadium would cost about $800 million to build and that the team would likely contribute only $300 million.

The specter of a public stadium subsidy could give the city and county more leverage to decide exactly where at the Coliseum complex a Raiders stadium would be built. "Whatever the Raiders want doesn't mean that they're going to get what they want," Miley said.

Andy Dolich, a longtime sports executive, said the Raiders should be willing to build a stadium adjacent to the Coliseum, but added that the status quo could remain in place for years to come.

"These teams are in Oakland," he said. "And there needs to be tremendous mountains to be moved from a finance standpoint, from a league standpoint and from a legal standpoint for them to go anyplace else."

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OAKLAND—The Oakland Athletics’ need for a new stadium was highlighted again Tuesday night when a sewage backup from a bathroom adjacent to the A’s dugout forced players and coaches to watch the final three innings of their 2-1 walk-off win over the Angels from the top step.

The problem wasn’t as severe as the massive sewage backup that spilled into both clubhouses in June, forcing players from the A’s and Seattle Mariners to shower in the Oakland Raiders’ locker room at O.co Coliseum.

But it left several inches of toilet water in the A’s dugout, which stadium workers were still mopping up two hours before Wednesday’s game.

“It wasn’t as bad as it looked, but it’s still bad,” Oakland catcher Derek Norris said. “It’s part of the things you have to deal with here. It’s not fun. It’s not awesome. But we have to just keep playing, and hopefully someday we’ll move into a nice new stadium that doesn’t have health hazards all over the place.”

Lew Wolff has been the point man in searching for a new stadium since 2003, first as the team’s vice president of venue development and then as managing partner.

In 2009, after the collapse of a proposed site in Fremont, Wolff pitched a move to San Jose. The San Francisco Giants have territorial rights there, so Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a task force to evaluate the situation.

After four years with no decision, the city of San Jose sued Major League Baseball in June. MLB has asked that the suit be thrown out, citing the immunity provided by its federal antitrust exemption. A hearing is set for Oct. 4.

But instead of using Tuesday’s plumbing snafu to intensify lobbying efforts for a new stadium, Wolff defended the antiquated, 45-year-old Coliseum.

“We’re making a bigger issue of it than it really is,” Wolff said. “It’s not fair to all the people at the Coliseum, all of the staff here, who work hard to keep this place going. We haven’t had that many problems of that nature. This could happen in your house.”

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will101 said:

This sort of thing does wonders for the A's when they court free agents.

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A city of 124,000 could be the next home for the Oakland Raiders.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, owner Mark Davis recently toured the Concord Naval Weapons Station on Friday as the potential location for a new stadium.

“He made no commitments, but my feeling, he liked the looks of the property,” Concord Mayor Dan Helix said.

The 5,000-acre facility has been decommissioned and is being cleaned up.

The proximity of the site to the Concord BART line caught the owner’s attention, since 30 percent of the team’s fans use the local subway system to get to the team’s games.

Davis has said he wants to build a new stadium that would hold roughly 58,000. Oakland is believed to be the first choice, but not much progress has been made. The Raiders also are believed to be a candidate to return to Los Angeles.

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slipperydog said:

Overnight timelapse video from Saturday evening (A's) to Sunday afternoon (Raiders)

http://blog.sfgate.com/raiders/2013/10/06/timelapse-watch-the-coliseum-go-from-baseball-to-football/

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JRDV created the master plan for the redevelopment of the Bay Area’s famed Coliseum District. The plan’s key elements are: a new next-generation sports and entertainment district, a high-density, mixed-use transit district with intermodal transit hub, and a waterfront science and technology district. The overall plan creates a strategy for change and transformation of the largest underutilized transit-served urban redevelopment opportunity in California into an economically vital community. The master plan establishes land-use, urban design guidelines, development and transit strategies that will enable a viable economic reuse of this critical urban resource. The centerpiece of the plan is the redevelopment of the Coliseum site, which is planned to integrate the professional sports facilities into an authentic functioning urban context. The master plan will allow retail, restaurants, and entertainment uses to leverage off of the sports uses to create a world-class sports-themed urban entertainment district. Above these ground floor uses are office, hotel, and residential uses. Transit connections to BART have been improved to create a true intermodal transit and pedestrian-centered urban center.

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OAKLAND, Calif. -- The Oakland Athletics and Oakland Raiders have new lease agreements to remain at the stadium they share in Oakland.

Officials overseeing the O.co Coliseum approved short term leases on Monday for both teams.

The Raiders' lease was extended through the end of the 2014-15 season. The A's were signed up through December 2015.

The coliseum Joint Powers Authority says the Raiders will pay $400,000 in 2014. The A's will pay $1.75 million each of the two years of the extension.

The lease deals now go before Oakland and Alameda County officials for approval.

The coliseum authority says it plans to continue working on a long-term deal to retain both teams. The A's have made no secret of their desire to leave for San Jose.

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OAKLAND, Calif. — A woman who jumped from the third level of the Oakland Raiders' stadium survived after a man tried to catch her and broke her fall, authorities said.

The woman, who was not identified, was critically injured Sunday after plunging about 45 feet at O.co Coliseum. She jumped shortly after the Raiders' 23-19 loss to the Tennessee Titans, as fans filed out of the stadium.

The good Samaritan was seriously injured but was conscious and talking at the hospital, police said.

"He saved her life quite honestly, at his own expense," Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson told the Oakland Tribune. "This guy 100 percent saved her life. She'd be dead now."

Nelson said the woman went to a seating area that was covered by a tarp and appeared to be alone when she jumped. Fans who spotted her tried to stop her.

"I yelled at her, 'Don't do it, please don't do it!' about 10 times. But she crawled out to the edge and jumped," witness Ron Brown of Sacramento told KTVU-TV.

The injured man was with a friend lingering near the flagpoles and Al Davis commemorative flame when he saw the commotion around the woman, Nelson told KTVU-TV.

The man also repeatedly shouted, "Don't do it," as he lunged toward the woman as she dropped and was knocked down as he tried to catch her, Nelson said.

Arriving paramedics found the woman in very critical condition, and the man also injured on the concourse. Initially, they thought she fell on him, but witnesses say he actually jumped to where she was falling, and tried to save her.

Nelson visited the injured man in the hospital Sunday evening.

"He just couldn't imagine having people see that," Nelson said. "He said it was a reaction. Even now, at the hospital he's very concerned about her. He's a real compassionate person."

The 61-year-old man's name was not released. Nelson told KTVU that the man is from Stockton and he has served in the Marine Corps. He is also a longtime Raiders fan and a season ticket holder.

The fall was the second such incident at an NFL game on Sunday. In Baltimore, a 48-year-old man was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after he fell on some stairs at M&T Bank Stadium during the Ravens game against the New York Jets, authorities said.

No updates on the man's condition were available.

Last weekend, two fans were injured in Orchard Park, N.Y., after one fan slid down a railing from the upper deck of Ralph Wilson Stadium during the Buffalo Bills' home game against the Jets. Both were briefly hospitalized and released.

On the NFL's opening day this year, a fan died from a fall off a pedestrian overpass outside Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and two others were injured when a railing collapsed at the Colts game against the Raiders in Indianapolis.

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By Matthew Artz

Oakland Tribune

OAKLAND -- The Oakland Raiders and Oakland A's have both agreed to short-term lease extensions that buy time for East Bay leaders trying to keep both teams in Oakland well into the future.

The joint city of Oakland-Alameda County board that operates the Coliseum complex approved Monday a two-year extension for the A's that will keep the team in Oakland through 2015 and a one-year extension with the Raiders through next football season.

The deals will require the A's to more than double their total payments from $800,000 last season to $1.75 million in each of the next two years, while the Raiders total rent will drop from more than $3 million this year to just under $1 million next year.

Both the A's and Raiders want new stadiums and view their continued sharing of the publicly-owned Coliseum as a stopgap measure. With the teams staying put for now, East Bay leaders are continuing with plans to redevelop the Coliseum complex as a privately-financed sports and entertainment center as well as a potential alternative stadium site for the A's near Jack London Square.

"The most important thing about this deal is that it opens the door to make a better long-term deal," said Oakland Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who also sits on the Coliseum board.

Although the board voted 7-1 to approve both deals, commissioners acknowledged that they had hoped to extract more concessions from the A's, who will continue to control valuable concessions rights at the Coliseum that grants them a share of proceeds from Raiders games.

Commissioners relented on their demands recently after Major League Baseball threatened to help the A's move to AT&T Park in San Francisco. City and county officials didn't want to get in a fight with the league, whose support it will need to keep the A's in Oakland.

"At the end of the day, it's not ideal, but it's progress," said Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, who is chairman of the Coliseum board. "The big thing is Major League Baseball supports this, and I think it's important to have (their) support for what we're doing with the A's for the moment and looking toward the future."

Board member Aaron Goodwin, who is also a sports agent, cast the lone dissenting vote. He said after the meeting that the board should have held out for a longer lease and more money from the A's. "I didn't think this deal was fair for the fans or the public, so I couldn't vote for it," he said.

The lease extensions offer little relief to city and county taxpayers who remain on the hook for renovations to the Coliseum made two decades ago to bring the Raiders back from Los Angeles. Debt service on those bonds will cost $14.6 million this year and at least $10 million a year through 2025.

By then, both teams might call a different city home. The A's still want to move to San Jose over the objections of the San Francisco Giants. The Raiders have said they want to stay, but are also considering a return to Los Angeles if the push to build a new football stadium in Oakland falters.

The lease deal bumps up the A's annual rent from $800,000 last season to $1.5 million over the next two seasons. The A's also agreed to pay a $250,000 fee for the rights to control concessions at the Coliseum.

Additionally, the team and the Coliseum board agreed to go to arbitration to settle a dispute over whether the A's can deduct rent money to offset a city parking tax. Since the tax, which pays for police and violence prevention programs, was first imposed at the Coliseum in 2009, the team has withheld more than $3 million in rent payments, Coliseum officials said.

The Raiders deal requires the team to pay a total of $925,000 for use of the stadium and the team's training complex -- plus half the team's revenue from game day concessions, parking and club seating. The team's total rent had jumped from $525,000 to roughly $1.5 million two years ago, $2 million last season and $3 million this season.

The Coliseum authority agreed to the one-year reduction, citing that the Raiders did not derive substantial revenue from the Coliseum and was negotiating in good faith to stay in Oakland long-term, said Deena McClain, the authority's interim executive director. The Raiders declined to comment about the lease extension Monday.

Parking fees will be capped at $35 next season at Raiders games and the team will be allowed to play one "home" game abroad.

Additionally, the Raiders will be able to rent its training facility in Alameda for $525,000 even if it plays elsewhere in two seasons as long as the team is negotiating in good faith for a new stadium at the Coliseum complex.

The extensions won't become final until they are approved next month by the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

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Oakland ballpark backers tout waterfront site

Imagine AT&T Park flanked by giant shipping cranes - that's pretty much the vision A's boosters have for a 38,000-seat ballpark at the Port of Oakland, just west of Jack London Square.

The $500 million waterfront ballpark is being proposed by a team led by Clorox chairman and CEO Don Knauss and former Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream boss T. Gary Rogers - with the blessing of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan.

"It's one of the two sites we promised Major League Baseball we would offer, and it will be available early next year," Quan told us Friday - the other being the current Coliseum site.

"Trust me, Oakland is hot now," Quan said, "and a lot of developers would love that (waterfront) site if it doesn't become a baseball stadium."

The Save the A's effort also includes at least two other prominent figures, development consultant Doug Boxer (son of Sen. Barbara Boxer) and Mike Ghielmetti, whose Signature Development Group wants to turn Oakland's Brooklyn Basin into housing, retail shops and parks.

The idea is to entice A's owners John Fisher and Lew Wolff to join the plan - or, failing that, to get Major League Baseball to see Oakland as a viable spot for a new ballpark and kill the A's hopes of moving to San Jose once and for all.

"The group envisions itself as a caretaker during the period it takes to get the A's to come to the table," said one knowledgeable source, who asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the talks involving MLB.

Team waiting on deck
Our source added that the ballpark backers aren't "looking to jockey for ownership" of the A's. However, if Fisher and Wolff aren't interested in the ballpark idea, we're told, leaders of the stadium effort will form a new ownership team that would be ready to step up to the plate.

The group will soon ask the Port of Oakland to give it control over the 50-acre Howard Terminal site. It says it has raised enough money to start an environmental review and get the regulatory approval process going, and it's come up with drawings of what the stadium might look like.

Project backers say the ballpark requires only 14 acres, leaving ample space for retail development or other uses that would help pay for a stadium, as well as parking.

And though it's too early to say if public money would be required, there has been talk of the port providing the land for the ballpark at nominal cost in hopes of spurring economic activity in the area.

To call Wolff skeptical of the Howard Terminal idea, however, would be an understatement. "It would be easier to build on Treasure Island," he told us.

"All I care about is getting a new home for the A's in the best possible circumstances - and under any circumstances, Howard Terminal would be as close to impossible as anything," Wolff said.

He wasn't willing to give an instant replay of all his objections, but in the past he has pointed to toxic wastes that will require an expensive cleanup and the difficulty of persuading the state to agree to a non-maritime use of the site. Wolff also has noted that the land is tied up in a long-term lease.

But the ballpark group contends that most of Wolff's fears are outdated or wrong.

The last leaseholder, SSA Marine, was recently allowed to bail from Howard Terminal to settle a lawsuit in which the company accused the port of giving a competitor better terms.

That cleared the way for the port to open the property for new bids. It has received three competing maritime-related proposals, but our sources expect the port to find that Howard Terminal is no longer suitable for such uses because they provide limited financial return.

On the other hand, a new stadium drawing more than 2 million fans a year to the waterfront could be the engine needed to help turn around the port's long-struggling Jack London Square and neighboring properties.

"Not only is it the most viable site, but it's also a phenomenal site," one booster said of Howard Terminal.

Convenient location
The site is along the Oakland Estuary's inner harbor, just more than a mile from both BART's West Oakland and 12th Street stations. Ballpark backers think another BART station could be added a couple of blocks from the terminal, along the existing tracks above Fourth Street.

The terminal is also within blocks of Interstates 880 and 980.

Port Commission member Bryan Parker, who is running against Quan for mayor, said the panel is obligated to see whether the terminal can still be used for maritime purposes. But the commission also needs to "look at opportunities - including but not limited to the A's situation - that can be transformative from an economic perspective," he said.

Quan has been pitching a new A's ballpark as part of an ambitious "Coliseum City" complex she envisions on the site of the current Coliseum complex along I-880. Privately, however, the mayor has been talking up the waterfront plan for months - and it's the one idea that seems to be gaining traction.

So, batter up.

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