OAKLAND — Despite advice from the city administration that its staff needed more time to research proposals from two groups vying to redevelop the vast Oakland Coliseum site, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with one of them.
The City Council approved a resolution to authorize an exclusive negotiating agreement with the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, which will give the group 12 months to work out a deal to either buy or lease the city’s 50% share of the Coliseum site. The group will have to pay a $200,000 fee to negotiate and $2.5 million to pay for staff time spent on the negotiations and other expenses.
At the end of the year, the city can choose to extend the negotiations for another year, sign a development agreement to confirm terms of the deal and prepare for construction or end talks and seek out other developers.
AASEG includes founding partner Ray Bobbitt, former Oakland city manager Robert Bobb, developer Alan Dones, sports agent Bill Duffy and consultant Shonda Scott in partnership with Black-owned investment firm Loop Capital, and the group wants to transform the Coliseum site — which includes the Coliseum stadium that currently houses the A’s and once hosted the Oakland Raiders, and the Oakland Arena that once was home to the Golden State Warriors, as well as the parking lots around it — into a complex containing housing, sports facilities for a Black-owned NFL team and potentially WNBA team, a retail and business district, and a college satellite campus or other academic center focused on sports and entertainment business.
The group’s leaders have vowed to commit to making 35% of the housing units affordable, although they have not yet shared how many housing units they plan to have, and they want to create a “Black Wall Street” district to support Black-owned businesses.
The group has highlighted its intention to reel in a WNBA expansion team run by Black owners to play in the Arena, and recently revealed that 14-year WNBA veteran Alana Beard would partner with it to lead that effort.
The details of those plans and the viability of making them a reality will likely be hashed out over the year-long negotiating period, but the vision was enough to sway the City Council to choose the group over another.
Since July, city staff had been in talks with both AASEG and another group led by former A’s star pitcher and Oakland native Dave Stewart and certified player agent Lonnie Murray. They were proposing to buy the site for $115 million to refurbish the Oakland Arena for concerts and music production, to add youth sports and recreation fields, and to build housing, a museum or library, a business incubator, office space, retail and restaurants.
The plan in July, as directed by a City Council vote then, was for staff to return in January with a recommendation and more information about each group’s plan.
City staff told the council on Tuesday that they recommended waiting until January to make a decision. Larry Gallegos of the city’s economic and workforce development department emphasized the concerns included in a memo to the council that “the teams have not shown strong evidence of extensive experience with building comparable large-scale, multi-phased real estate projects similar in size, scale and cost as what is being contemplated for the Coliseum Complex” and that staff was still doing due diligence on the groups’ and their plans.
The city was also waiting on confirmation from the state that it had approved its process for noticing the land under the Surplus Lands Act, which requires the city to notify appropriate developers that the land is available for sale. Alameda County has been under investigation by the state for potentially violating that law when it signed an agreement to sell its share of the Coliseum to the Oakland A’s, although a spokesperson for the California Department of Housing and Community Development did not confirm the status of that investigation this week.
Some city councilmembers expressed concern for staff’s desire to wait.
Treva Reid, who represents the East Oakland district that includes the Coliseum, said she has believed for months that it would have been better for the city to issue a request for proposals for the development of the property, to make it a more open and transparent process.
“There are concerns about it being rushed through,” Reid said. Still, she said, AASEG seemed to engage the community extensively, showing up at clean-events, resource fairs and community meetings. “I regret to share that the public has not seen the same level of engagement from the Stewart group.”
She ultimately voted to approve the resolution to sign an agreement with AASEG.
“It’s important we do acknowledge what this decision is,” said Councilmember Loren Taylor. “It’s not a final sale agreement or long term lease. It’s a commitment to work with one group to move forward.”
Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said she understood staff’s concern, but she said that with the federal infrastructure bill recently passed, “there is an opportunity to move forward and seek funding for Oakland. I’d like to see us move forward.”
Fortunato Bas added that because any agreement would come back to the council, this is an opportunity to “get really clear on what the terms would be” — including important elements like affordable housing commitments.
The group will likely have to work with the Oakland A’s, which signed an agreement to buy a 50% share of the Coliseum site from Alameda County two years ago for $85 million. If the state’s Surplus Lands Act investigation into the county does not halt the team’s purchase of the deal, which is being completed over the next few years in installments, it will be a co-owner of the site.
The A’s have been tight-lipped about their plans for the property. When they bought it, the team said their intent was to redevelop the Coliseum site into housing, retail, office and research campus space. Team President Dave Kaval and Major League Baseball officials have been adamant that the A’s won’t continue playing at the Coliseum after the lease expires in 2024 unless the new ballpark is under construction.
The A’s are still negotiating with the city to build a 35,000-seat waterfront ballpark, about 3,000 homes, hotel rooms, office space and an entertainment complex at Howard Terminal, near Jack London Square. The team is also exploring sites in Las Vegas and southern Nevada for a potential home.
Source: www.mercurynews.com