Oakland wants to buy county’s half of Coliseum
Alameda County and Oakland are prepared to negotiate a deal to sever their 52-year-old joint ownership of the Coliseum sports complex and surrounding land in the hope that a single owner would make it easier to build housing and attract business to the industrial area dotted with vacant lots, a city official said Thursday.
With the departures of the Warriors and Raiders from the East Oakland site in the next few years, officials say having the city as the sole landlord would hasten development. Rather than negotiate projects and contracts with two local governments, sports teams, builders and businesses could more efficiently negotiate with the city alone, both sides say.
“The city of Oakland and Alameda County are aligned in the view that development of the Coliseum property would be simplified and streamlined with a single owner that controls all aspects of the future development process,” City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said in a statement to The Chronicle. “To that end, the city and county are engaging in discussions on the terms of an agreement that will be mutually beneficial. We will publicly discuss the outcome of these negotiations at the appropriate time.”
City spokeswoman Karen Boyd said the first meeting will take place this month.
In the divorce, the city would keep the land — including 130 acres in Oakland and the Alameda site that now houses the Raiders training facility — and the county would probably get lots of cash. Before it could sell its stake to Oakland, however, the county would need to pay off its share of outstanding stadium debt, about $38 million, owed to the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Board of Supervisors President Wilma Chan said that wouldn’t be a problem.
Yet the county’s outstanding debt could rise by as much as $20 million if the Warriors win a legal case against the city and county, which argue that the team should have to pay all outstanding debt on the basketball portion of the sports complex even after it leaves Oakland.
The dual ownership, known as the Coliseum Authority, began in 1966, the year the complex opened. Chan said the arrangement has long stymied development of the Coliseum site, and she sent the city a formal letter proposing its dissolution in December.
“We’d like to see something developed out there and developed more quickly,” Chan said. “When we had offers that didn’t pan out before, they’d have to go to us and then go to them. It was very tedious.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf could not be reached for comment. But she told Chan in January that she agreed the city should own the property alone and that she hoped to begin negotiating soon with the county.
Under a deal, Oakland would be expected to buy out the county’s 50 percent stake in the Oakland Coliseum, Oracle Arena, Raiders training facility and headquarters in Alameda, and the “Malibu” site — an unpaved parking lot behind the stadium.
Previous appraisals have valued the land containing and immediately surrounding the sports complex at $150 million.
It’s not the first time county officials have tried to bow out of the joint operation. In 2015, they outlined a proposal to NFL executives and Schaaf, but a deal never materialized.
This time, Oakland City Council President Larry Reid, who sits on the Coliseum Authority board, is optimistic.
“It’s something that can get resolved over a few months,” he said of a deal.
For their part, county officials have tapped Patrick O’Connell, the county’s retired auditor-controller, to work as their consultant in the possible transaction.
Officials on both sides said it never made sense for the county to co-own the sports complex. Chan pointed out that the land surrounding the Coliseum property belongs to the city and is subject to city regulations and zoning. The county’s domain, meanwhile, is health care, social services and public safety in unincorporated areas.
“We thought it would just be better if we got out of the sports business because we have a lot on our plates as it is,” Chan said. “The city absolutely has more jurisdiction over these issues.”
It’s unclear whether simplifying the ownership structure of the property will solve its development problems.
Oakland officials have long tried to spur commercial and housing development in the area encircling the sports complex. They spent years creating zoning regulations and a strategy, enshrined in a 200-page plan, to turn the district into a destination for retail, arts, sports, entertainment, science and technology. But despite the trifecta of built-in transportation — Interstate 880, the Oakland Airport and BART — the coveted development bonanza never materialized, and the No. 1 goal of the plan, keeping Oakland’s sports teams, failed in at least two of three cases.
Where the A’s, the third, unresolved case, choose to build their new ballpark will affect the fate of development around the Coliseum. While the A’s first-choice landing spot, near Lake Merritt, was rejected by the owner and current occupant, the Peralta Community College District, the team has said that option remains on the table. Another option is to rebuild its current home, the Coliseum, or construct a ballpark at Howard Terminal at the port.
The latter, which is packed with transit and regulatory hurdles, will be discussed at the Port of Oakland’s board of commission meeting next week. The closed-session agenda item lists “price and terms of tenancy” for the A’s, and officials say the issue is in early stages of consideration. The waterfront terminal is currently used for truck parking and short-term container storage.
Whether the A’s stay or go, the area ought to be developed with the city at the helm, said City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, also a Coliseum Authority board member.
“There’s so many things that could go there — manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, hotel and retail, a convention space,” she said. “It becomes a blank slate for us to think about how we maximize the benefit of Oakland as a whole. The smorgasbord is beautiful. Once you’re not bound to sports uses, you open up a world of possibilities.”