While the Oakland Athletics and city officials continue to negotiate terms that could start or finish a plan for a new ballpark at Howard Terminal, a nonprofit has jump-started questions into Alameda County's sale of half of the current A's stadium to the baseball franchise.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development said it found no record that the county declared its share of the 188-acre RingCentral Coliseum complex — co-owned with the city of Oakland — as "surplus land" or "exempt surplus land." What's more, the department said it has no record that the county complied with notification requirements for selling the surplus land.

The Coliseum is the place to be this weekend, and how often is that the case? Big crowds, playoff-type vibes and the A’s and Giants — two of the majors’ best teams — grinding toward the playoffs.

Imagine if a shiny new ballpark were situated at 7000 Coliseum Way, replacing the old stadium and arena, with infrastructure upgrades to provide better access and parking.

On July 16, the Oakland A’s Friday night home matchup against Cleveland resembled other night games played at the Coliseum in every way except one. The place was cold and canyon-like. The A’s played admirably. Their fans cheered hard.

What was different was the anxiety.

Fans were dogged by a sense of gloom, or weariness. Earlier that day, Oakland City staff had previewed its plan for the $12 billion stadium-anchored development project at Howard Terminal proposed by A’s owner John Fisher in April. It arrived at the tail end of an increasingly vituperative A’s campaign to pressure the Oakland City Council into voting on their plan, a campaign that featured gaslighting, duplicitousness and threats issued over social media to relocate the team to Las Vegas if the city failed to meet the A’s demands. “HOWARD TERMINAL OR BUST,” read the full-page ad the A’s took out in Bay Area newspapers. It felt like a ransom note.

Oakland, like the rest of the Bay Area, has a housing crisis rooted in the fact that so much office, retail and entertainment space was built without enough homes for the people who work in them — especially low-wage workers. As a result, Oakland has over 4,000 unhoused people, a population that has grown more than 86% in the last five years, even as the minimum wage has gone up.

And yet at a City Council hearing earlier this month to discuss the Oakland A’s $12 billion residential and commercial development at the Port of Oakland, team President Dave Kaval publicly stated for the first time that the A’s want a special exemption from the city law that requires them to provide onsite affordable housing or private money for affordable housing elsewhere in the city. The attending City Council members were rightfully appalled.

A town hall meeting this week examined the negative consequences of placing John Fisher’s privatized, multibillion dollar real estate development on publicly owned land at the Port of Oakland, the region’s thriving and growing economic engine.

More than 100 people attended the town hall on Wednesday, which was live on Zoom and Facebook. Councilmembers Carroll Fife and Noel Gallo were among those who attended.

Speakers included voices of those who are directly impacted by the project: members of the longshore union, the ILWU, who said the project was a dangerous threat to the livelihood of port workers, over 70% of whom are Black; representatives of the Pacific Merchants Shipping Association and several of the largest businesses based at the port; and Paul Cobb, publisher of the Oakland Post.

Built in the 1870s, Oakland Chinatown has survived catastrophic earthquakes, world wars, recessions, gentrification, a pandemic and a surge in anti-Asian hate.

Now, just as the mom-and-pop businesses that are the core of the 20-square block community struggle to get back on their feet after a punishing economic lockdown, Chinatown faces another threat: the Oakland A’s Howard Terminal stadium proposal.

Billionaire John Fisher proposes putting 3,000 luxury condos, a mall, and a stadium on Oakland’s public port property. Even if the Port could survive a stadium, it can’t survive 3,000 condos and a mall. Oakland’s current life-and-death debate is not about the A’s and a baseball stadium.

It’s about the creation of a new, posh, luxury city built on public property, profiting a billionaire, paid for by taxpayers, and reducing the viability of Oakland’s economic engine. The heart of Oakland as a progressive, working-class city and the unusual reality of thousands of decent-paying jobs employing Black workers are all at stake.

The ancient Coliseum Arena was abandoned by the Warriors two years ago and has been COVID-quiet for the past 15 months, but don’t send for the wrecking ball.

The 55-year-old arena is about to spring back to life.

“We believe we are ideally suited to attract a lot of events,” said Henry Gardner, executive director of the Joint Powers Authority, which administers the Coliseum and the arena for the city of Oakland and Alameda County. “We had nary a one for the last 15 months, but already we are booking events, lots of them, big events, at the arena, and I think there are a couple of them at the stadium.”

The Oakland A’s are threatening to leave town as the franchise negotiates to build a new stadium on port property, the political equivalent of a pitch to the batter’s head. But city officials shouldn’t allow themselves to be intimidated into dropping legitimate questions about the team’s offer — or into dropping a container-ship-sized public subsidy on a lucrative private business.

The A’s may be rooted in Oakland, but those roots never have run very deep during their 53 years in the city. Counting this week’s threat via Major League Baseball, there’s been at least nine times when it seemed plausible the franchise could be dug up and replanted elsewhere.

With the A’s efforts to secure a multi-billion dollar waterfront stadium project at Howard Terminal moving slower than they’d like, MLB has given the A’s permission to pursue relocation. The team is expected to explore its options in cities such as Las Vegas, Portland, Montreal, Nashville, Charlotte and Vancouver.