The A’s and Major League Baseball threatened this week that if they don’t get their way they will pack up and leave the Bay Area.

The team has thrown down a greedy and opaque demand that the city of Oakland approve a $12 billion residential and commercial waterfront development project that happens to include a new ballpark — and requires a massive taxpayer subsidy.

If that’s the best the A’s can offer, the city should let them go.

“It’s called chin music.

That’s the tune MLB and Commissioner Rob Manfred started playing Tuesday. They threw a high, hard one at the chin of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Oakland City Council.

Get the message, Oakland? Vote to approve the A’s plan and commit to kicking in $855 million for infrastructure for the A’s new ballpark and surrounding village around Howard Terminal, or kiss your lovable little baseball team goodbye.”

There is growing public scrutiny of the deal the Oakland A’s are offering to the city in a proposal, released the end of April, to “privately fund” the building of a $1 billion ballpark and a massive $12 billon real estate development, almost a city within a city, on the waterfront at Howard Terminal and Jack London Square in downtown Oakland. 

Besides touting the hollow tagline “Rooted in Oakland,” Dave Kaval hasn’t been listening to most Oaklanders. For over a year we’ve been voicing our concerns about traffic issues related to the A’s proposed ballpark; and now, following the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR)  and the Term Sheet, it’s evident that John Fisher and the Oakland A’s care more about putting money in their pockets than about the real people who will be negatively impacted by their project.

For years, the Oakland A’s have touted the privately financed ballpark they plan to build to keep the club in the Bay Area.

Led by team President Dave Kaval, who previously brought San Jose the Earthquakes’ soccer stadium, the A’s are now pressing Oakland to sign off on a massive public subsidy of a billion-dollar professional baseball team.

We’ve seen this play before, as franchises in the Bay Area and elsewhere promote the false rationale that pro sports boost local economies. Falling for that claim can be costly: Taxpayers are still paying for stadium improvements that temporarily brought the Raiders back to Oakland in 1995.

The Oakland Athletics’ proposed plan for a new ballpark at the Howard Terminal waterfront site now has an estimated $12B price tag attached, of which $450M would be spent on community benefits like affordable housing, and it would yield about $1B in tax revenue for the city’s general fund, as reported by the S.F. Business Times reports.

Plans for the new baseball park within a larger mixed-use project potentially delivering 3,000 housing units, up to 1.5M SF of office and life sciences uses and 270K SF of retail gained momentum after nearly a yearlong hiatus following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. If approved, the project would also deliver a 35,000-person capacity stadium, a 50K SF performance venue for up to 3,500 people, a 400-room hotel and 18.3 acres of open space for the general public.

The Oakland A’s proposed 35,000-seat waterfront ballpark and accompanying mixed-use development is expected to cost at least $12 billion to build and inject nearly $1 billion into city coffers, according to documents released Friday.

But city officials were surprised by the A’s new plan, which proposes using tax-generated revenue from the site to fund infrastructure costs.

The Oakland Athletics won a ballgame 13-12 on Wednesday at RingCentral Coliseum. They then lost 54-5 at the Oakland Planning Commission.

In three hours of comments on the adequacy of the draft environmental impact report for the A's waterfront ballpark project at Howard Terminal, 54 Oakland residents, environmentalists, shipping industry employees, law students and community activists roughed up the document pitched by city planners. They said the study and the overall development is incomplete, offers vague relief options and throws a curve to affordable housing, pollution, maritime jobs, transportation and other issues.

The head of Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor (CCJPA) service, which runs trains between Sacramento and San Jose via Oakland, wants rail safety improvements to the designs of the Oakland A’s proposed ballpark development at Howard Terminal in Jack London Square. From a memo obtained by Streetsblog, written by Robert Padgette, Managing Director of the CCJPA:

"The proposed Oakland Waterfront Ballpark would be the only MLB stadium where patrons will cross the mainline heavy rail tracks at grade at all five nearby railroad crossings. Long freight trains can block multiple crossings regardless of the time of day, and these trains can sometimes be stationary for an extended period of time, during which roadway users (motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists) would have no access across the tracks and may be tempted to navigate around crossing gate arms and the stationary train unsafely. What behaviors patrons will exhibit before or after events in such a scenario has grave implications for the safety and operations of trains along the entire CCJPA route."

A real estate development plan that includes a new park for the Oakland Athletics has set up a battle with the team and its supporters – including Mayor Libby Schaaf — against a coalition of labor unions, trucking companies, heavy industry and environmental groups who say it would eliminate jobs at the port, increase car and truck traffic in the neighborhood and create environmental hazards.