The $12 billion plan by the Oakland Athletics to build a baseball stadium and real estate development on a parcel of industrial waterfront owned by the Port of Oakland has faced any number of challenges and opposition since it was proposed in 2018.
These include Oaklanders who are skeptical of the privately funded ballpark’s projected financial benefits and wary of the team’s demand for $855 million in tax breaks to fund infrastructure investments, all while attendance is falling at the team’s longtime home, the aging and increasingly decrepit Oakland Coliseum.
But the stiffest resistance to the idea of building a 35,000-seat stadium at the port comes from major players within Oakland’s maritime industry: Groups representing truckers, ocean carriers, terminal operators, dockworkers and other port-related businesses have argued in three recent lawsuits that the development will cause major impacts to both the surrounding community and port operations, adding to supply-chain woes and dealing a permanent blow to the economic prospects of the third-busiest port in California.
“If that ballpark goes in, you may not have killed Oakland, but you seriously damaged it,” said Jim McKenna, head of the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents about 70 carriers, terminal companies and other shipping firms operating across the West Coast.