Following nearly eight hours of deliberations Tuesday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors made a non-binding vote in favor of aiding the city of Oakland in a potential A’s waterfront ballpark deal at Howard Terminal.
The five-member board started the marathon session at 12 p.m. PT Tuesday and heard from invested speakers and took public comment for six hours, before recessing for another county meeting and returning for another 90 minutes on the topic.
Finally, shortly after 9 p.m., the board made a non-binding 4-1 vote in approval of co-creating an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (EIFD) with the city of Oakland to help finance off-site infrastructure costs related to the $6 billion project. Supervisors Wilma Chan, David Haubert, Nate Miley and Richard Valle voted in favor of moving forward with the ballpark project while Keith Carson voted against it.
In essence, EIFDs will allow the project to capture future tax revenues over a 45-year period from the county and city to be used on the projected $352 million off-site infrastructure upgrades, for things like pedestrian safety and transportation improvements around the ballpark. The A's are proposing to fund the rest of the development -- which includes a $1 billion ballpark, residential and commercial high-rises, a 3,000-seat performing arts center and 18 acres of public parks -- with $5.77 billion of private investment.
John Fisher is the majority owner and managing partner of the A's. According to Forbes, Fisher is worth $2.8 billion with his family's fortune stemming largely from his parents' founding of the Gap clothing brand, which also includes brands like Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta. He was appointed to Gap's board of directors in 2018.
Fisher is also a founding partner of the investment firm Sansome Partners, the parent company of others like the Mendocino Redwood Company, which is a forest management and logging company that holds 228,000 acres of land in Northern California. Sansome Partners (est. 1997) co-founder Sandy Dean is also a board member with the A's.
As it’s a non-binding vote, the county basically gave a public declaration of confidence for the ballpark development without making any firm, legislative commitments. A ‘no’ vote could have been catastrophic for the A’s chances to remain in Oakland, where the franchise has played at the aging Coliseum since 1968. The city of Oakland is reliant on Alameda County to help make public financing commitments -- ones which will only exist due to the construction of the ballpark -- in order to make this vision a reality.
“Fundamentally, the reason we’re here is because the project is not financially feasible using entirely private capital,” said city of Oakland project manager Molly Maybrun.
Since the start of 2020, the A’s have zeroed in on Howard Terminal, which is located just west of Jack London Square, claiming it is Oakland's lone "viable" site to form a new ballpark. The team’s lease at the Coliseum expires in 2024, which the franchise and Major League Baseball have used as a talking point for justifying the A’s to explore other potential future markets like Las Vegas.
While the ‘yes’ vote is a bit of progress, it doesn’t sound like the county has done much homework on the project since it was first presented to the Board of Supervisors by the A’s and the city on June 15. During that meeting, the board agreed it needed until at least September to review relevant information regarding the development's potential impact on Oakland and the greater region. It's unclear what progress the county made on this topic in the past four-plus months (which included an annual month-long recess in August) but supervisors repeatedly noted the priorities of unraveling the complications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Have our staff done an analysis of whether or not this is beneficial to the county?,” Supervisor Miley asked at the beginning of Tuesday’s session. “Both the upsides as well as the downsides of financial projections on us becoming part of this venture. I haven’t seen any analysis and I’m still a little uncomfortable without any analysis.”
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In addition to Alameda County, the city of Oakland, interests from the Port of Oakland and the A’s were represented at the meeting. A’s president Dave Kaval reiterated that he has been heading the team’s search for a new stadium for the past five years, as the franchise also had a failed attempt to build near Laney College in downtown Oakland and purchased half of the Coliseum site from Alameda County in 2019.
“We’re at a critical juncture where we really need to know from a public policy perspective that the city, the county, all the elected officials are supportive of this direction,” Kaval said. “We’re running out of time at our current facility at the Coilseum and we’re hopeful we can get the necessary answers to proceed with this project on a pace that makes sense.”
Maybrun said the city is still sorting through the hundreds of public comments it received on the draft environmental impact report, a key piece of the process that has yet to be certified. Kaval said the A’s are willing to pay for the county’s economic studies and consulting, like the team has done for the city of Oakland over the past few years, so that may be the next step in this seemingly never-ending saga.
Don’t be surprised if the A’s come out Wednesday and say they’re upset with the lack of progress from Alameda County on the matter, but it appears all parties involved will keep kicking this can down the road. The team is also expected to announce a short list of potential stadium sites in Las Vegas after the World Series, following six trips to Southern Nevada locales like Sin City, Summerlin and Henderson over the past few months.
