At this point it’s like a bad breakup, but she won’t get her stuff out of the apartment.
Nearly two months have passed since Nevada legislators approved Senate Bill 1 to build a new ballpark for the A’s on the Las Vegas Strip. Yet, the franchise has yet to finalize its relocation paperwork with MLB, keeping the stadium saga in a state of stasis.
On Wednesday night, a fire at Schnitzer Steel in West Oakland sent huge plumes of contaminated smoke into the East Bay, something that’s been a recurring scene at Howard Terminal over the years. After months of silence on Twitter, A’s president Dave Kaval used the fire as an opportunity to blame Oakland for inaction on the franchise’s proposed ballpark, which would have been located next door to Schnitzer.
Kaval recently spoke with Shayna Rubin of the Bay Area News Group and wagged his finger at Oakland, while trying to unshoulder any responsibility for the A’s and their failed efforts to get a new stadium deal pushed through at Howard Terminal. To me, it looked like another spineless squirm from Kaval, who is just doing the bidding for his clandestine boss, A’s owner John Fisher.
I’m old enough to remember when Kaval parrotted the phrase “Howard Terminal or Bust” after the A’s put all their eggs in that basket to build a ballpark. A perfect site for the $1 billion stadium, 18-acre public park, 3,000-seat performing arts center, commercial and residential high-rises. Now he’s trying to change the narrative – that the A’s HAD to build there because it was the preferred site of former mayor Libby Schaaf.
“That was the Mayor (Libby Schaaf) preferred site,” Kaval told Rubin. “Our preferred site was Laney (Peralta site) originally. We thought the infrastructure costs there were lower and that we faced less opposition, but we didn’t have political support at the time for Laney. So we pivoted to the Howard site, which we knew had some challenges but we knew had upside because it was on the water. By the same token, a lot of the California laws were tweaked against us to make it very difficult to proceed. It was a strategy of delay with our opponents that was successful.”
First of all, the Peralta site was a non-starter. The A’s might as well have closed their eyes, plopped their finger down on a map of Oakland and said they wanted to build there. The franchise never got the OK from Peralta Community Colleges to explore constructing a ballpark downtown near Lake Merritt, so to use that as a talking point seems disingenuous. The plan was dead on arrival and wasn’t even up for consideration of “political support.”
Sure, there were lawsuits filed by opposing groups like the East Oakland Stadium Alliance (EOSA), but they were merely more hurdles in the track. Small apples compared to the expected red tape that comes with building a multi billion waterfront development in the Bay Area.
They had the city on board, the county on board, the port on board and subcommittees like the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Committee – but that EOSA lawsuit they lost in March about *checks notes* wind mitigation – was the major killer of the project? Something doesn’t add up here, Dave.
So blame the city, blame the mayor, blame the EOSA – but God forbid you blame the A’s. Fisher and Kaval did no wrong here, folks!
My take on the situation: They got cold feet at Howard Terminal with skyrocketing construction costs and saw a Nevada legislature in a fervor with the Vegas Golden Knights Stanley Cup run, so they robbed their coffers. The A’s eyes were too big for their stomachs (or wallets) at Howard Terminal and now they’re trying to dodge any blame. The whole thing stinks.
The A’s just need to leave. Every time Kaval opens his mouth, it gets worse. The A’s don’t deserve the Bay Area and their loyal fans, at least not with this ownership group. This sham needs to end and she needs to get her boxes out of the apartment.
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