Big changes are coming to the Oakland Coliseum.
Next Thursday, the A’s will play their last home game there. And earlier this month, the stadium was sold to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, whose vision for the land includes a $5 billion housing and business development.
The Oaklandside’s Eli Wolfe explains what this sale means for the future of the Coliseum — and for the city of Oakland.
This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:55] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to the bay. Local news to keep you rooted here. There’s really nothing like getting off the Oakland Coliseum. Bart, stop with a bunch of strangers.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:15] And walking out the station with a crowd of people all heading in the same direction, whether that be for a concert. Or an A’s game. But what goes down at this 120 acre coliseum complex is going to change. Next week, the A’s will play their last game in Oakland. And even bigger changes are on the way after the city of Oakland finalized a deal to sell its share of the Coliseum.
Sheng Thao [00:02:00] Together with community, with leadership, when local government, with private sector, we’re coming together to say we demand we demand to see a better, stronger and more prosperous Oakland. And these are the seeds that we’re planting today.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:16] The sale to the African-American Sports and Entertainment group marks the end of an era for the Oakland Coliseum. Today, the future of the Coliseum.
Eli Wolfe [00:03:16] The Colosseum was first built in the 60s, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it served literally tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of fans.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:31] Eli Wolfe is a city hall reporter for the Oakland side.
Eli Wolfe [00:03:35] It’s been a home for obviously the Oakland A’s.
TV announcer: [00:03:39] Oakland A’s have set a new American League record with their 20th consecutive win and this is a game nobody here will ever forget.
Eli Wolfe [00:03:49] But also for many, many years, it was where the Raiders NFL team played.
TV announcer [00:03:55] It’s at the 15 – he throws! Touchdown Raiders! Touchdown Raiders!
Eli Wolfe [00:04:01] And also the Warriors play better.
TV announcer: [00:04:05] The Golden State Warriors have pulled off the greatest upset in the history of the NBA playoffs.
Eli Wolfe [00:04:19] But the city lost three teams over about five years. And each time you lost one of these teams, I think you could sort of feel how irrelevant the Coliseum was becoming. It was this massive, I mean, truly massive piece of sports infrastructure in the middle of East Oakland. Once you have a stadium that has no sports teams playing in it, I mean, it really sticks out like this. A giant concrete thumb in the middle of the city.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:46] And who exactly owned the Coliseum over the years?
Eli Wolfe [00:04:50] In recent years, the Coliseum has been jointly owned by the city of Oakland and Alameda County. So it was a publicly owned site that started to change a few years ago when Alameda County ended up selling its half of the Coliseum site to the A’s. It was a public private partnership for the Coliseum site. And I think one that made city officials a little bit uneasy. I think it’s easier to sort of negotiate with another public agency than a private developer. And we kind of saw what the drawbacks of that were when last year the A’s announced that they were leaving for Las Vegas.
TV newscaster: [00:05:35] After 56 years at the Oakland Coliseum. It is game over for the athletics in Oakland. The A’s announced this morning they will leave the East Bay in 2025.
Eli Wolfe [00:05:44] And that created this awkward situation where the city owned a stake in a stadium site that was not going to have a sports team to play there. And their co-owner was the sports team that was leaving.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:02] Now the Coliseum is being sold off. I mean, why is this happening now?
Eli Wolfe [00:06:09] Even though this deal has been in the works for a while I think city officials would agree that this was a little bit expedited. And the reason it was is because Oakland was facing a severe budget shortfall this year. The budget that the city council approved back in July was relying on about $105 million from the sale, but about half of it would apply to this year’s budget. So the deadline that everybody was like nervously watching was whether the deal would get complete by September 1st. If it didn’t get complete by then, they were going to make a bunch of service cuts and layoffs to make sure that the budget is balanced.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:57] Yeah. Now, let’s let’s talk about the sale. I know in the city of Oakland and the A’s have now sold the Coliseum to the African-American sports and entertainment group, as you mentioned. Who is this group? Can you tell me a little bit more about them?
Eli Wolfe [00:07:12] Yeah. So the African-American sports and entertainment group, if they were founded in 2020, they’re a black owned development firm. And their core mission really is to invest in sports and entertainment sites. They are co-founded by a guy named Ray Bobbitt. He’s an East Oak Wonder and he’s a big champion of the city. They got a lot of talent. They’ve got Robert Bobb, who’s a former city manager for Oakland. They have a developer named Allen Dones, who’s done the work all over the world. Bill Duffy, the former NBA player, and Travis Scott, who the former chair of the African-American Chamber of Commerce here. You know, their money comes from this company called Loop Capital, which is a black owned Chicago based investment firm. Last year when the city was announcing their exclusive negotiation agreement with the AASEG. One of the things that got noted at that time was this was going to be the biggest land transfer in Oakland history for a black owned firm.
Press conference intro [00:08:21] All right. Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming on Saturday night the city and has signed the purchase and sale agreement for their house.
Eli Wolfe [00:08:30] Over the weekend, the city and the ACG announced that they had finalized the deal. They were bumping music. It was beautiful outside. You know, everyone there was just like in an extremely good mood.
Press conference intro [00:08:43] Right now I’m going to start by bringing up Ray Bobbitt of African-American Sports and Entertainment Group. The guys up here grew up
Eli Wolfe [00:08:57] Ray Bobbitt got up and thing pretty much everybody under the sun who had been working on the deal.
Ray Bobbitt [00:09:02] Just wanted to start by thanking God for the opportunity. So that’s that’s very important. I waned to thank our entire community this has been a journey has been.
Eli Wolfe [00:09:13] It was sort of a victory lap for everybody who’d been involved in this.
Ray Bobbitt [00:09:17] The historic nature of a team that is from this community taking the stewardship of this incredibly iconic site. It’s a place that has represented so many important memories and so many important events for all of us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:34] It sounds like I imagine both sides are pretty happy about this deal.
Eli Wolfe [00:09:39] Yes, very much so for the mayor. For city officials, this isn’t just, you know, a giant economic engine that they’re sort of like jumpstarting in East Oakland. It’s also obviously, you know, a way to avoid really severe budget cuts this year.
Sheng Thao [00:09:54] What a momentous occasion, everyone. I’m excited. Are you all excited?
Eli Wolfe [00:10:01] You know, Mayor Sheng Thao, you know, spoke before all the stakeholders and she talked about the fact that this was a momentous and truly historic occasion.
Sheng Thao [00:10:12] You know, many people thought institutional capital was fleeing Oakland. It’s not the case when you are able to be innovative and think outside the box. You know what the Coliseum is. You know that this is the place to be in the Bay Area.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:31] I mean, what do we know, Eli, about what the African-American sports and entertainment group plans to do with the Coliseum?
Eli Wolfe [00:10:39] That is the big question. And we still don’t have a ton of details on it, unfortunately. They had a vision of bringing in major league sports teams like a WNBA team. On the development side, you know, they’ve they’ve previously outlined these plans to build like, hotels, restaurants, you know, an outdoor amphitheater. I also believe they don’t have any plans to remove or renovate the stadium. It’s possible that will change over time, but I think they want to keep those venues in part because, you know, at least like with the smaller arena, they they can still hold concerts there. And the city and the county were hosting concerts for a long time there. And that was a big source of money to spend. And in the meantime, ACG has also agreed to this term sheet where it says, you know, as part of whatever development we do here, we’re going to create a community benefits plan. That’s going to include labor agreements for any construction that they do workforce training for residents that they hire. They’ve also promised that they’re going to make sure that any housing that they build is 25% affordable. So there’s a lot that they’ve sort of promised on top of the payments that they’re they’re making.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:57] Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge, huge space . Mean whatever happens with it, I think it’s fair to say that it’s going to take years at least, right?
Eli Wolfe [00:12:07] Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, as exciting as this is for a lot of folks, they shouldn’t get their hopes up that like overnight, they’re going to see, you know, buildings go up like it’s going to be a long timeline.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:18] What else in the immediate future can we expect for the Coliseum?
Eli Wolfe [00:12:23] The root and soul soccer teams are going to be playing at the Coliseum in 2025. So that’s that’s going to be exciting for sports fans here. And then also earlier this year, the city decided to purchase a lot near the Coliseum. Were there plans to build a modular soccer stadium? And Oakland Pro Soccer, which owns The Roots, has a vision of holding games at that stadium probably in like 2026. So there’s still going to be sports at the Coliseum site for at least the next couple of years until whatever else happens.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:55] Yes. I mean, it sounds like there’s still going to be some activity there, Lots of use for that space. But I do wonder if we know anything about what all of this change is going to mean for all the employees of the Coliseum who for decades have have been able to rely on steady work at the Coliseum. But it seems like now sort of a little more up in the air.
Eli Wolfe [00:13:19] I think that is still, like you said, up in the air. I don’t think it’s going to be good for many of them. Back in April, it was reported that the A’s president said that there would be layoffs when the team moves to Sacramento. It’s been reported, I think that that could impact thousands of workers, including hundreds of concession employees at the at the Coliseum right now. Yeah, I think that a big question and one that I think people should probably try to address is what happens to those workers.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:51] I mean, just stepping back a little, Eli. Why do you think all of this is such a big deal?
Eli Wolfe [00:13:59] It’s sort of hard to explain unless you’re on the ground in Oakland like we talked about before. The city has lost three major sports teams over a very short period of time. For sports fans, that’s devastating. But it’s also really, I think, humiliating for residents. Oakland had a really rough go of the early years in the pandemic, and now the city is bracing for, you know, budget cuts and dealing with this really intense political atmosphere. I think there’s a feeling that in Oakland, like people have just been getting beat up by just life for the last few years. This is a part of the city that has a long history of disinvestment, and that’s really only recently started to change. So it’s really empowering to see this developer that wants to invest in the city and wants to invest in a big way. So it’s taking the L and turning it into a W.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:00] Eli, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us. I really appreciate it.
Eli Wolfe [00:15:04] Yeah, Thank you.