Oakland Pushes Coliseum Sale to Next Year, Delaying Funds Yet Again

Whoever becomes Oakland’s new mayor after Tuesday’s special election will inherit the deal that keeps getting delayed: the Coliseum sale.

After earlier revisions to the deal pushed back payments and triggered a trimmed-down city budget, the Oakland City Council voted Monday to postpone closing on the sale to a developers’ group until 2026. The latest delay was an effort to align the timeline with a separate Alameda County deal for the other 50% stake in the site, city officials said.

The county sold its stake to the A’s in 2019, but the deal has been paid in installments, and the title doesn’t officially transfer until next spring, when long-standing bonds tied to the site will be defeased or paid off. That means Alameda County has to sign off on the team’s sale of its stake to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group.

The group of Oakland-based investors has agreed to pay $125 million for each 50% stake in the Coliseum site, with plans to develop the space into homes, jobs and retail and revitalize East Oakland — a welcome prospect in the area after decades of disinvestment and the loss of the A’s last year.

But Alameda County’s talks to replace the A’s with AASEG as the new title holders come next spring have been protracted.

Financially, it wouldn’t make sense for AASEG to pay such a steep price for the city’s stake in the land without knowing it would also get the A’s stake, city property asset manager Brendan Moriarty said, since each entity owns half of each square inch of the property — not a lump half.

“Until you control the whole property, you really can’t manage effectively, activate it and begin development,” Moriarty said.

With the sale delayed again, Oakland will be left without a payout until at least the next fiscal year as a rotating mayor’s office tries to develop a budget that can close a budget gap of more than $200 million over the next two years.

The delays underscore criticism that the deal drew after it was announced in part as a budget remedy by former Mayor Sheng Thao. Some council members worried that using $60 million in elusive sale revenue to cover some of the city’s expenses could backfire.

That happened last fall when the deal was revised for the first time, pushing payments into the new year and triggering a contingency budget that required police cuts, layoffs and the closure of multiple fire stations in the Oakland Hills.

During Monday’s City Council meeting, Alameda County Board of Supervisors President David Haubert said the county and AASEG were very close to finalizing deal terms but wouldn’t have them complete by May, when the city had planned to close its sale, or by the end of the fiscal year in June.

“We haven’t taken any steps backward, but it will take time, and it’s very clear that it will take past the June 2025 timeframe,” he said.

Ray Bobbitt, the managing partner of AASEG, told KQED that the funding and group are still fully committed to developing the site and that the new deal is more standard than the initial one AASEG made with the city.

But questions still remain. Chief among them: What happens if May 2026 rolls around and the A’s become the in-name owners of the other half of the land?

“Who knows what could happen then,” Haubert said to City Council members during Monday’s meeting.

Vanessa Riles with the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy said the tumult that’s surrounded the deal has been hard on Oaklanders, who are left to wonder about their budget and their local leaders’ intentions.

“My concern is: Where did the county timeline come from? To whom did they express it?” Riles asked. “As far as the whole county of Alameda knows, we’re waiting with bated breath any second for them to decide to vote on the reassignment. So what is actually happening that is causing that delay, and what has caused the city to [say] ‘We’re going to align with you?’”

She said confusion is especially frustrating in East Oakland — where residents were first asked for input on what investment they’d like to see in the neighborhood when the city was working on the Coliseum Area Specific Plan ten years ago.

“To this date, none of it has happened,” she said. “The people of East Oakland have been let down over and over and over again. So to continue to delay the potential for development that will involve real community benefits and community engagement feels like a slight against people who have been slighted by their government forever.”