‘Confirm your intentions’: Oakland City Council leaders push back on MLB, A’s relocation threats

Three Oakland City Council members are pushing back against Major League Baseball for publicly instructing the A’s to start looking for a new home before the city even votes on the team’s proposal to build a waterfront ballpark.

In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Friday, Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan and Councilmember Carroll Fife said the council “is committed to negotiating in good faith for a strong future for the A’s in Oakland, and we invite the A’s and MLB to do the same by agreeing not to seek relocation while the A’s complete the project process as the Council moves forward.”

The letter follows Tuesday’s surprise announcement by A’s President Dave Kaval that Major League Baseball wants the team “to explore other markets,” a development that some perceive as a tactic to pressure the city into hastily approving the ballpark at the Port of Oakland’s Howard Terminal, as well as a mixed use development that together have been estimated to cost $12 billion.

“MLB is concerned with the rate of progress on the A’s new ballpark effort with local officials and other stakeholders in Oakland,” MLB asserted in its statement earlier this week.

The A’s submitted its term sheet for the proposal late last month and asked the council to approve it before summer recess in July.

The letter by council members Fortunato Bas, Kaplan and Fife, who represents the district encompassing Howard Terminal, points out the city has been reviewing the A’s request and meeting with team officials to see what can be don.

“We were asked to schedule it (a meeting) prior to the summer recess, and were in the process, when instead MLB announced that apparently you have been given incorrect information that City leadership is refusing to work with the A’s, and you have announced your plan to enable their relocation to a new city,” the letter says. “This relocation announcement came without giving the Council an opportunity to receive and vote on a proposal, and did not even wait for the time requested for the vote.”

The council members also noted that although city staff had fully intended to bring the A’s proposal to the full council, “rather than send forward full completed deal terms for consideration, the A’s announced in the press that instead they were demanding that the Council take a vote on a summary ‘term sheet’ without full details.”

The term sheet doesn’t contain funding details or clearly spell out who would pay for what. While it promises that the A’s would pay for the $1 billion ballpark and tap developers to finance and build thousands of residences, a hotel, and other buildings in the proposal, the term sheet calls for creating two tax districts to pay for costly infrastructure in and around the project. Nor does it contain a public analysis to indicate whether the city would benefit or by how much.

On Friday, Kaplan announced she is trying to schedule a council meeting for July 20 to discuss the A’s proposal.

Asked to comment for this story, a MLB spokesman referred to the league’s earlier statement about the “rate of progress” on the A’s new ballpark. Asked why the league is so concerned about the rate of progress since the A’s released their term sheet just two weeks ago, the spokesman referred to the portion of the statement that said the team had been working “hard” to advance a ballpark in downtown Oakland for the last four years.

In its statement, MLB also said for the first time that the Coliseum site — viewed by some city leaders and residents as a potential fallback — is not a viable option. Kaval told this news organization the same thing on Thursday.

The three council members took issue with that sentiment in their letter, asking MLB to “please send to us any and all materials that you used or reviewed in making such a determination.”

According to Kaval, the Coliseum site is not “viable” because the A’s don’t want to play there in the future.

“The model is now for the downtown urban locations,” Kaval said Thursday, describing the Coliseum as a “relic” of past sport stadium models that thousands of people would drive to.

Although the Coliseum site is adjacent to a BART station, the A’s envision a “downtown urban venue” amid a bustling sea of densely packed homes, hotels, shops, restaurants and other retail uses that would connect with and enhance nearby Jack London Square and downtown Oakland.

The proposal from the A’s for Howard Terminal includes — in addition to the ballpark — 3,000 housing units, 1.5 million square feet of offices, 270,000 square feet of retail, hundreds of hotel rooms, and an indoor performance space.

In their letter, the three council members said “we hope you will understand that the shifting ‘demands’ on what Oakland must do, combined with your public threat to allow the team to leave, even while the City is undertaking the items that you and the A’s have urged, might leave the impression that there never has been any good faith intent on your part to work on a future ballpark in Oakland. … As we continue to work in good faith to identify the most successful way forward for everyone involved, we seek to confirm your intentions.”

Despite the firm tone, the letter goes on to say they still want to work with MLB and the A’s to “move forward” and asks MLB to “confirm definitively, that if the Council were to take such a vote for a term sheet regarding the A’s, that you would prohibit any action to seek or pursue relocation during those next steps?”

The Coliseum lease ends in 2024, and the earliest a new ballpark in Oakland could open would be 2027, if the project moves forward immediately.

Staff writer Shayna Rubin contributed reporting.