Oakland A's Buy 49-Acre Site in Vegas for Stadium

Ending years of unsuccessful negotiations with the city of Oakland for a redevelopment of the Oakland Coliseum that would include a new baseball stadium, the Oakland A’s are heading for Las Vegas.

The MLB franchise once owned by Charley Finley, the one with green and yellow uniforms, handlebar mustaches and a mule in the outfield—which, lest we forget, won three consecutive championships from 1972-1974—has signed a binding agreement to purchase a 49-acre site near the Las Vegas Strip owned by Red Rock Resorts, parent company of Station Casinos.

Dave Kaval, the team’s president, said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the A’s will build a new major league ballpark on the property. The price of the property was not disclosed.

Kaval said the team, the state of Nevada and Clark County will form a public-private partnership to build the stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2027. Plans call for a $1.5B, 35,000-seat stadium with a partially retractable roof and an adjacent amphitheater and restaurants.

When they move to Vegas, the Athletics will become the first major league franchise to play in four different US cities—Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland and Las Vegas.

In what appeared to be a parting shot at the city fathers in Oakland, Kaval noted that the past 20 years of the half-century the team has spent in the Bay Area have been marked by back-and-forth negotiations over the stadium and the team’s future in the area.

“For a while we were on parallel paths [with Oakland], but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.

“Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that,” he said.

For most of its existence in Oakland, the fortunes of the A’s—in terms of their playing venue—in many ways was tied to the Oakland Raiders NFL franchise.

The mammoth, circular Oakland Coliseum, which was built to be the home of the football Raiders, has long been an obstacle to getting a deal done on a new baseball stadium for the A’s. In giving up on a deal with the Athletics, the city signaled renewed interest in bringing another NFL franchise to Oakland in a refurbished Coliseum.

African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG) announced in February an agreement with the City of Oakland on a $5 billion redevelopment of the Oakland Coliseum and a portion of the 100 acres surrounding it.

According to the terms of the agreement, the city will transfer 50% of the ownership of the Coliseum site to AASEG, the largest transfer of public land to a Black-owned developer in Oakland’s history, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

However, the developer won’t tear down the cavernous, 57-year-old Coliseum—a football stadium built for the Raiders, who have deserted Oakland for Las Vegas (after deserting the city twice for Los Angeles)—and replace it with a cozy new baseball stadium for the Oakland A’s.

The Athletics, the last professional sports team left in Oakland, have been threatening for the past two years to leave town for—you guessed it, Vegas—if the city doesn’t give the MLB team the deal they want: a new baseball stadium and a 3,000-unit retail village, all part of a $12B development at Howard Terminal—which is the other 50% of the 100-acre Coliseum site.

The A’s originally were designated to develop the entire Coliseum site, but after negotiations broke down, the city—not wanting to sit idly by and watch its NFL and MLB teams both end up in Las Vegas—decided to split the site in half and hired AASEG to renovate the Coliseum for more football, among other attractions.

AASEG says it is aiming to bring a Black-owned NFL franchise and a WNBA team to Oakland. In addition to renovating the Coliseum, the developer is planning a complex with homes, a convention center, a hotel, restaurants, museums and an outdoor amphitheater for youth sports.

The Coliseum, built in the circular, multi-purpose style of the 1970s, will be upgraded so it can be configured not just for an NFL team, but also a WNBA basketball court, and a venue for concerts and events like Disney on Ice.

The deal requires AASRG—formed in 2020 by a group of civic leaders in Oakland to develop sports and entertainment venues to enhance economic equity—to make a one-time $2.5M payment to the city as well as an annual fee of $200K per year.

The group, which is purchasing the city’s half-interest in the site for $115M, includes former Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb; Oakland-based developer Alan Dones; Shona Scott, a former chair of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce, former NBA player and sports agent Bill Duffy and Loop Capital, a Black-owned investment firm.

The agreement gives AASEG two years to gain approval from the City Council for a development plan for the site.