Supervisors Aim to Finalize Coliseum Sale, Offering Hope for Oakland’s Budget Woes

Oakland residents concerned about the uncertain Coliseum deal may finally get some relief next week if Alameda County supervisors follow through on their plan to conclude negotiations with developers on Friday.

At a special meeting on Thursday afternoon, Board President David Haubert said that he expects the deal with the African American Sports and Entertainment Group to come back before supervisors at its regularly scheduled meeting on March 11, “hopefully done and completed.”

“The project is one that is going to provide economic vitality to an area that needs it,” Haubert said. “I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: As goes Oakland, so goes all of Alameda County. So this opportunity before us is important, and I remain steadfastly supportive of getting it done.”

The elusive development project from AASEG, a Black-owned development group led by Oakland locals, has been in the works since May. It hinges on deals with the city of Oakland and the Oakland A’s for their respective 50% stakes in the 155-acre property the baseball team vacated last year.

Ray Bobbitt, AASEG’s managing partner, has said the group plans to reimagine the parcel to bring jobs, housing and entertainment to East Oakland, an area that’s been neglected for years.

The city of Oakland signed a deal with the group in July after relying on the $100 million windfall from the real estate transaction to balance its fragile budget. That went south shortly after since the A’s deal with the group stalled at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

AASEG has fallen behind on the payment schedule outlined in the city deal, saying it was waiting to secure the A’s half of the property before continuing to pay.

Alameda County is involved because it owned the A’s half of the land until 2019, and the team’s purchase of the property is still pending. The county must assign that purchase from the A’s to AASEG before the deal is final.

While the A’s reached a deal with AASEG in August, supervisors stalled on transferring the sale to the developers in the fall. Pressure increased when Oakland began implementing severe budget cuts in an attempt to address its financial crisis, which worsened without the guaranteed Coliseum fund.

Oakland implemented a contingency budget last fall after the sale stalled, resulting in layoffs and public safety cuts, including the closure of two fire stations. The city has been able to reduce its massive funding shortfall through cuts to police overtime spending and increased parking enforcement revenue, but it is still struggling to patch a $89 million hole by the end of the fiscal year.

In January, Alameda County supervisors gave staff a term sheet and a 30-day deadline to finalize the AASEG deal. They blew past the deadline but seem to be honing in on an agreement this week, according to Bobbitt.

Before Thursday’s closed-door meeting with the county’s negotiating team, he told KQED that January’s board resolution gave “30 days for us to kind of get this draft completed. That came and went, we got some extra time, but we really feel like we want to try to come out of this with a definitive timeline today.”

He said of about nine items on the term sheet, there were “a few open items” that still needed to be resolved.

“We are waiting on two documents from OAC [Oakland Athletic Club] and AASEG to finish negotiations that include the quit claim deed and a release related to litigation,” Kimberly Gasaway, director of Alameda County’s general services agency, said during Thursday’s meeting. “We expect to receive these tomorrow at our next negotiation meeting.”

Tuesday will be a big day for the county — arguably bigger for the city of Oakland — if AASEG can get through one of the final hurdles to becoming the new owners of the historic site.

“The reason why we’ve been so steadfast and so committed and had so much perseverance and commitment is because we love Oakland, and we’re from Oakland,” Bobbitt told KQED. “We’re really excited on being part of the resurgence of Oakland.”