After Months, Oakland Coliseum Sale Is Finally Up for Key Vote. Here’s What to Know

Updated 4:25 p.m.

The Oakland Coliseum sale has officially passed one of its last major hurdles: Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors.

After months of standstill, waiting for the board’s approval, supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to reassign the county’s interest in the Coliseum property to local developers known as the African American Sports and Entertainment Group.

“This is an important critical step in a monumental process,” Ray Bobbitt, managing partner of AASEG, said ahead of the vote. “This community has stepped forward and allowed us to be patient, perseverant and to make sure that we have been in prayer. We just want to say thank you so much for the opportunity to move this forward.”

Over a year ago, AASEG excitedly announced their intent to buy and redevelop the former home of the Oakland A’s, but contract negotiations and complicated ownership hang-ups have plagued the deal process, especially with the county.

The vote to finalize the county’s role in the deal, according to Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas, will finally give the group the power and assurance to begin that work.

“There’ll be one organization that will own the entire Coliseum so that redevelopment and revitalization can move forward,” she told KQED ahead of the meeting.

What’s happening: Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors has been in a monthslong negotiation with AASEG over the developers’ purchase of the A’s stake in the Coliseum. Even though the county agreed to sell its half to the Major League Baseball team in 2019, it has to approve the AASEG deal as the original owners, reassigning its interest from the A’s to a group formed by AASEG.

That’s meant a series of closed-door meetings between negotiators, which Bas said have been spent hammering out the “complex” real estate deal.

In March, as the board inched closer to finalizing the agreement, Kimberly Gasaway, director of Alameda County’s general services agency, said there were just two outstanding documents that the county needed from AASEG.

On Tuesday, the board finally voted to reassign its interest in the property to the purchasing company, Oakland Acquisition Company, which is an affiliate of AASEG. Board President David Haubert and Supervisors Elisa Márquez, Nate Miley and Nikki Fortunato Bas all voted in favor of the sale. Board Vice President Lena Tam was excused.

The context: In early 2023, AASEG entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city of Oakland to develop the Coliseum site. Over the summer of 2024, as the A’s prepared to play their final game at the Coliseum, both Oakland and the team signed deals formalizing sales of their shares to AASEG for $105 million and $125 million, respectively. Shortly after, Oakland renegotiated its deal with AASEG to increase its revenue by $5 million.

Both sale timelines have been delayed as months went by without Alameda County reassigning its interest in the site to the development company. The A’s deal cannot go through until the county does so, and AASEG has paused payments to Oakland, falling behind on its previously negotiated schedule, until the county deal is done.

Both of those deals are set to close in 2026.

Zoom out: Slow-moving negotiations with Alameda County have been far from the only bump in the road for the Coliseum deal since 2023.

Last spring, then-Mayor Sheng Thao announced that more than $60 million in revenue from the sale would be used to help patch an even larger hole in Oakland’s budget. Shortly after AASEG and the city finalized their deal in July 2024, though, the payment timeline was pushed back, forcing the city to institute a bare-bones “contingency budget” that caused fire station closures and police cuts, and eroded public trust.

AASEG has not made any payments to the city since the start of the year. The projected revenue from the sale is not included in the city’s 2025 budget plan.

What we’re watching: It’s unclear if AASEG plans to hand Oakland a lump sum for the payments missed due to county delays, or if the deal timeline with either the city or Oakland will be further revised.

The group’s $5 billion plan has raised eyebrows — and concerns about feasibility — since it was announced.

Once the sole owners, AASEG will also have to begin work on a community benefits agreement, which was required by its city deal. The deal aims to ensure that development serves the surrounding East Oakland community, where decades of disinvestment by businesses and the A’s have decimated the local economy.

AASEG has already committed to making 25% of any housing built affordable, and in the next five years, will have to begin to negotiate a bundle of other community benefits with stakeholders like Black Cultural Zone, Brotherhood of Elders, local youth centers and more.

Shonda Scott, one of the entertainment group’s members, told KQED when the deals were being negotiated that AASEG is looking forward to that work.

“It’s us being of the community, giving back to the community and making sure it’s done equitably, especially for those who have been historically disenfranchised in these sixth and seventh district areas that the Coliseum is a part of,” she said.