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A's have Plan B for Oakland stadium

By Guy Ashley

CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Posted on Sat, Aug. 20, 2005

Naysayers who write off the latest Oakland A's stadium proposal as impossibly ambitious may be heartened to know that the team has a plan to stay in Oakland or Alameda County even if the new stadium doesn't fly.

In proposing a massive $400 million ballpark and redevelopment plan last week that could encompass 90 acres along Interstate 880 and even a new $100 million BART station, A's managing partner Lew Wolff said the team wants to play in a stadium surrounded by a bustling new residential and retail neighborhood. It would require razing an aging industrial strip and acquiring dozens of privately owned parcels between 66th Avenue and High Street.

But if that plan fails, Wolff said, the team still intends to stay in Oakland or Alameda County -- even if it requires a scaled-back project that would have the A's build its new ballpark on the site of the publicly owned Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex.

"We have alternatives," Wolff told commissioners of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority when making his first public presentation of the A's new ballpark proposal Aug. 12.

Though Wolff said the team is open to all possible alternative sites, the preferred one appears to involve a compact new A's stadium in the Coliseum's north parking lot, and a massive new parking facility on the south side of the Coliseum near Hegenberger Road.

One East Bay official at the center of the A's ballpark initiative said the site repeatedly comes up as the most logical Plan B for the stadium project.

"It's his fallback position," said Oakland City Councilman Larry Reid, who spoke with Wolff about the Coliseum scenario days before Wolff went public with the baseball team's grand Plan A to transform a tired swath of land along I-880 between 66th Avenue and High Street.

"Outside the overall plan that he is pushing, I think this is probably the most logical alternative," Reid said.

The idea of building on the Coliseum site is nothing new.

Last year, Wolff issued a lengthy report articulating the team's preference to stay near the Coliseum, saying that he loves the location right on Interstate 880 and next to an existing BART station. And public discussions before the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority and elsewhere this year have alluded specifically to a Coliseum-based ballpark project.

But Reid said two factors shifted the ballpark discussion away from that scenario in recent months.

One is the team's growing desire to locate its ballpark amid a thriving new pocket of Oakland.

"Everybody benefits," Wolff said, "when we take an older area and recast it to a nice, more modern activity."

The second issue involves worries about potential resistance to using the parking lot from other Coliseum tenants, especially the Oakland Raiders football team.

City and county leaders are already in tricky negotiations with the Raiders over how to resurrect their partnership, which has wilted in the face of lawsuits and about $150 million in unexpected public costs for stadium upgrades and other incentives that lured the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1995.

"Any discussion (about a Coliseum project) would have elevated the whole issue of how much Raiders would be compensated and what would be done to provide replacement parking," Reid said. "With our relationship with the Raiders starting to get better, the most logical thing to do was to not have that conversation."

Reid says the Coliseum alternative could be revived, however, if the grander redevelopment proposal falls through. He says as much as 22 acres of land on the Coliseum's Hegenberger side, some already publicly owned, could be made available to offset parking lost by a Coliseum-based ballpark.

The land includes a former go-cart business on property owned by the city and county and a vacant home improvement store site that has not been successfully revitalized.

"There's much more you can do to improve that area and benefit the city and the team than just putting in a new ballpark," Reid said. "But at least we know he's exploring all options. The A's belong in Oakland, the team's legacy is in this city and I think Mr. Wolff understands that."

Reporter Guy Ashley covers Oakland and Alameda County. Reach him at 510-763-8045 or gashley@cctimes.com.

I think that Larry Reid just got dropped from Lew Wolff's Christmas Card list.