Oakland Keeps Swinging in Bid to Keep Baseball’s A’s Safe at Home

SAN FRANCISCO — Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums and civic boosters publicly unveiled three stadium sites they’ve been pitching to Major League Baseball in an attempt to keep the Oakland Athletics in California’s eighth-largest city.

The mayor didn’t offer exact financial details of the stadium proposals. The team and the baseball league would pay for the stadium, he said. But the city — which has struggled with sharply declining general fund revenues over the past year — would use some redevelopment dollars to fund infrastructure and parking improvements.

The three sites are near the city’s San Francisco Bay waterfront, mass transit lines, and major highways. Two of the sites are new ideas, while a third has been studied before. The baseball team currently shares the Oakland Coliseum with the National Football League’s Oakland Raiders.

The A’s, which ranked last in attendance among MLB teams in 2009, have been seeking a new home for several years and have sought the league’s permission to move south to wealthy Silicon Valley.

“This city’s leadership has a clear, concise and unified message for Major League Baseball: Keep the A’s in Oakland,” Dellums said at a press conference. “This project is not solely about a baseball stadium. This is about continuing our efforts to bolster Oakland’s economic future.”

Dellums and City Council President Jane Brunner wrote Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig in March saying they were “prepared to do everything reasonably possible to keep the Oakland A’s in Oakland” and have since been lobbying a committee the commissioner set up to study the A’s stadium options.

The A’s earlier this year scrapped plans to build a $500 million stadium in Fremont, a suburb about halfway between Oakland and San Jose, after residents opposed increased traffic and the economic slowdown dimmed the prospects of the mixed-use “urban village” that was to be built alongside the stadium.

The team’s owners have now settled on San Jose as their preferred home, but the move requires permission from MLB and is opposed by the San Francisco Giants, which currently have exclusive rights to the Silicon Valley territory.

Oakland officials are trying to show that the team that it has viable options in their downtown, which has lured increasing numbers of middle-class residents and development in recent years.

“The Oakland waterfront is a great place to play ball,” said Brunner, the City Council president. “More than $3 billion dollars of public and private money is being invested in projects on Oakland’s waterfront. The Oakland A’s are a key part of our economic development strategy.”

California professional sports teams are using competition among cities to push local officials to come up with public cash to support stadium projects.

Earlier this week, the San Diego ­Chargers National Football League team said they would need public funding to build an $800 million in California’s ­second-biggest city. The city is ­considering using some redevelopment dollars for the project.

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