Oakland Coliseum City Rendering

Set to expire yesterday after two years of effort, Oakland’s City Council has granted a 90-day contract extension to the group which has been trying to get the proposed $2 billion “Coliseum City” development off the ground.

While a developer for the project has yet to be identified, and neither the Raiders nor Athletics have inked a letter of interest, a new investor group fronted by Floyd Kephart, the Chairman of a firm which advises hedge funds, has joined the project’s planning team and will be leading the overtime drive.

From the Oakland Tribune’s report:

Kephart, declined to name his investors, but said they had the requisite capital and that he would engage all three of the city’s sports teams, including the Golden State Warriors, who have already purchased land for a new arena in San Francisco.  He did not say if the investors would seek an equity stake in the Raiders in return for helping finance a new football stadium.

“We’re not making Kool-Aid,” he said. “It’s not just going to flower up. But we believe that we can open negotiations … and identify the things that need to be done.”

Last year, a similar high-profile push by Colony Capital and Dubai-based businessman Rashid Al-Malik failed to secure a developer for the project nor a letter of interest from either the Raiders or A’s.

12 thoughts on “New Hope For Oakland’s Ambitious Coliseum City Development”
  1. Would love to see this project succeed but don’t think it’s going to happen. Too much animosity between the teams and city and too much risk for a developer. Warriors could have anchored the project but that ship has sailed.

    1. Agreed. Beyond the fact that the Warriors own the Mission Bay parcel (though they could probably flip it for profit), they’d alienate a lot of S.F. people and lose political capital by renegging and going back to an Oakland arena idea. They also wouldn’t want to be the guinea pig, i.e. being the first team to sign on to this. Maybe if the Raiders and A’s signed on, the Warriors could be tempted to join in a “sports village” concept, but I can’t see them signing on the line first when both the A’s and the Raiders have such nebulous remaining ties to Oakland.

  2. It’s too bad so many projects like this fall through… I’d love to have access to, and be able to enjoy the Oakland waterfront one day.

    1. You can come enjoy the Oakland waterfront today. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Shoreline covers most of this area and is quite lovely.

      1. agreed..there are more and more places to enjoy the Oakland waterfront. This deal has relatively little to do with that.

          1. It’s gorgeous out there. My dad walks his dogs out on the shoreline every morning and rarely encounters another person but always sees a variety of bird wildlife.

  3. Naysayers, don’t forget that huge projects that entail major changes to infrastructure usually take a decade or more to break ground.

    1. Feasibility studies for Mission Bay started way back in the 1980s. That one took a long time to come together. Incidentally, the ballpark was a major catalyst for that neighborhood moving forward.

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