The Oakland Raiders have signed a short-term lease and will remain at the Coliseum through the 2015-2016 NFL season, a move which should help extend the runway for the city of Oakland and Alameda County to pursue their proposed $2 billion “Coliseum City” plans.
As currently envisioned, the 800-acre Coliseum City would rise upon Oakland’s existing Coliseum site and 550 acres of adjacent land on the other side of I-880, with nearly 6,000 units of housing; 500,000 square feet of retail; and 7 million square feet of science, technology, office, and industrial space in addition to a new NFL Stadium and ballpark for MLB.
In the works for over two years, Floyd Kephart, the Chairman of a hedge fund advisory firm, is over one month into a 90 day extension to ink a letter interest with the Raiders and Athletics in order to get the Coliseum City development off the ground.
The Raiders and A’s have been given the green light to propose competing development plans for the site as well.
Oakland should focus on securing an anchor tech tenant to lead the development and drop the stadium and/or ballpark plans if the teams won’t get on board.
Maybe if a bunch of burly fat dudes dress up like Goth Software Salesmen and put stickers that say “CRM-Cloud Based Solution NATION” on their Harleys, 15 year old Suburbans and Jet Ski trailers, Oakland could work with that. But don’t hold your breath.
Find a way to make a tech company stand in for parochial masculinity and you will be on your way to a million.
Like if every weekend we could watch Enterprise Global Sales Reps compete with Powerpoints. Slo-mo cams for the backslaps. Draft day for C+ guys with good hair from Arizona State. Token smart kid from Berkeley. How awesome would that be?
Oh come on, it’s Friday.
<3
So what will be served off of tailgates in the parking lots? artisanal waffles topped with Niman ranch fried chicken and washed down with Sazeracs?
Davis needs to propose an anti-Levy Stadium concept: back to basics and all about the game. There’s no point in competing with the snobs who’re just going to Levy to network and post on social media. That’s not Raider Nation, that’s not Oakland, that’s not (the core) East Bay -let’s be ourselves and break from the pack dammit!
Good Post Matt!
Matt, who is always chastising people for casting aspersions at Oakland, sure has no problem painting with a broad brush when denigrating others. What a hypocrite.
FYI: Coliseum City is no longer realistically being planned for 800 acres. Yes, that is still in the options in the EIR because that train left the station long ago. But since Schaaf took over, the pie-in-the-sky 800-acre fantasy has been abandoned for a much more realistic redevelopment of the 120-acre footprint.
Also, you should note that the lease was only agreed to after Davis got an extension on the amount of time the team can stay at the Alameda training facility after he leaves for another city. The real news is Davis continuing to scheme for his eventual exit as soon as someone, somewhere builds him a stadium.
Doesn’t the Raiders need to win some games before any group is willing to take the team, much less build it a stadium? Last I heard, bookies stopped taking bets on whether Raiders would win, rather, they are taking spreads of how much they would lose.
Schaaf is better off courting the tech crowd and/or poaching subsidized housing from SF.