Oakland A's Can Privately Finance New Stadium; Raiders, Coliseum JPA Meet Developer

The Oakland A's, in the form of John Fisher, the Majority Owner of the Athletics Organization, met with Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty last Wednesday, and according to a friend of mine who was close to the conversation, said to Haggerty that "We don't need your money," or words to that effect. But the gist is that the Oakland Atlhletics told Haggerty, the President of The Alameda County Board of Supervisors, and a member of the Oakland-Alameda County Joint Powers Authority, that the A's have a plan in place to privately finance a new stadium at the Oakland Coliseum. That should come as good news to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who wanted to escape this new stadium problem without spending a dime of public money and yet retaining at least the Raiders and the Atlhletics, yet was under the impression that it would take a public subsidy s recently as the last week of September. (Even though I proved that wasn't the case via the spreadsheet proposal I created for a 'Coliseum City Reboot' with A's and Raiders stadiums and as per Raiders Owner Mark Davis' request, and argued with her as I asserted she was misinformed.) While I wasn't able to reach Scott to have him confirm this on the record, I know my source is 100 percent correct. I also learned that Alameda County has still not received a "good proposal" (as my source put it) from the City of Oakland regarding the proposed sale of the County's share of the Coliseum. So, as of this writing, the parties, City, County, JPA, are proceeding in their normal way - as before. They're also waiting for the Raiders to give them a proposal of their own for a new stadium. Right now, the Silver and Black are in limbo. Regardless of how "crazy" Oakland Raiders President Mark Badain thinks my news that the Raiders were talking to Magic Johnson, the fact is the Raiders have held conversations with persons who could step in as the investor the NFL sorely wants it to have. (And to that end, the Oakland Alameda County Joint Powers Authority and the Raiders held a meeting with a potential developer / investor on Columbus Day. I don't know the names of the developer / investors as of this writing.) MORE ...http://ift.tt/1QmLgDQ

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