Oakland Athletics to pay $45M to Alameda Co for Coliseum. What’s next?

OAKLAND — The A’s will cough up $45 million owed to Alameda County to acquire its half of the Coliseum property, resolving the latest chapter of a messy saga involving one of the Bay Area’s most notable plots of land.

The baseball franchise, which initially had tried to get out of sending the money so quickly, sent a letter Thursday to Nate Miley, chair of the county’s Board of Supervisors, acknowledging that it will “satisfy the obligations” that remain outstanding from the parties’ 2019 agreement to purchase the land for $85 million.

The sale entitles the A’s to 50% ownership of the Coliseum complex, which includes the ballpark, the nearby arena and the vast parking space in between, even though the 2024 season may be the team’s last there.

And while the deal doesn’t formally close until 2026, its terms required the A’s to pay out the rest of what they owed to the county if the team ever announced it was leaving Oakland — which it did in April, when the team first secured a land deal for a Las Vegas ballpark.

That detail of the agreement — and the notion that the A’s owed the county $45 million within 180 days of the announcement — garnered attention after an opinion columnist for this news organization pointed it out last month, prompting weeks of confused responses from both the team and county officials.

County officials, including Miley, did not respond Friday to requests for comment, nor did the A’s.

The team hasn’t said what it intends to do with the 155-acre property, which has a murky future. A’s president Dave Kaval said at the time of purchase that the deal would help keep the team in town, but that outcome now appears off the table.

“I have not had any discussions with board members about what the A’s want to do with the property, because the A’s have never articulated them,” said Henry Gardner, the head of the Joint Powers Authority, which oversees the site on behalf of the city and county. “I haven’t seen or heard from the A’s what a redevelopment would look like.”

The other half of the property is owned by the city, which is in negotiations with the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, a Black-led development group to transform the site into a large commercial hotspot with live sports, hotels and nightlife, though the project has faced difficult early hurdles.

A local soccer franchise, Oakland Roots SC, has made overtures to play in an adjacent lot or even on the ballpark grounds after the A’s lease at the Coliseum expires at the end of 2024.

Separately, though, the A’s purchase is tied up in litigation after the lobbyist group Communities for a Better Environment challenged the county’s decision to sell the property.

The Bay Area’s chapter of the group alleged that the county did not sufficiently follow the Surplus Lands Act, a longstanding California law that requires public agencies to prioritize affordable housing for land.

Meanwhile, the deal cannot close until bonds taken out by the city and county in the 1990s for improvements at the ballpark and arena are fully returned, with the final payments expected in early 2026.

Where the A’s will play after their lease at the Coliseum expires remains a mystery.

Back in June, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority president Steve Hill said the A’s could play in Reno in the interim. Since then, three other options have been presented by Kaval: staying at the Coliseum and extending the lease, playing at the A’s Triple-A home in Las Vegas or sharing Oracle Park with the San Francisco Giants.

ESPN reported in September that MLB owners would want to know the A’s plan for a temporary home before voting to approve their move to Las Vegas at the owners’ meetings in November. But the vote was unanimous in approving the relocation — without the A’s announcing their intentions.