On Monday, Columbus Day of 2015 and this week, Oakland District 7 Councilmember Larry Reid , and Oakland City Administrator Claudia Cappio met for an hour-and-a-half in the office of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, and with Oakland Raiders President Marc Badain, Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority Executive Director Scott McKibben, and Bruce Elieff and Pat Keliher, both representing Sun Cal.
Thus, it is Sun Cal Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Elieff that’s one of the rumored billionaire investors the Raiders are talking to, but he’s not into moving the team to Los Angeles. This is about Coliseum City in Oakland – something Sun Cal has been involved in for a few months now.
The general objective of that meeting was to determine next steps in the City’s proposal to the Raideers to come up with a new Coliseum City plan, although no specifics were finalized, and the Oakland A’s were not in the room. My sources say that the feeling now is the Raiders will not get the 24 NFL Owner votes required to approve a relocation request, although that idea will not stop the Silver and Black from filing for one. Moreover, the Raiders are expected to sign an extension of their current lease at the Coliseum, and perhaps even for not one, but two years. The Carson LA NFL Stadium deal is not expected to work out in the favor of the Raiders.
From this, it’s clear the Raiders are trying to work out a way to get a stadium deal done in Oakland. It’s also clear that the Coliseum City plan still has a housing component – one that I think should be removed and is still making this a land deal more than a stadium deal. But it’s also evident, from my point of view, that the lack of the existence of a focused task force, and a good competition between capable development groups, is still the case. Indeed, the overall strategy of the City of Oakland’s side of the Oakland / Alameda County coin is to simply just wait and let events in Los Angeles play out.
That’s not the say individual parties aren’t working on this, but there’s no real coordination. Want proof? Look no further than the fact that appropriate members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors were not at the Columbus Day meeting at Mayor Schaaf’s office.
And they’re not happy about it.
This continues the pattern of City of Oakland behavior where Oakland – regardless of whether it’s Jean Quan at the Helm or Libby Schaaf or Oakland Councilmembers on the JPA– has a habit of calling meetings with Oakland sports team executives and not informing or including County of Alameda representatives in them. Given that both Oakland and Alameda County jointly own the Coliseum, one would think such an action as one informing the other of meetings would be standard operating procedure. It’s not.
Some sources place part of the blame on the very capable shoulders of Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker. Many officials involved with the JPA point to her very cold read of the Ralph M. Brown Act as the reason why this pattern of lack of informing appropriate persons about these meetings has happened. The Brown Act was designed to prevent the occurrence of ‘backroom deal meetings’ of elected officials – gathering that were done without public notice, and giving the appearance that the wishes of the electorate were being circumvented.
Prior to Parker’s appointment to replace the then-departing John Russo – who’s now Riverside City Manager after having served Alameda in the same capacity – the Brown Act was interpreted in such a way as to at least allow the members of the JPA to meet in such a way as to have, say, one City representative and one County representative – not any more. Moreover, no one has challenged Parker on her stance and Parker’s office has not come up with a workable alternative of any kind as of this writing.
So, the overall news is the dysfunction continues, and Oakland has not given Alameda a good deal for the County to sell its share of the Coliseum to the City of Oakland, but the Raiders are working on something with Sun Cal, which is not new to the Coliseum City matter. That Sun Cal is involved in the Oakland Oak Knoll development project, too, should be of some concern. The last thing any one wants now is to have Coliseum City derailed by allegations of developer influence on elected officials via campaign contributions or anything else. I’m not saying Sun Cal has done this, but go to Google and search “Sun Cal Oakland” and see what is there.
Stay tuned.