Oakland mayor details terms of city's deal to sell its share of the Coliseum
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao touted her deal to sell the city's share of the Oakland Coliseum Tuesday morning.
Oakland city leaders confirmed Monday that they had agreed on the terms to sell the Coliseum site to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group. The deal was signed Tuesday morning at Oakland City Hall.
The $105-million sale will potentially allow the city to avoid budget cuts as it struggles with a major financial shortfall.
According to the term sheet, the developer will pay the city in installments over the next few years. Thao spoke about the deal at Tuesday morning press conference.
Oakland Coliseum sale summary of terms by CBS News Bay Area on Scribd
Thao said the deal will lead to a multi-billion dollar investment in the East Oakland Community.
"We are investing in a place where it has been underinvested in for too many decades," Thao said at the press conference. "Working with an organization, the African American Sports and Entertainment Group that really cares for the community; not only when it's popular, not only when they need the community support, but day in and day out."
The mayor went on to say the sale will consist of five payments to the city totaling $105 million set to be complete by June of 2026.
Ray Bobbitt, the developer's founder and an Oakland native, said that the city's financial challenges and potential cuts to its services gave him a personal reason to accelerate the negotiations.
"This is where we are born and raised," Bobbitt said. "So, whatever we have to do in order to ensure the safety of my grandparents is something that I'm obviously going to be ready to move forward with."
The deal allows the city to stave off $63 million in cuts that would have been needed to shore up the deficit in the next couple of years. That means avoiding cuts to fire and police services among other things.
But there is some skepticism about the deal. The Oakland Police Officers Association issued a statement that said in part, it was "doubtful the sale of the coliseum will solve the mayor's and city council's epic mismanagement. We are deeply concerned for the safety of residents, businesses and our police officers. "
A member of Citizens Oakland, a group pushing for the city to stop chronic overspending, voiced similar concerns.
"This is a few months time that we are buying and we're right back to the same problem," Tim Gardner said. "We're overspending in a number of different ways that has crept up over five plus years. I understand the pain and difficulty of making real cuts to budgets, but the only thing we've been willing to cut is police, and to some degree now, fire."
The African American Sports and Entertainment Grou is planning to redevelop the area with new additions that include affordable housing.
"We are here. We are committed to it. We have incredible capital partners. We have incredible partners in this process," said Ray bobitt, AASEG founder.
One possible complication is that the A's own the other half of the Coliseum site. The group say it's now working with the team to purchase that portion.
But one of the biggest questions that still needs to be answered is what happens to that $63 million if the deal doesn't close: Does the city have to pay it back to AASEG, making the budget crisis even worse or would the city be able to keep that money.
The city said they will not release the final details of the deal until the purchase agreement is signed, hopefully by Aug. 23.
