What to Know: The Oakland A's Las Vegas Ballpark Plans

The Oakland A's could be leaving Oakland. I'm Jonathan Bloom and here's what to know about the team's deal to buy land for a ballpark in Las Vegas. It all started more than 20 years ago. The Coliseum was already getting old and the A's wanted to build a new ballpark near Oakland's Uptown neighborhood. Former Governor Jerry Brown was mayor at the time and in 2001 he rejected the plan because he wanted that land for new housing. It was the first of at least eight different stadium plans to fail over the next two decades. In 2005 the A's looked at land across the street from the Coliseum.

Then a year later they announced plans to build Cisco Field in Fremont. When that fell through they started looking at Jack London Square and then San Jose near the Shark Tank. That led to a legal fight with the Giants who said San Jose was their territory. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed so the A's signed a 10-year lease extension back here at the Coliseum, thinking maybe they could build a new ballpark right here. Now of course the Raiders also played here at the Coliseum and their owner insists that lease extension is part of the reason his team gave up and moved to Las Vegas.

He says they were ready to negotiate for a new football stadium on this site, but they were stuck until the A's moved out. In 2017 the Raiders announced they were moving and the Warriors broke ground on the Chase Center to move to San Francisco. Meanwhile the A's kept trying more sites in Oakland, first near Lake Merritt and then on the waterfront at a former shipping facility called Howard Terminal. That plan was actually moving along, but then came the COVID-19 pandemic and progress slowed to a crawl. There were missed deadlines, a couple of lawsuits and somewhere in there the A's began their talks to move to Las Vegas. You see the pandemic did a couple of things. First with all the delays, Major League Baseball got impatient and told the A's to go ahead and start looking elsewhere.

And second, a piece of land near the Vegas Strip that was supposed to be a future casino suddenly went up for sale. It might be the ideal spot for a ballpark, walking distance from the Strip right next to the hockey arena and the football stadium where the Raiders now play. And so the A's signed a binding agreement to purchase that land with plans to build a $1.5 billion ballpark there with a retractable roof and room for 30 to 35,000 fans. But then, not even a month later, the A's announced a different land agreement, this one right on the Strip at the site of the Tropicana Hotel. The owners would demolish the hotel, build a ballpark that opens out onto the Strip and then build a new hotel next to it. The A's said they backed out of the first agreement, meaning it wasn't so binding after all.

Now, if the A's are going to move, buying the land is just the first step. The next step is getting approval from state and county lawmakers in Nevada, and that involves getting them to fork over $400 million in public money. Something Oakland flat out refused to do. But in Vegas, it's a different story. The state and county already gave $750 million to the Raiders to build a legion stadium. The team had to guarantee they'd stay there for 30 years until the stadium's paid off by a hotel tax of just under 1%. So the A's would ask for a similar deal.

Now, if they can't get the public money, they've already explored a backup plan, some land farther from the Strip near the Rio Hotel that the owners would give them for just a dollar. The A's say they're still laser focused on the site near the Strip, and if that goes through, then they'd need a vote. At least 22 of the other 29 Major League team owners would have to approve to make the A's only the second Major League team to relocate in more than 50 years. Then they have to start construction. Now, their lease here at the Coliseum is up next year, and it could take until 2027 to open a new ballpark. So they'd have to find a place to play in the meantime. That could be the Las Vegas Minor League Stadium, which only has 10,000 seats, or staying a little longer here at the Coliseum, or even sharing Oracle Park with the Giants for a couple of seasons.

Either way, the deadline to put this all in motion is January 2024. That's when Baseball's Commissioner said the A's need to have a signed agreement for a new ballpark, or they'll lose the revenue sharing they're getting from the other teams. The Commissioner says he doesn't care where that new ballpark is. So technically speaking, the door is still open for the A's to strike a deal right here in Oakland.

a's, oakland a's, athletics, oakland athletics, mlb, baseball, sports, bay area, las vegas, rob manfred, john fisher