OAKLAND (KRON) — The A’s privately financed ballpark could be closer to actually happening.
The team’s president went into negotiations with the city’s chief negotiator Tuesday night and if certain conditions are met, the city could end up dropping a lawsuit that’s been holding up plans for a waterfront ballpark.
During that same closed door session they also gave the city attorney the okay to drop the lawsuit if certain conditions they would disclose to the public could be ironed out with the A’s.
That lawsuit isn’t against the team but against the County of Alameda.
The issue is that the county wants to sell their half of the coliseum site, the current home of the A’s, to the team for $85 million.
The city claimed in their lawsuit that the county should have offered the plot to Oakland first.
That lawsuit took the A’s by surprise.
The team is planning to build affordable housing and retail on the site and say it’s a lynchpin to the plan that would allow them to build a new privately financed ballpark at howard terminal.
On Wednesday, a group of local business owners calling themselves Town Business showed up at city hall to deliver a letter to each member of the city council and the mayor asking them to drop the lawsuit for the good of baseball fans and the local businesses that could be affected if the team picks up and moves somewhere else.
“We’ve already lost two sports teams and it really does enjoy the economy, the local economy,” said one business owner. “It just makes common sense to work with the organization and to build the economic development opportunity that we have.”
The business owner says now is not the time to be fighting in courtrooms.
The team has offered to buy the city’s portion of the coliseum as well for the same price, but only if the city agrees to drop the lawsuit holding up their deal with the county.
Even with the lawsuit is dropped, there are still likely hurdles ahead for the team.
There is still opposition to A’s moving to the waterfront from businesses at the port of Oakland who believe that a ballpark will get in the way of their operations.