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Options for Keeping the Raiders in Oakland

There is an answer to keeping the Raiders in Oakland. Hopefully our three headed beast which pervades the the Oakland city council, Alameda County Board and the Coliseum Board will refrain from spinning themselves into paralysis regarding how to keep the Raiders here. The three entities did well to keep the A's with the recent agreement. The A's bring more revenue over time than the Raiders in the course off any fiscal year.

With the fact the the Warriors will leave to San Francisco it remains to be seen what happens with the Arena. While it may generate some revenue, it can not match what the Warriors as tenants mean to the facility. Assuming it gets torn down, this exposes more available space for both the Raiders and the A's .

There is not so much conflict between the A's and Raiders as their is between the development groups and how they want to say how they control the dollars spent involving these two franchises. One one hand, Colony Capital can conceivably bankroll a development that includes retail and private living quarters. Likewise, Lew Wolff can do the exact same thing with the economics of his group controlling similar revenues.

As of now the A's may appear closer to that reality than the Raiders.If the 3 joint powers are not careful and expedient at the same time they will lose the Raiders. The challenge remains as to how they can negotiate an agreement with the Raiders in lieu of Lew!

Is it too much to see a joint venture capitalization of the coliseum complex by these two firms to create a facility for both of our teams? That remains to be seen and depending upon the personalities involved, I am no hopeful that both would want to work together for the greater good of allowing these teams to remain identified with Oakland. If they wanted to, I think this would be a slam dunk and could be accomplished in the next 3-5 years. Once again, I don't remain hopeful.

Don Knauss and his group have made loud overtures to the Howard terminal as a venue for the A's, but has been publicly rejected by Lew Wolff for years now regarding the feasibility of the location. He continues to clain the EIR studies showed viability and I think it is worthwhile pursuing...for the Raiders.This point really needs to be emphasized. If they can build a stadium for baseball, what prevents a football stadium which conceivably would be used less often and therefore have less of an impact on the surrounding environment.

No one has brought up the issue of a state of the art football stadium on the waterfront overlooking the San Francisco Bay that could be attractive as a Super Bowl site and would dwarf Levis Stadium based upon it's location in the hub of the Bay Area. Once again, this is something that we haven't heard mentioned too often but I think the A's missed out for personal reasons only known to Lew Wolff and his ownership group on the Howard Terminal site. As far as Mark Davis is concerned, a stadium at Jack London Square would highlight some of what is best about Oakland and would allow for private development for ancillary sources of income.

I don't think the Coliseum wants the Raiders away from their facility. Frankly, they are not doing enough with the two other heads of this three headed beast to meet anybody's expectations for keeping the Raiders on thier property. Let's just keep our team in Oakland and get away from the hold these entities have over the Raiders we can all enjoy our team here in the Bay Area.