Oakland Coliseum City Reboot

This version of Oakland Coliseum City, called "Coliseum Reboot", came about when Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis asked me to come up with a plan for a stadium for the Oakland Raiders. Mr. Davis was frustrated that, to the point of the NFL Spring League Meeting, and after 10 years of discussions going back to the original Coliseum City idea created by Robert Leste, Frank Dobson, and Steve Lowe, that no actually ready-to-build, approved plan for his team was done.

 

Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics were planning a new baseball stadium of their own, but because their contract with the Oakland-Alameda County Joint Powers Authority calls for a stadium at the Coliseum, and the ownership fears that their seat license sales would compete with those for a new Raiders stadium, they expressed that the Coliseum be baseball only. Coliseum Reboot allows both the Raiders and the A's to co-exist in a way such that both benefit from each other.

 

There are separate stadiums but the overall single series of bond issues for the complex will allow an overall surplus of revenues to protect against cost overruns. The plan is for a 1,010 room hotel split into two wings, and such that the "Raiders Wing" benefits Raiders fans such that the rooms would be tied to special ticket sales and luxury suite sales, and the same would be true for the "Athletics Wing" . A central retail public complex would serve as the 'front room" for the entire venue and a kind of "hall of fame" for both the Raiders and the A's, too. The Oracle Arena, still one of the best basketball and concert facilities ever created, would remain, and also accessible via the retail complex and the A's wing of the hotel.

 

Right now, what I have is a financial spreadsheet that calls for an industrial development lease revenue series of bond issues totaling $1.9 billion, and for a baseball stadium of 35,000 seats and 150 suites, and a football stadium of 68,000 seats, and 300 luxury suites, in addition to 300,000 square feet of retail space in what, today, is a berm structure between the existing stadium and Oracle Arena. I have a bond amortization schedule. I have emails from Piper Jaffrey Investment Bankers, who, i think, should be the underwriting firm of record for this project. I have a sketch, but that's it.

 

What I have done is put in the broad financial structure, but what we need is a hard, true, design concept. Layouts for specific areas like the suites, corridors, clubs, retail areas, bathrooms, press areas (heck, even rethinking the press box concept) flooring, air conditioning, lighting, signage. There's so much that needs to be thought out, and designed, and cost estimated within our financial budget, that there's enough room for all kinds of ideas and approaches by Raiders and A's fans and Oaklanders, and Oakland sports fans. So please help me move forward in creating what you and I know we can do: build a large sports entertainment complex in Oakland that is the envy of the World, affordable to the fans, visited by millions, the pride of the A's and Raiders and all without public subsidies. We can do this. We must do this. It's about Oakland and the redevelopment of a once-powerful can-do attitude. Let's work. Together.