Critics throw barbs, fans toss tomatoes as Oakland A’s waterfront deal set to expire

OAKLAND — This city’s ambitious dream of sandwiching a giant ballpark and thousands of new homes into its busy waterfront is now dead — possibly once and for all.

The Oakland A’s are expected to let their exclusive negotiating contract for land at Howard Terminal expire Saturday morning, leaving them with no further ties to the 55-acre property in the middle of Oakland’s industrial seaport that had until recently been slated for a large-scale development guided by the team.

With recent shake-ups in Las Vegas indicating a bumpier path to a new stadium there than the A’s had previously indicated, this might not be the final nail in the coffin for the franchise’s relationship with Oakland.

But it does point to a different direction for the future of Howard Terminal, now used mostly to store shipping containers and parked trucks and which city leaders have indicated will be left on the market for possible new suitors.

Mayor Sheng Thao said as much last month when she announced the end to ballpark talks with the A’s. Thao noted that future developers could be “fast-tracked” for approval at the site if they come forward with the right proposal — live entertainment or otherwise.

Not everyone agrees on the potential for a splashy future development of this waterfront property. In particular, those who spent the past few years pushing back against the A’s and former Mayor Libby Schaaf’s nonstop boosterism of the ballpark deal are rolling their eyes.

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous — it’s an inaccessible piece of land and a really poor place to build,” said Nola Agha, a University of San Francisco professor previously commissioned by opponents of the A’s project to study its costs.

“The city has invested so much time and money into this land in ways that just aren’t very logical,” Agha added.

City officials sunk hundreds of millions of state-provided grant dollars last year into shoring up the transit infrastructure near Jack London Square.

Much of the investment appeared intended to directly benefit the A’s development: a protected bicycle lane that led straight to the port and an overcrossing that would allow vehicles to go over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

Were a stadium deal to go through, those would be necessary measures to ensure that thousands of fans could access the waterfront ballpark and other attractions in the residential community.

But the deal’s opponents never intended to stop fighting the development.

They hadn’t notched too many victories — a lawsuit opposing the city’s environmental review of the development didn’t make it far, while last year a Bay Area conservation agency determined the port had enough space to support the ballpark and housing.

Still, shipping companies that insisted Howard Terminal was needed for future port expansion had strong motivation to resist the A’s deal to the bitter end, and now they have similar impetus to thwart any future plan for a public-facing development.

“The A’s felt like they could outlast us, and we basically told them, ‘The more you ignore us, the louder we are going to become,’ ” said Mike Jacob, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, a trade group representing marine terminals and vessel operators.

Meanwhile, Oakland’s last major sports team is already running into a snag in its triumphant exodus to Las Vegas.

The team’s original planned site, for which it touted last month a “binding agreement” to purchase land, seems to have fallen from favor after Nevada legislators balked at the team’s request for $500 million in public investment.

Now the A’s have agreed to partner with the entertainment company Bally’s Corp. to build a $1.5 billion stadium on the same lot as the Tropicana hotel and casino, the Nevada Independent reported this week.

The move would lower the team’s request for public funding from $500 million to $395 million, the Independent reported.

These kinds of switch-ups are familiar territory for the A’s, who have sought new stadium sites for years, often making grand announcements or setting bold deadlines that ultimately hold little actual weight.

Could the team circle back to Howard Terminal, the site that A’s President Dave Kaval had long hyped as Oakland’s last possible home for the team?

“If they wanted to come back and say, ‘Listen, the Vegas thing is not for sure, and we want to talk about the last offer,’ we’re here for that,” Oakland Councilmember Dan Kalb said in a recent interview. “The problem is when they keep saying, ‘We want more funding, we want more.’ ”

But Saturday’s likely end to the team’s exclusive negotiation rights at the waterfront suggests there is no plausible path forward for a deal.

As for A’s fans, whose latest planned demonstration against the team is to chuck tomatoes at an effigy of billionaire owner John J. Fisher before Friday’s home game, hope springs eternal, even if it’s hard to justify.

“If the A’s sold and the new ownership wanted to push forward in Oakland — hell yeah, let’s get Howard Terminal built!” said Jorge Leon, an A’s superfan who plans to take part in the tomato tailgate. “That would be my best-case scenario; there’s still no hope (for a sale right now), but we’ll keep putting that pressure on him.”