The fight to keep the Raiders is Oakland is heating up. Developer SunCal is now working with the team on site review work for a new stadium in Coliseum City. The Irvine-based company is helping the team figure out whether a 55,000-seat, $1.5B stadium, required parking and development can squeeze on the site of the current Coliseum and Oracle Arena, reports the San Francisco Business Times. It's still up in the air as to whether the company is diving deeper into Coliseum City with the 800-acre project that could include housing, retail, hotels, stadiums, parks and office and R&D space.

SunCal was among four development teams in early 2012 hoping to lead pre-development work on Coliseum City. The project was jump-started by Floyd Kephart's New City Development. The Oakland City Council and Alameda County Board of Supervisors just OK'd an exclusive negotiating agreement with New City. Now New City hopes to mend issues around joint city-county ownership of Coliseum land and lay the groundwork for reworking some $100M in debt on former renos.

The news is a drastic turn from just a month earlier, when the San Diego Chargers and Raiders announced plans to jointly pursue constructing a $1.7B NFL stadium in Carson. Both the Raiders and Chargers have expressed interest in remaining in their current homes, and the leading candidate for bringing football back to LA is Stan Kroenke and his plans for a massive venue in Inglewood. [SFBT]