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The Oakland Athletics hope to hit a home run with a planned ballpark near Laney College in Oakland. The team is moving forward with a 35,000-seat stadium to replace its aging Coliseum ballpark, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The team also considered a plan northwest of Jack London Square and at the Coliseum site in Oakland. Once the A's, Warriors and Raiders move, there will be no professional sports teams left at the Oakland Coliseum.
If all goes well, the A's could throw out the first pitch at the $500M-plus ballpark in 2023. It will be a long process and the A’s will need to buy the land near Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue from the Peralta Community College District, which has a headquarters there. The next nine months will consist of negotiations as well as finding a new 50K SF headquarters for the college district, a responsibility that will fall on the A’s. The team plans to use private funding for the stadium.
Oakland A’s President Dave Kaval said in a letter that the 13-acre site was the team’s best opportunity to stay in Oakland.
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The A’s want to build housing and commercial development on eight acres that are now a parking lot for the college used for a Sunday morning flea market. The A’s would construct a parking garage to improve the college’s parking.
The site provides the team with access to the Lake Merritt BART station and Interstate 880, but the team will need to get local support to build freeway ramps and other infrastructure upgrades that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It will also need to negotiate with BART for land for parking lots.
The Oakland A’s said the Coliseum, which has been the team’s home for 50 years, could be turned into a community sports park and urban youth baseball academy. The site could be also be redeveloped into commercial and residential uses, according to Kaval.
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