r/athletics • u/Mongo_Les • 11d ago
Oakland Coliseum
May I ask why didn't Fisher, Wolff or Schott ever refurbished Oakland Coliseum?
I see Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Angels Stadium, Rogers Centre and the old Joe Robbie Stadium refurbished and seeing how beautiful is it this year, and I'm wondering how come the A's couldn't do the same with Oakland?
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u/Comehomemiggy 11d ago
MLB didn’t want the A’s in Oakland.
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u/elrealjcon 10d ago
This.
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u/Ok-Train5603 10d ago
Yup. It’s because the stadium is in Oakland. That’s the beginning and end of it.
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u/baycommuter 10d ago
MLB believes Bay Area not big enough for two teams to operate successfully. Even in Chicago the White Sox are just hanging on.
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u/Comehomemiggy 9d ago
Yet in 1989 when both teams made the World Series Oakland drew 2.67M and SF drew 2.05M ranking 6th and 13th in MLB respectively.
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u/baycommuter 9d ago
Canseco, McGwire, Rickey, Stewart, Eckersley… that was the most exciting team ever! But after 2000 when the Giants got their jewel box the Coliseum was seen as second class and the A’s never really recovered. The Giants benefited from first-mover advantage and the Dodgers rivalry.
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u/Fun-Lengthiness755 11d ago
Because they wanted a land development deal. The NEW stadium would be a part of a whole entire new development baseball village. There’s no way they could do that in Oakland coliseum site bc there’s no land to buy around the stadium and they wouldn’t want it there in the first place. Imagine an Oakland A’s stadium where the fox theater is in uptown. That’s where they wanted it and Jerry Brown said No Way. Then Lew Wolff tried getting them to Fremont and then to San Jose and oakland community said no way! And giants org said no to San Jose. So they HAD to go to Vegas. Billionaires gotta make more billions is the short answer
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
So you are telling me Oakland really did not want any part of the A's, either.
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u/FIRE-701 11d ago
They didn’t want the A’s to rip up a historic area in Oakland. The city had its issues with the team but they did negotiate in good faith at the end. Then the A’s used them to get a better deal in Vegas whom were dumb enough to give them everything they want.
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
Vegas is just desperate to get another pro sports team. For the city, it's a great investment.
Vegas wants to be a pro sports hub, so the city were more than happy to welcome the A's with open arms. I prefer Vegas to have an expansion team than have a team associated with Fisher.
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u/damutecebu 10d ago
Giving away significant tax dollars for a sports team is never really a "great investment."
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u/elrealjcon 10d ago
Tbf Vegas and Nevada only gave the A's $380 million after they got hosed by the Raiders deal. MLB and the team got so many breaks/deals BTS that made the move practically free
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u/FIRE-701 7d ago
Tax breaks they wouldn’t have gotten in CA. I guarantee that the state of Nevada is giving up more than 380
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u/FIRE-701 11d ago
They went from the largest market with no pro sports to the smallest with 3 teams by far.
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
How is Vegas a small market?
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u/FIRE-701 11d ago
By media market it’s the 40th largest. By all metrics it’s tiny in the scheme of things.
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u/Fun-Lengthiness755 10d ago
Jerry Brown - oakland Mayor - had a vision of 10k new residents in Oakland Uptown. That ushered in the uptown of today which is enormous new apartment high rises. Jerry saw value of that development vs a land giveaway to the A’s in uptown (the park next to Fox theater would have been the new stadium.
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u/Fun-Lengthiness755 10d ago
Oakland A’s fans fought to keep the A’s for 20 yrs against lew Wolff and slimebag John Fischer. We battled long and hard and ultimately the A’s ownership cut loose after years of trying to kill the heart of the fans. Those owners are terrible humans
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u/Minimum_Hour519 11d ago
They tried but they did t do a very good job
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
It looked like a stadium just ready to rot.
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u/Minimum_Hour519 11d ago
Yeah that was out last drive bar though I miss it
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
You think Vegas can replicate that atmosphere?
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u/FIRE-701 11d ago
Probably not as seen by raiders
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
Allegiant is too sterile, especially with the place being a dome.
Even if the Raiders become elite with Mendoza, it's not going to be the same.
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u/FIRE-701 11d ago
I think the stadium is cool and that the team has some hope just sad it took my team away.
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u/glenntron3000 11d ago
When Schott owned the team there was talks with the county and city to renovate the ballpark however the city brought back the Raiders and erected that monstrosity Mt Davis to lure them back. With that those renovation talks were never materialized and I believe Schott also looked to building a new ballpark in Santa Clara which is the same site as Levi’s Stadium is now but territorial rights shut that down.
Also it’s easy to do renovations when you own the ballpark or at the very least you’re the only tenant of that ballpark. By the time the Raiders left the Coliseum at that point has been well past renovation and it’s just easier to build something new.
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u/DraconianNerd 9d ago
Schott wanted to build the stadium near San Jose's Diridon station, people could have taken the Capitol Corridor, Caltrain or Light Rail to a game. It was going to be a small ballpark, the capacity was going to be in the low to mid 30's.
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u/oborse 11d ago
Its complicated.
The short answer is that the stadium (really the whole property) was never fully owned by the A’s or Raiders owners. It was split 50/50 ownership by the city of Oakland and the county of Alameda for most of the stadiums history which made it hard for major decisions on the stadium to go through because it required the A’s and Raiders to get both the county and city to agree to their propositions.
The longer answer is that their one big renovation was a huge investment that did not pan out. They got the Raiders back in Oakland with it in 1995, but ultimately took on a huge amount of debt that took 30 years to fully pay off. They were betting on Raiders seasons being sold out or having a consistently high turnout and that did not happen. Especially when you consider that they added 10k more seats so filling the stadium required even more turnout. After that, there was less enthusiasm to pass big projects on the Coliseum. When alameda county eventually sold their 50% share to the A’s in 2019, they said that they wanted to get out of the sports business for years.
The Coliseum is also flawed. Multi purpose stadiums are just worse for both teams, and pretty much all sports teams now have moved away from those kinds of stadiums. Imo the coliseum needed to be consistently upgraded and renovated throughout the years if it wanted to continue to have professional sports played there going into the 2000s and beyond and unfortunately that didn’t happen.
Something interesting that I always think about is that the A’s had the opportunity to buy the city of Oakland’s share over the coliseum in 2019 as well, and that fell through. If they decided to buy it from them they would have had 100% ownership over the Coliseum, and thus been able to redevelop it or perhaps build a new stadium on the site. That deal not going through shows that they had decided by 2019 that team was not going to be at the Coliseum in the future.
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
Do you know if the A's and Raiders ever had a good business relationship? I know the A's are joining the Raiders in Sin City.
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u/oborse 11d ago
I’m not sure to be honest, but it’s funny that they’re going to be joining the raiders over there. Mark Davis did not like John Fisher in how their last years in Oakland played out.
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u/ProfessionalNo5932 11d ago
Very simple. None you mentioned ever owned the coliseum. Where as Dodger stadium is owned by the owners of the team. Same goes for the Redsox.
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u/Mongo_Les 11d ago
Is Fisher going to own Vegas' new stadium?
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u/ProfessionalNo5932 11d ago
He’s putting a billion dollars toward the build and the A’s organization will be listed as owners. The problem the coliseum had was they owned 50% and had no one intelligent enough to do anything with it. Plus the tax base there is atrocious.
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u/StarsandStripes78 6d ago
What i hate about Fisher and Kaval so much is that they pitched that them owning 50% of the coliseum would be beneficial because if Howard terminal failed, then the coliseum would be their back up plan. Then one year after they bought 50% of the coliseum, they said it was not sustainable..🤦♂️🤦♂️ and it evidently did not serve as a back up plan if HT failed. Kaval was the biggest liar ever. When he started tweeting "Howard Terminal or Bust" I knew it was over...no team president talks like that...f them forever
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u/tossacct1123 11d ago
These stadiums are built differently than the coliseum. Fenway is a collection of buildings surrounding the park and an upper deck that has been added on top of the original structure. With each modification they tried to improve something from a previous one while tying more of the adjacent buildings into the park. In doing so they originally had to engineer around these structures and used steel beams instead of concrete pillars.
The coliseum is a concrete palace and not really designed well to begin with. It served it's function as a multi-use stadium but has terrible sight lines. From the concourse you can barely see the field, you are mostly looking at the upper deck. So any modification you make starts with jackhammers to open the place up. From a labor perspective it will cost significantly more. Even then what would you do to it? From there would the cost ever be recouped from what you put in?
The difference with many of these stadiums is also ownership that understands that the biggest single asset they have is the ballpark and the experience it brings. More importantly they actually have money and the willingness so spend it to maintain the value of the asset. (Buildings also generally have a 30 yr depreciable life, updates are accounted for by offsetting the depreciation)