It is Oakland versus Las Vegas In The Battle To Land Fisher’s Business.
There are a group of architects and urban planners who are getting paid a lot of money from John Fisher who are rather happy. Fisher is the owner of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics franchise and he wants to build a 21st century state of the art ballpark complete with all the bells and whistles necessary to make money. In Oakland, he has proposed building a stadium-village on the Oakland waterfront near Howard Terminal. In Las Vegas, he and the Oakland Athletics team president Dave Kaval are going on fact-finding tours of Las Vegas trying to learn as much as they can about Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. Recently, it appeared that the Athletics owner Fisher was interested in continuing a dialogue with Oakland elected officials and attorneys in an effort to stay in the nation’s sixth biggest market. But that seemingly has changed again and Las Vegas is very much in the picture. At least that is according to Kaval.
“I think it’s important that we recognize that we’re still having conversations. It’s also really important to understand the parties are still working towards a mutually agreeable solution. But we’re also going to work on a parallel path in Las Vegas, because it’s important that we have multiple options. We’re really running out of time here at the Coliseum.” Under ideal circumstances construction would have started on the Oakland waterfront stadium-village concept and Oakland’s new stadium would be ready by 2025. But that pesky thing called funding is in the way. Fisher and Kaval want about $800 million in taxpayers’ money to help pay the cost for the stadium-village venture. Oakland elected officials don’t want to put that much money up. Las Vegas has not publicly shown its hand yet. But Fisher has two cities that want his business, the ultimate leverage in the stadium game.
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