It will be staying in Oakland or moving to Las Vegas.
The saga of the Oakland Athletics and the business’ future home continues into another move although the saga of where the team should call home has been playing out for decades since one-time A’s owner Charles Finley tried to sell the business to Denver interests in 1978 and 1979. All these years later, the present Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher has been playing Oakland against Las Vegas for a better part of a year. Fisher has a place in Oakland he would like to develop, a parcel of land on the Oakland waterfront that he would like to turn into a stadium-village. But Oakland politicians have not, as of yet, embraced Fisher’s proposal. Fisher does not have a place in Las Vegas although the business does have a couple places in mind that it thinks would work out.
The Athletics team president Dave Kaval keeps discussing the two cities and recently said “I really think by the end of the year we need to know one way or another. Hopefully we’ll get a sense this summer in Oakland with some of the votes. Hopefully we’ll be able to make an announcement in Las Vegas on a site soon and we can start a conversation with the community about how to bring that to a reality.” Back in Oakland, there is a San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission vote scheduled for June 30th that could remove a Howard Terminal port designation which would allow the development project to proceed. Fisher and the City of Oakland also have to come to terms on a development agreement and have it passed by the city council. Las Vegas area elected officials claim there will not be public money available for the project. The saga of John Fisher’s Major League Baseball franchise will continue throughout the summer.
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