“There’s an elephant in the room, and that’s the Oakland A’s,” Davis said after Thursday’s press conference. “They have to make a commitment to what they want to do.”
The Athletics signed a 10-year lease extension with the existing O.co Coliseum in 2014, an agreement Davis says has hurt development prospects on the Coliseum site. Davis wants the A's to state their long-term plans for a new ballpark, and where that will be. Until they do, Davis says everyone is stuck in neutral.
“That’s the problem. They signed a 10-year lease while we were negotiating with Oakland officials), and it kind of put somebody right in the middle of things,” Davis said. “There isn’t much you can do. They’ve tied our hands behind our back.
“Now it’s up to the A’s to make a declaration of what they want to do. If they don’t do that, I don’t see how we can make a deal.”
Davis hopes the A’s and Raiders can work together under his vision for the Coliseum site. The Athletics prefer to play at O.co Coliseum and build a ballpark next to it. The Raiders want to tear down the aging sports venue, play off site and return to a newly minted site that features a football stadium and a new ballpark.
“We like the game day experience of tailgating on that parking lot. We don’t want to give that up,” Davis said. “People have not listened when I’ve said that I don’t mind building two stadiums on that site. The A’s stadium would take about 12 acres, and a Raiders stadium would take 15-17 acres. That’s fine with me, but I don’t want to give up the parking.”
Davis also doesn’t want to play under endless construction.
“What I do not want to do,” Davis said, “is build a football stadium in a corner of a parking lot while the Oakland Coliseum is still standing and, once we have a brand new venue, we begin to tear down the old stadium and build a new ballpark, disrupting the ingress, egress, parking and tailgating experience for Raiders fans on game day.”
http://www.csnbayarea.com/raiders/davis-tied-our-hands-behind-our-back-regarding-stadium
