City and county leaders will convene an unusual joint public meeting about the future of the Oakland Coliseum property, officials confirmed to The Oaklanside on Monday.<\/p>\n
The idea for a meeting was prompted by a letter Oakland City Council President Kevin Jenkins sent Monday morning to his counterpart on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, President David Haubert.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is imperative that there be an open and public conversation between our two governing bodies regarding how we jointly approach the disposition of our equal ownership interest in the Oakland Coliseum property,\u201d Jenkins wrote.<\/p>\n
Haubert responded to Jenkins\u2019 email Monday afternoon, applauding the plan to meet and hash out where things stand publicly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a great idea, and something I have long felt necessary,\u201d he wrote. Haubert did not respond to interview requests for this story.<\/p>\n
The meeting, with a yet-to-be-determined date, comes as significant questions remain about plans for the 112 acres of land, the largest publicly owned redevelopment site in Oakland. The Coliseum\u2019s fate is tied up in complex negotiations between the city and county and the developers hoping to purchase the property.<\/p>\n
The Coliseum is jointly owned by Oakland and Alameda County. In 2019, the county entered a deal with the A\u2019s baseball team\u2019s owners to sell its 50% undivided interest in the property to the team. The A\u2019s have made all of their required payments and are scheduled to take ownership of the county\u2019s half interest this year.<\/p>\n
However, in July 2025<\/a>, the county changed course and approved a new deal that allows the A\u2019s to assign their right to purchase the Coliseum to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group. The supervisors set a June 30, 2026 goal to finalize this.\u00a0<\/p>\n This aligned with the city of Oakland\u2019s longstanding plans. Since 2021, Oakland had been in negotiations with AASEG, and in 2024, the city approved selling its half-share in the Coliseum to the Black-led developer group. That agreement became the source of controversy when the parties had to renegotiate it and Oakland didn\u2019t receive the expected payments from AASEG, leaving the city in a deep deficit.<\/p>\n Even so, last summer\u2019s decision by the county to move forward with AASEG was framed as a key milestone by leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n AASEG plans to leverage financing from Chicago-based Loop Capital to redevelop the East Oakland property as a housing, entertainment, and shopping complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since July, the county has been meeting repeatedly in closed sessions with key stakeholders to finalize the complicated transfer but no new progress has been publicly announced.<\/p>\n The reasons for the ongoing hold-ups haven\u2019t been entirely clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his email, Jenkins noted that the city and county previously held a similar public forum about the future of the Coliseum property in 2013.<\/p>\n Jenkins told The Oaklandside he called the meeting \u201cto ensure we\u2019re on the same page as we\u2019re approaching deadlines.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He said he\u2019s confident the deal can pan out by June 30 if \u201call stakeholders are working together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In early January, activist and mayoral candidate Seneca Scott put out a press release claiming a county \u201cwhistleblower\u201d told him the county was planning to buy back its interest in the Coliseum from the A\u2019s at a $30 million loss. He also claimed the city is in talks with PG&E about selling its portion of the property to the company, after AASEG missed required payments.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Monday, East Bay Insiders similarly reported<\/a> that the Coliseum deal is \u201calmost dead.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about these allegations, Jenkins said he doesn\u2019t \u201chave the same sources\u201d and \u201cwould hope\u201d that the claims are not accurate.<\/p>\n Jenkins originally brought up the idea for a joint meeting at this month\u2019s gathering of the Oakland-Alameda Joint Powers Authority Commission<\/a>. The authority was discussing where the Roots soccer team, which played at the Coliseum in 2025<\/a>, would be able to play this year.<\/p>\n \u201cI talked to the council president about this after the JPA meeting, and thought a meeting like that could be productive,\u201d said Ray Bobbitt, AASEG\u2019s co-founder. Bobbitt said the Roots\u2019 2026 season is among multiple time-sensitive issues to sort out.<\/p>\n Eli Wolfe contributed reporting.<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City and county leaders will convene an unusual joint public meeting about the future of the Oakland Coliseum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[75056,389,75057,8550,143,12300,145,144],"class_list":["post-152119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-african-american-sports-and-entertainment-group","tag-alameda-county","tag-david-haubert","tag-kevin-jenkins","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-coliseum","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}