How Do We Get Stuff Done? The A's Saga

1 team leaving might be an aberration. 2 is eyebrow raising. 3 is a pattern - but that's exactly what's happening in the great city of Oakland this week, as the A's announced a deal to buy a ballpark-sized piece of property about 1 1/2 miles off the strip in Las Vegas. That makes them the 3rd professional sports team in just 5 years to plot what they view as a brighter future outside what used to be one of the best sports cities in America. 

So what happened in Oakland? 

There is a long and harrowing wikipedia entry devoted solely to the A's ballpark saga that I would recommend reading if you have the energy - it's a 20+ year journey through the administrative state in California in the 21st century, featuring a panoply of inflexible procedural rules, ever present court challenges, and other complexities that turn a ballpark into a leviathan. At one point, negotiations stalled over how much affordable housing the team would be paying for at the new site. Amid all this, the team continued to use a facility ranked the worst stadium in sports - the Oakland Coliseum. Don't take my word for it: https://www.kron4.com/sports/oakland-as-ballpark-ranked-worst-in-u-s/

But the team owner is a billionaire, why didn't he just pay for it? From what I could surmise, the team was going to privately finance the construction of a new ballpark but needed help from the city to create an infrastructure so people could reach the new site. This is textbook SOP for large projects, whether it's a stadium or a corporate park. But teams are run as public-private concerns and get more scrutiny as a result. 

Anyway. efforts intensified over the last 6 years to get a stadium deal on the waterfront done, but with a January 2024 deadline looming (imposed by MLB), the A's made the calculation they could no longer wait. The team had spent $100 million on finding ways to stay in Oakland, and team president Dave Kaval told me they were still 8 years way from realistically opening the new venue. When a business spends 9 figures trying to stay in its own community and fails, something is inherently wrong in the design of the institutions that are meant to serve the people. A baseball stadium gets 80+ dates a season of full use - that's jobs and foot traffic that mean economic activity, and ultimately, community resources for some of Oakland's pressing needs. 

As of Friday, April 21st the prospect of the A's staying in Oakland looks just about DOA. And that's a shame - for fans, for unions, for the local economy. .The mayor said that she will move forward on plans to develop the port area without the A's as an anchor tenant. I hope she succeeds. 

The A's experience raises larger questions for me about a successive series of city leaders trying to do well by everyone, and resulting in governance that is unable to execute on big, important projects that advance the public good. And they had years to do it. 

I spoke to the Speaker of the Nevada assembly, he sounded optimistic they could have an A's bill delineating how the state could get a ballpark off the ground, completed in the next 45 days. Nevada has made a calculation that, well, if you build it they will come.

At some point, we gotta get stuff done.