Oakland Reports a Hitch in Bid to Lure Raiders

Oakland authorities are reporting a serious hitch in their attempts to entice the Los Angeles Raiders back to the East Bay city, with the Oakland A’s baseball team objecting to some of the renovations planned for the Raiders at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

However, reports in Bay Area newspapers that the A’s have threatened to leave Oakland if the Raiders come back are untrue, according to both an A’s spokesman and Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata, who has led the Oakland effort to win back the Raiders.

Perata said Thursday that it will be necessary to confer with the A’s before Oakland’s offer to the Raiders can be finalized, because the A’s “have a contractual right to approve any reconfiguration or remodeling of the stadium.” He said talks with the A’s will not begin until after the World Series, in which the A’s are playing the San Francisco Giants.

Oakland has tentatively offered the Raiders $53 million in stadium renovations, including an expansion of the stadium’s seating capacity from about 50,000 to 65,000. Such an expansion might force changes in the alignment of the baseball field as well as the football field.

The A’s chief operating officer, Walter Haas, said last week the A’s are also concerned that aggressive marketing of Raiders games could adversely affect the A’s business, and the president of the Golden State Warriors basketball franchise, Dan Finnane, said he is concerned that bringing in the Raiders could “stretch the sports dollar” in the East Bay too much for his team’s good. The Warriors play in an indoor arena that is part of the Oakland Coliseum complex.

Perata said Thursday that the experience of both Candlestick Park in San Francisco and Anaheim Stadium indicates that major professional baseball and football franchises can coexist in the same facility without suffering competitively. He said he is certain that there is room in Oakland for the A’s, the Raiders and the Warriors.

But, Perata added, just for the record, Oakland authorities would not be interested in bringing in the Raiders if it meant losing the A’s.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Coliseum Commission President Richard Riordan said Thursday that he has been told privately that Oakland is fading as a prospect for a Raiders move and that Los Angeles’ real competition may be Sacramento.

Riordan said, however, that he understands that cost estimates for building a stadium for the Raiders in Sacramento have been coming in higher than Sacramento entrepreneurs expected.

Both Riordan and Coliseum private management negotiator Irving Azoff said no progress has been made in efforts to resume discussions with Raiders owner Al Davis about keeping the team in Los Angeles.