Oakland Letter Of Intent With Ronnie Lott Group For NFL Raiders Stadium An Exciting Start

Oakland Letter Of Intent With Ronnie Lott Group For NFL Raiders Stadium An Exciting Start
Anyone who thought Oakland wasn't serious about building a new NFL stadium for the Oakland Raiders should jettison that idea, or any media takes or Raiders Owner Mark Davis' comments to the contrary, right now. Forget Las Vegas. Laugh at Los Angeles. Oakland is officially very serious about building an NFL state-of-the-art stadium for the Raiders. Since 1987, when my first job out of the Berkeley Planning School was as intern with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, then consultant to the same organization, then on The Alameda Military Base Closure And Reuse Commission, then a columnist for The Montclarion, Economic Advisor to Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, then head of the Oakland Super Bowl XXXIX Bidding Committee and Executive Director of The Oakland-Alameda County Sports Commission, then publisher of Oakland's first blog, and then Oakland's first YouTube Partner Channel, then on Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' Sports and Entertainment Task Force, and now helping the current Mayor Libby Schaaf and Oakland Officials as a friendly advisor and media critic, have I ever seen one Oakland government document that established a path toward a new stadium until today. In fact, the last time any document came this close, it was the 1983 memos and the subsequent resolution that formed the deal to bring the Raiders back to Oakland from Los Angeles. Some may point to the Oakland-financed baseball stadium land study – but that was an analysis paper released in 2001 and financed by John Russo's Oakland City Attorney Office. Others will quickly say “Coliseum City” but a close read of the documents associated with the Forest City-then-Floyd Kephart plan shows that there was a focus on building housing while stadiums were a secondary focus. Not this time. What the Letter of Intent that was signed by Alameda County this week (and is expected to be signed by the City of Oakland next week) points to a design concept that is focused, first, on a state-of-art NFL stadium for the Oakland Raiders, and then the facility future of the Oakland Athletics and the Golden State Warriors in Oakland at the Coliseum, and also a place for MLS Soccer, NCAA Football, and FIFA, too. More http://ift.tt/2arPz3t
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