Oakland A's Reasons For Pessimism With Howard Terminal Ballpark Project - ATLNews

Ok, Oakland A's Fans, on the matter of Howard Terminal Ballpark Project, you've seen all of the rosy headlines, thumbnails, and tweets giving you hope that a ballpark will really be constructed on that site in Oakland, right? Reasons to be optimistic. Ok, well, here's your boy Zennie Abraham, with a spoon full of medicine to snap you out of your Fantasyland (sorry Disney), and bring you right back to Earth. Very real reasons to be pessimistic that Howard Terminal will ever get done. Let's line them up, shall we? One: Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has said they're focused on Las Vegas, and are done talking about Oakland. Yep, that's what Commissioner Manfred said late last year. Regardless of what you think of him, Rob Manfred is the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, and sets the tone for the organization, which includes our beloved Oakland A's. Rob Manfred said that because Oakland A's President Dave Kaval was not in a position to tell that truth and for a host of reasons there: foremost among them it would almost completely stop people from coming to watch the team at the Coliseum (even though the losses to the Angels kinda helped with that, early on). Manfred also said that because he's sick and tired of waiting for the City of Oakland to get over its penchant for bureaucratic malaize and over-politization, which was waisted three years of the almost five years this version of Howard Terminal Ballpark has been a thing. Everyone knows Las Vegas offers a better way forward regarding actual implementation. Indeed, if you look at stadium progress in Nashville and Buffalo, or even renovations to Lambeau Field or Gillette Stadium in Green Bay and Boston, respectively, Oakland looks like it's standing completely still. It's even alergic to improving the existing Coliseum, allowing it to be ran as if it's a giant high school gym, and little more than that. And all of that, even with a bad economy, which gets to my next point. The bad economy is holding up development projects around America, and there's no reason to think Oakland's not immune to that, especially at Howard Terminal, and even in Las Vegas. The problems of inflation, rising labor and material costs, and supply issues (two of those issues are solvable if the Fed Chair stops acting like a drunk driver and takes his foot off the interest rate gas), are hampering many sports stadium and facility projects from getting past the drawings stage. Take a read at what the folks representing Houston Billionaire Tilman Fertita's planned Las Vegas Casino said just three weeks ago to the The Nevada Independent : “It's very expensive to build right in an inflationary environment,” Steven Scheinthal, a vice president with Fertitta Entertainment, said in a brief interview with The Nevada Independent following an appearance in front of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. What we're doing is going through with our options and trying to understand what the development process would entail,” Scheinthal said. “Tilman, at some point, can decide whether he wants to go forward or not.” In Howard Terminal's case, and presenting the next reason for pessimism, there's zero public subsidy officially committed to the ballpark project, and the City of Oakland's slowness at doing anything meaningful closed the door on implementing a tax increment financing zone three years ago, if only to start collection on revenue that could, at least, have been used for administrative costs. Even now, implementing an EIFD would take another years worth of planning, negotiations, and approvals, and what has the City done? Nothing. You can talk, talk, talk, but if there's no money to do, do, do, you have nothing but empty promisses in the end. One promise is a truth and our next and final reason for now: the Oakland A's have lobbyists and architects at work in Las Vegas and regarding a Las Vegas ballpark. Meanwhile, there's no real progress, no money, an economic slow-down, and bureaucratic lethargy, over-politization, and a disinterested Major League Baseball Commissioner, with respect to Oakland. Stay tuned.
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