For more than a decade, John Fisher, the owner of the Athletics Major League Baseball team, has been threatening to move the club out of Oakland if the city didn’t pony up enough public money for a new ballpark.
Among his final bids were plans for a massive West Oakland redevelopment that included far more than just a stadium. It involved 1.8m sq ft of commercial space, a hotel, a performing venue and, most important for a region undergoing an immense housing crisis, 3,000 residential units. Arguments over how many of those units would be deemed “affordable” kept erupting and were often cited as the major hangup keeping shovels out of the ground. It was unclear how much of this was public posturing because, ultimately, any plans to keep the Athletics in Oakland were ditched.
