Like the NFL’s San Francisco 49’ers Skip wrote about, Oakland A’s officials are seriously – very, very seriously – considering a move to Fremont, California, another east-bay area city.
The Oakland Athletics reached a deal with Cisco Systems Inc. to build a new ballpark in Fremont, according to city officials who met with the team’s owner.
The agreement would create a 32,000- to 35,000-seat ballpark, to be dubbed Cisco Field, on a 143-acre parcel held by the company, officials told the San Jose Mercury News. If the plan is approved by the city, the A’s could begin playing in Fremont 20 miles south of Oakland as soon as 2011, the newspaper reported.
A’s officials are planning on building a new stadium, with no public funds for the structure per-se, on land currently owned by the city of Fremont and leased by Cisco. One must look for the lucrative land deal when analyzing the public/private share of costs. Cisco, according to the article quoted above, has the option to buy the land in the next three years. Does this not limit the lucrativeness of any land deal the A’s will get?
