The Oakland Raiders are seeking a home of their own in Oakland but the stadium approval hinges upon the city of Oakland’s willingness to put up $400 million dollars. If the two can not agree on an agreement the Raiders could make the move the team to Los Angeles.
Raiders’ owner Mark Davis spoke with ESPN about their future plans:
“The Raiders, along with the NFL with the G4 money, which is a $200 million loan to the Raiders, would be able to come up with $500 million. We’ve put $500 million on the table and we believe that we could build the stadium in Oakland that would be suitable for the Raiders and our fans for about $900 million. We would need the land and the infrastructure to be taken care of somehow.”
Davis remains optimistic about the deal getting done in time.
“What the city and county have done is they’ve given an exclusive negotiating agreement to a company run by a guy by the name of Floyd Kephart. They are attempting to come up with that $400 million gap through some type of a real estate development deal. By June 21, they’re supposed to come with a financing plan to the city and the county and then to us. We’ll see if it’s a doable deal or not. We’re hoping that it is.”
Even with those comments, Davis seemed pretty excited about the possibility of sharing a Complex in Carson, California with the San Diego Chargers.
“The fact that there are two teams doing this project and the fact that we’ve got 170 acres right now, it gives us the ability to finance the stadium without relying on ancillary development. We don’t have to fill the parking lot or extra acreage with buildings and hotels and things of that nature. We’re able to just build a football stadium, which would have the ingress because of the freeways and where Carson is located. It would have the ingress and egress that I require and, as well, have the parking that would give us the best game day experience possible.”
The fans in Oakland are amazing but it’ll be hard for the owners of both the Raiders and Chargers to turn down the opportunity to move to the LA market and have a state of the art stadium.
