By Steven Tavares.
Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley has recently pushed a proposal to save taxpayers’ money by renovating O.co Coliseum as a football-only facility instead of constructing a new stadium likely to cost more than $1 billion. Getting the Oakland Raiders and the NFL on board with such a plan is questionable.
But Miley, who also sits on the Coliseum Joint Powers Authority, told a Los Angeles radio station he believes Raiders owner Mark Davis would “buy into” a renovation of the stadium, provided the city and county can finally come together with a unified plan.
Both the Raiders and the NFL have publicly acknowledge a strong preference for a building new stadium and have pledged roughly $300 million toward its construction. Financing the rest of the costs has proven problematic.
Miley told sports radio host Fred Roggin of KFWB, the renovation, which he estimates could cost roughly $500 million might come to fruition “if we get everybody on a critical path.” Miley also noted the Coliseum Authority’s unique governing structure which includes the Oakland City Council and Alameda County Board of Supervisors represents “a lot of moving parts.”
In the past, critics of the drive for new stadium plans in Oakland have pointed to this byzantine process as a reason for the perceived inaction by officials in the East Bay.
A feasibility study for a possible renovation by the county is in the offing, said Miley. However, he has not seen any concepts or plans for remodeling the Coliseum. Similarly to his recent Op-Ed, Miley referred to local renovations of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley and Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto as templates for the Coliseum.
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