A day after the Oakland City Council approved city-revised terms for the A's Howard Terminal ballpark, team officials were in Las Vegas to continue exploring stadium options there, and Mayor Libby Schaaf was praising the council's action.
The revisions to the A's proposal, among which included more affordable housing, caught team president Dave Kaval off guard during Tuesday's meeting.
"We were disappointed that the City Council didn't vote yes on our proposal, so we're taking time to understand exactly what they voted yes on; many of the provisions we had never seen before," Kaval told NBC Bay Area after Tuesday's vote.
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Kaval and other team executives on Wednesday visited Las Vegas again to explore their options should the Howard Terminal project fizzle, but Schaaf seemed unfazed, saying she believes the A's will find the city's revised terms agreeable.
"Some of the changes were absolutely last-minute changes, and we respect that they're looking at them," Schaaf said. "But we provided the primary things that they asked for, that they have said they need to keep going on this process."
Off-site infrastructure, community benefit and timing were some of the main revisions the A's need to review to see if the proposal still fits with the team's objectives, Kaval added.
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The vote also prompted Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to express disappointment.
"We will immediately begin conversations with the A’s to chart a path forward for the Club," Manfred said in a statement Tuesday.
Schaaf said a deal with the A’s will also depend on how soon Congress can pass an infrastructure bill. She said the city might be able to tap into federal funding in order to improve the public infrastructure around Howard Terminal.
Mick Akers, a sports business reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said Kaval was spotted with a casino magnate Wednesday looking at a possible site along the north end of the Las Vegas Strip.
"Kaval said that one of the things he liked about out here is there's so much space and open land where they can have these 20 different sites that they could build on," Akers said. "Out there they’re always saying Howard Terminal or bust."
The nuts and bolts of the A's $12 billion Howard Terminal proposal are a 35,000-capacity ballpark, 3,000 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, 270,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 18.3 acres of new public parks.
