Plan for Waterfront Baseball Stadium in Oakland Advances

Business leaders want to put up $100k on Jack London Square baseball.

The Port of Oakland is still planning to play ball, A's or no A's.

Plans to build a waterfront baseball park for the Oakland Athletics -- or a team to be named later -- on the site of a just-abandoned shipping terminal are moving forward, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Oakland's Port Commission is expected next week to open up "exclusive negotiations" with a pack of local business leaders who want to transform the 50-acre site into the next AT&T Park.

The A's and owner Lew Wolff still have their sights set on San Jose, where the city and team are suing Major League Baseball in federal court for dragging out a decision on whether an MLB team will be allowed to play there.

Wolff has even said that the Howard Terminal stadium site is a no go, the newspaper reported.

However, business magnates from Oakland institutions like Clorox and Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream are promising to put up $100,000 of the $1 million required to study the site as a possible ballpark.

The Howard Terminal site is just north of Jack London Square -- far from BART.

For now, the A's are at O.co Coliseum until 2015 -- and are trying to lock down a lease until 2025 -- but the future is uncertain.

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