The Oakland Raiders could decide very soon whether to move to Los Angeles by Nathan Salant on Dec 29, 2015, 10:45 PM  The storied Oakland Raiders football team could decide by Wednesday whether to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area or move back to Southern California, where it played in the 1980s and early '90s.
The Raiders have a Wednesday deadline to submit a financing plan for building a new stadium in Oakland but plan to tell the National Football League that they are still trying to convince the team to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area city. Oakland plans only to update league officials on the status of negotiations, Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio told the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. That's because city officials have pledged not to ask for additional subsidies from Oakland and Alameda County taxpayers, who still are paying for a $100 million renovation of the stadium undertaken to convince the Raiders to return to the city in 1996. So, Oakland officials say, no new proposals will be forthcoming from them. But two other cities who want the Raiders to relocate to their locales — St. Louis and San Diego — have solid offers on the table for new stadiums and are waiting for the NFL to make its choice. Raiders owner Mark Davis, who inherited controlling interest in the team from his flamboyant father, Al Davis, wants the city and county to give the team ownership of 169 acres of public land at the Coliseum site. “In 2013, the city and county made a presentation that would give us the land,” Davis told the newspaper.  That "is the starting point for us, absolutely,” Davis said.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaff has reportedly proposed building a new $1 billion football stadium paid for nearly entirely by the Raiders, although she recently said she was considering authorizing the city to issue $500 million in lease revenue bonds to be repaid from rental income. But the Raiders and NFL have only agreed to pay half of the construction costs. “We have not committed to any bonds,” Schaaf said. Davis said NFL owners could vote in January on whether to allow the Raiders to move to Carson, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, where the team proposes to build a $1.7 billion stadium with the San Diego Chargers. But meanwhile, Oakland's attention is being distracted by the baseball Athletics, who are trying to arrange to build a new stadium in the city's downtown. Sites under consideration for a baseball stadium include the West Oakland Post Office site, Howard Terminal near Jack London Square and Brooklyn Basin, the newspaper said. The Raiders have won three Super Bowl championships in the team's 55-year history, and last reached the big game in 2003.
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