Nevius: A's can't wait much longer for Oakland to get serious about new stadium

Picture the Oakland A’s in a waterfront ballpark. It is sleek, new and state of the art. It even has gondolas.

Here’s the catch.

It’s in Portland.

The simple truth is that if the Oakland City Council continues to stall, nitpick and slow-walk the popular Howard Terminal ballpark project in downtown Oakland, the A’s have to do the obvious. Plan to move.

And there are plenty of options.

An aggressive group of investors, including Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson and Grammy-winning wife Ciara, are promoting an ?if-you-build-it-they-will-come waterfront park in Portland. (Yes, it includes gondolas.) They hope to open by 2023.

Which, in an amazing coincidence, is when the A’s are hoping their new ballpark will open. Is this Portland waving down from the north and saying, ?“Yoo-hoo, if things aren’t working out there, take a look at this?”

In Portland, they aren’t even pretending that isn’t true. The A’s are openly mentioned as a potential Portland tenant in local news stories. And it makes some sense.

Portland figures it has two chances to land a team. First, it might get one of the two expansion teams baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred says he wants to add.

Or second, they might get one of two franchises that are struggling. That would be Oakland and Tampa Bay, each of whom has been endlessly frustrated in attempts to build a new stadium. Relocating is Plan B.

Tampa owner Stu Sternberg already has one foot out the door. He’s proposed a split season where the team would play half its home games in Montreal. Two cities, 1,500 miles apart, sharing the season? What could possibly go wrong?

Clearly, the A’s would be nuts not to check into relocating. Imagine a new ballpark and a city delighted to have them.

And Portland, by the way, may not even be the best option.

The A’s Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas, the Aviators, leads the minor leagues in total attendance and average per game. And a big part of that is the stunning $150 million (!) ballpark that opened this season.

With the Raiders coming to town, and sports gambling no longer a taboo, Las Vegas is seen as a prime MLB location. And the A’s already have a presence.

A little more than an hour up the road is Sacramento.

The Triple-A River Cats have been a minor league box-office powerhouse for years, ever since they averaged 12,000 a game in 2001.

(Last season they drew fewer than 8,000 a game for the first time in 20 years, but the Giants affiliate also finished last for the third straight year.)

Sacramento’s Raley Field, opened in 2000 at a cost of $29.5 million, has been spiffed up with improvements like a 120-foot high-res scoreboard. No wonder Forbes valued the franchise at $49 million in 2016.

If the A’s explore Sacto, the Giants might squawk about their territory, but c’mon, guys - you already claimed San Francisco all the way to San Jose. How far do you want your territory to go? Medford?

The point is there are people in the A’s organization who can see A’s owner John Fisher going to the commissioner and saying, “Look, Oakland is dysfunctional. This is never going to happen. I have to move.”

However, there is one more option:

And that is - for the love of God - for the Oakland City Council to stop … I am searching for a word other than “dithering,” but one isn’t coming to mind.

The Howard Terminal location, on the water, has its problems, but it also has a ton of momentum. Approvals have been secured, including the Oakland Port Commission. The project was given a helpful nudge by a couple of state lawmakers to streamline the process. It has the full and enthusiastic support of Mayor Libby Schaaf.

And then it ran into the self-righteous quagmire that is the Oakland City Council.

The real tipoff was when Councilman Dan Kalb harrumphed, “It is going to be done on our timeline, not the A’s timeline.”

Yeah, because you’re the important factor here.

Let’s try this. As a council, what are you providing? Hair splitting, quibbling and grandstanding.

What do the A’s have to offer? Major League Baseball.

Who is more valuable to Oakland?

Or, let’s put it like this: Would you like to be part of a project that will provide the city with civic pride and economic stimulus for decades? That will be a draw for residents and visitors and top-flight local sports entertainment 81 or more days a year?

Or, would you like to be known as the group who, because you couldn’t get it together, let the third, and final, great sports franchise leave town?

I’m not sure the City Council realizes how far down the road this has gone. There are people in the A’s organization who flatly predict the team will play in another stadium someday, “but it ain’t gonna be Oakland.”

And some have the impression the City Council would be fine with that.

Great. So if the A’s leave, Oakland’s elected officials can take BART out to the great concrete elephant graveyard south of town, and sit between an empty coliseum and deserted arena, and wonder where it all went wrong.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cw.nevius@pressdemocrat.com. Twitter: @cwnevius