There’s a Possibility of One Bay Area Football Stadium, But Where?

The 49ers and Raiders have respectively struggled for years in trying to broker a new stadium deal. Among NFL stadia, only the more historically significant Lambeau Field is older than Candlestick Park and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. So, rather than stumbling on their own, recent proposals have called for the two franchises to share a stadium, a la the Giants and Jets.↵

↵↵The problem is figuring out which municipality offers the best accommodations. The 49ers last year reached a deal with officials in Santa Clara on a 68,500-seat stadium, but the matter won’t go before voters for approval until this June. In the meantime, officials representing the area where the Raiders presently play ↵aren’t yet ready to abandon the prospect of football in their district and want to undercut the Santa Clara proposal before it goes to a public vote.↵

↵↵⇥“There is only going to be one stadium in the Bay Area, and it’s not going to be in Santa Clara,” said Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, a member of the Coliseum board who voted with his colleagues last week to spend $125,000 on a study of a new Oakland stadium.↵⇥↵⇥“We have a better location, a better infrastructure and better access to roads and mass transit” than the spot in Santa Clara where the 49ers want to build, Haggerty said.↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥Plus, he said, once Santa Clara voters understand that their stadium is almost certainly going to house the Raiders along with the Niners - which will mean at least 20 games a year rather than 10 - they’re going to say “no.”↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥Oakland has quietly spent more than $19 million to buy up 18-plus acres around the Coliseum complex in anticipation of a possible stadium deal.↵⇥

↵↵↵It’s matters like these that lead me to believe that any such stadium-sharing deal is going to create an uneasy alliance between the two teams. The fans have a distinct contrast in image, with the wine-and-cheese 49ers crowd and the unhinged monsters who frequent Raiders games. Even their respective territories don’t want to see their team having to play its games in the other’s area. Given how much difficulty each has had with their own stadium deal, however, this may be the only viable solution, however messy it may end up being.↵

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