The deal, which still isn't quite complete, has been anything but straight forward and included two buyers, three sales, a lawsuit and the city of Oakland, which until recently was the owner of the other 50 percent stake in the property.
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"This didn't come about in the last week. It came about because some of us have been toiling the soil for quite a long time," said Supervisor Nate Miley.
"I understand what we need to do and I understood when I was on the Oakland City Council how the Coliseum area never lived up to its potential and we now have an opportunity to have the Coliseum area live up to its potential," Miley said.
The road to the current agreement, which is technically a term sheet and a resolution stating the county's intent to finalize a sale, started in 2019, when the then-Oakland A's bought the county's 50 percent stake in the Coliseum site for $85 million.
In the summer of 2024, the A's -- who by then had decided to leave for Las Vegas via West Sacramento -- then agreed to sell to AASEG for $125 million, but the deal needed approval from the Board of Supervisors.
Supervisors, however, held up the sale for about five months while they continued to negotiate with AASEG over term sheet details, which lay out some specific conditions under which the deal can proceed.
One of those conditions includes the requirement that AASEG and any subsequent owners release the county from liability for any possible hazardous waste clean-up at the 112-acre site.
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The term sheet also requires the end to a pending lawsuit brought by an environmental group, Communities for a Better Environment, challenging the county's initial sale to the A's over state rules that require local authorities to prioritize affordable housing on surplus public land.
Bobbitt said Tuesday that he's been in regular contact with CBE leaders and that he believes they will pull the suit in light of the fact that AASEG's plans include both market rate and affordable housing components.
"We've reached an agreement with them to dismiss if we transact," Bobbitt said. "We feel very confident they'll support that."
The county and AASEG now have 30 days to wrap up any remaining details of the three-party sale.
"People ask why it took so long -- now they see. We negotiated the release with the A's, with CBE for the lawsuit. We negotiated with the (Coliseum Joint Powers Authority) for the bond defeasement and the county for the assignment," Bobbitt said. "It was just really complex."
In order for AASEG to receive the property as soon as possible, Bobbitt said the bond defeasement, or repayment, was accelerated under the newly approved agreement so that the bonds still associated with the Coliseum will be paid off in February and the bonds for the arena will be paid off in March of 2026.
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"The county and city can't transfer the properties until the bonds are paid off," he said.
To complicate matters, AASEG already penned a $125 million sales agreement with Oakland for the city's 50 percent share of the property, which former mayor Sheng Thao tried to use to stave off massive cuts in the face of a nearly $130 million budget shortfall.
Because the initially scheduled payments for that sale were held up at least partly by the county's process, the city was forced to balance its budget by making large cuts to programs and services.
Now that the county's sale is going through, it is expected to have a positive impact on Oakland's on-going budget crisis, a point made by several people during the public comment portion of Tuesday's meeting, including several city employees and interim Oakland Mayor Kevin Jenkins.
"We desperately want to be out of the sports business. I know the county desperately wants to be out of the sports business and so this offers us that transition to get out of the business," Jenkins said. "But more than anything, what this means to us is the billions of dollars not only for Alameda County but billions of dollars in investment for Oakland and specifically East Oakland, which has been disinvested in for years," he said. "And this means jobs. This means hope."
Once escrow closes on May 30, the city should receive its money, including $10 million the city council earmarked to offset some of those budget cuts -- $7 million for reopening the three fire stations that were closed to help balance the budget and $3 million to make up for cuts to the city's affordable housing fund.
Bobbitt said he's looking forward to the next stages of redeveloping what is widely seen as the most important urban project in the East Bay.
"I think what we have now is everybody wanting to work together to get this deal done," Bobbitt said. "Then we just move more into the whole completion of the transaction and the site plan. It gets fun again. We can start actually moving."