Oakland Roots has released plans for a potential new soccer stadium to rise on Howard Terminal along the Oakland Estuary. The team has conceived of a multi-phase development which would culminate with a permanent arena for the Roots and the Soul Sports Club on the waterfront site. HOK is responsible for the design.
The Club announced that their Howard Terminal proposal was submitted to the Port Authority last month. Their plan for the site is split into two phases, with phase one involving the construction of a modular stadium facility with a capacity for 15,000 attendees. The modular phase is similar to a proposal shared last May for the Malibu lot near the Oakland Coliseum and could be finished in a relatively short timeline.
Phase two for Howard Terminal would include the construction of the 25,000-fan stadium designed by HOK. Illustrations show the rectangular structure with a dynamic exterior shell and a steel-truss partial roof.
The Roots and Soul are scheduled to play this current season in the Oakland Coliseum. Club President Lindsay Barenz said in the press release, “we believe that our success at the Oakland Coliseum in 2025 will showcase why this Club deserves a world-class stadium to call home, one that proudly represents our City to the world.”
The club press release goes on to articulate that “given the importance of a permanent game day venue to the Club’s success, we are also actively pursuing other paths alongside Howard Terminal to explore all permanent, long-term options, including the Coliseum site with AASEG and other potential locations around the City.”
The club’s Chief Real Estate Officer, Lydia Tan, adds that “while we are keeping all options on the table for other locations in Oakland, Howard Terminal stands out as a unique and exciting opportunity that aligns with our long-term aspirations for the Club.”
The Oakland Roots were formed in 2018 and are currently playing in the second division of the United Soccer League Championship. In 2022, the club launched the Oakland Soul to play in the USL Women’s League. Soul now plans to join the USL Super League this year. Both teams will play home games in the Oakland Coliseum this year, with the Roots games starting in March. The 2025 season scheduled for Soul has yet to be released.
The announcement from the Roots comes less than two years after the Athletics baseball team pulled their much-hyped plans for a mixed-use entertainment and housing project on the waterfront site. While plans for the site beyond the stadium had never been fixed, the team was promising to construct a 35,000-seat stadium, around 3,000 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office space, a quarter million square feet of retail, and a 3,500-seat performance theater.
The Athletics played their last game in the Oakland Coliseum in late September last year, winning 3 to 2 against the Texas Rangers. The team is expected to play in Sacramento before moving to a permanent location in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Very cool location and concept, but how many years will they play there before moving to Vegas?
zero, ’cause the team is not owned by slimy John Fisher
FJF
Hopefully this plan can accommodate some of the housing and mixed use development proposed by the A’s plan. Even if in a future phase. It would be a shame to not fully activate the finest urban waterfront in California.
100%
My understanding is that for whatever reason the Port has explicitly excluded residential development from its current request for proposals for Howard Terminal.
Yes, sadly the Port has squashed plans for any residential in the greater vicinity. This includes large portions of Jack London and West Oakland. I believe they want to avoid any air quality or noise issues that would in any way limit their activities. This is despite their commitment to be one of the first all-electric ports, which would seem aligned with more proximal residential uses…
I’m glad we have the Port, but I wish they would be a better team player. Right now it just seems like they like to throw their weight around to prevent anything from happening. They could at least do more with CIM and the City on the Jack London Square master development. That site has languished.
It would be nice to have a way to keep the Port honest and accountable.
Awesome.
Great article. Very exciting development for the Roots and Soul. One small mistake, in the last paragraph of the article, it states the A’s lost its last game, at the Coliseum, to the Mariners, actually the A’s won their last game at the Coliseum, against the Texas Rangers, the A’s lost their last game of the season in Seattle.
Oops, thank you so much for that correction!
This stadium won’t get built. The Roots play in a league that is the equivalent of AAA baseball and have no chance of ever being in MLS. Having much lower operational revenue and no media rights money like an MLS franchise means the team isn’t going to pay to build a brand new stadium (that in almost 40% larger than the Earthquakes’ stadium in San Jose) on a very complex site.
I could see them eventually building a smaller, simpler, cheaper stadium somewhere else in Oakland, but this one is pure vaportecture.
What would the point of pursuing, let alone pitching something like this, if the money people haven’t already chatted about feasibility? I’d have to imagine the site yields greater financial potential (thinking music, conferences, etc) than serving as a smallish teams practice/play space.
It’s a Hail Mary. They are probably hoping the city of Oakland or some private individual gets involved. Drafting up some vague ideas isn’t that expensive but gets people talking.
I’m with “Anonymous?” 100%. If the A’s couldn’t get it done, a soccer club “formed in 2018…currently playing in the second division of the United Soccer League Championship” with no chance of even being an MLB franchise due to the Earthquakes…will never happen.
New soccer specific stadiums of this size in the US are costing $250M+, and even those are in places with cheaper land, no seismic engineering considerations, and not directly on the water. It is completely realistic to assume this proposal would end up costing $300M+. The owners of the teams can’t afford that, and there won’t be any public funding for it (nor should there be).
There’s also no market in the Bay Area for using a venue of this type and size for non-sporing events because there are do many other alternatives already.
Team owners constantly float these trial balloons and lie about the “economic benefits” to see how much public funding or other subsidies they can extract. Luckily California cities actually tend to be much less stupid about falling for this than in most other places in the US.
Why do you say “no chance of ever being in MLS”? I’m not a soccer person, but it certainly seems plausible that they could position themselves to be the obvious choice if MLS ever wants a second team in the Bay Area, which is certainly plausible at some point.
The San Jose Earthquakes have territorial rights within MLS for the entire Bay Area. No other team can move in without their permission. Yes, everything can be renegotiated technically, but that’s a long, long ways away.
There is no chance. Like was mentioned above, the Earthquakes have exclusive rights to the Bay Area. There’s no promotion or relegation like in most global leagues, so they can’t get in that way. There’s also already 30 MLS teams with no expansion on the immediate horizon. If they eventually go to 32 teams, they are going to prefer new markets and probably places that will publicly fund a new stadium. And on top of that, the most recent expansion fee for the San Diego team was $500M, which won’t decrease for any future expansion franchises.
Agreed. Sacramento will get an MLS franchise before SF or Oakland does, for example.
There is nothing wrong with the Oakland coliseum that a good architect like SOM original architect of the coliseum or HOK can’t solve. The bleachers got to go!
Agree that this very complicated site will probably not get developed by a minor-league soccer facility. Many other locations (Raimondi-west?) in Oakland available for this stadium. It doesn’t appear to even utilize the entire Howard Terminal site. This rare urban waterfront site deserves a mega-mixed use development utilizing housing, convention, entertainment and regional attractions.