So you let your economic decisions be heavily influenced by English professors, then wonder why your business sits $20,000,000 in debt. Such is the thinking of the Peralta trustees and with it the A’s hopes of building a cool stadium at Lake Merritt. No worries: that land should become available again soon when Peralta goes bankrupt, but the A’s have to pivot now — and if options did not exactly abound before, they sure as heck don’t now.
On the plus side, the A’s faced a series of hurdles – from leasing or buying the land, to appeasing the NIMBYhood, to securing private financing, to passing muster with the arduous EIR and permitting processes – and if they were going to be felled at some point, best that they had the rug yanked out from under them now rather than a year or three down the road.