Raiders fans get chance to lobby NFL to keep their team

Juan Spencer center, and Clara Arroyo, right, cheer as Raiders fans watched the team's score during the game against the San Diego Chargers at The Go Sports Bar in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, October 25, 2015. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodellâ€™s staff will arrive into Oakland Thursday to hold a public hearing on the Raiders possible move to Southern California. less Juan Spencer center, and Clara Arroyo, right, cheer as Raiders fans watched the team's score during the game against the San Diego Chargers at The Go Sports Bar in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, October 25, 2015. ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Raiders fans get chance to lobby NFL to keep their team 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

With Oakland’s would-be Coliseum City developer gone and three pro football teams jockeying to build stadiums in Los Angeles, the future of the Raiders is up in the air.

But fans are still desperate to keep their team here — and they’ll get their chance to make a case Thursday, when the National Football League holds a public hearing in Oakland to weigh options for the Raiders before any decisions are made.

The hearing, which begins at 7 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, will feature NFL Executive Vice President Eric Grubman, a league power broker who handles team relocations and construction of new stadiums. Members of the public have until Nov. 13 to submit comments via e-mail to oak.hearing@nfl.com.

Billed as an opportunity for fans to grill officials and opine directly to the NFL, Thursday’s event is one in a series of town halls the league will hold in Oakland, St. Louis and San Diego. All three cities stand to lose their football teams — St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke is vying to build a plush stadium in Inglewood (Los Angeles County), and the Raiders and San Diego Chargers are in ongoing talks to share a new venue in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles.

3 teams, many possibilities

And those are just two of many potential futures for the three sports franchises, said Andy Dolich, a sports marketing consultant and former executive for the A’s, Warriors and 49ers.

“This is a three-dimensional chess game of incredible complexity,” Dolich said, pointing out that the Raiders could also share a stadium with the Rams in Inglewood, given that the NFL now promotes stadium sharing as a way to save costs. City officials in both San Diego and St. Louis have offered public money to keep their teams.

To complicate things, officials in San Antonio met with Raiders owner Mark Davis, who signed a one-year lease extension in Oakland this year but groused about the condition of O.co Coliseum.

According to Oakland Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio, both the A’s and the Raiders have complained that it’s expensive and time-consuming to routinely convert the Coliseum from a baseball park to a football stadium. Both teams want separate facilities, and perhaps the main question is how to finance them.

While city officials are willing to pick up the tab for an estimated $90 million to $120 million in infrastructure improvements to the Coliseum area, including utility upgrades, road realignment and new parking structures, Mayor Libby Schaaf refused to spend public money on a billion-dollar football-only stadium for the Raiders.

Potential of East Bay

Oakland and Alameda County are still paying millions a year in debt service for a Coliseum renovation that lured the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1996. That debt won’t be paid off until 2026.

Still, there’s hope for Raiders fans, despite the team’s talk of leaving town.

Oakland is in a better negotiating position now that its administration has severed ties with San Diego businessman Floyd Kephart, Dolich said, adding that Kephart’s plan to build a mega-sports development at the Coliseum site “had no chance from day one of ever seeing the light of day.”

Now free of a third-party developer, the city is pursuing direct talks with the A’s and Raiders. City officials recently hired New York-based stadium finance consultant Mitchell Ziets in what Cappio described in a statement as “one last effort to keep the Raiders in Oakland.”

She said the city will have a good idea by the first week of November whether a deal with the Raiders is feasible.

Fans, meanwhile, persistently tout Oakland as a city with a strong and loyal Raiders fan base, saying that the East Bay’s hot real estate market and proximity to Silicon Valley guarantee a bright future for the team.

“Fan interest in the Raiders is absolutely surging,” said Jim Zelinski, a 20-year season-ticket holder and co-founder of the grassroots group Save Oakland Sports, which has campaigned for three years to keep the A’s, Warriors and Raiders in Oakland.

Having three sports teams has been a point of pride in a city long burdened with high unemployment and crime. Now the teams are threatening to leave just as Oakland enters a renaissance, with transportation company Uber moving its headquarters downtown and the promise of new investment pouring in, Dolich said.

“If you were to lose those foundational points of civic pride and jobs, that takes away from the growth the marketplace is creating,” he said.

Occasions to get together

The Raiders are more than a football team to people like Juan Spencer. Sundays are like family reunions in the Coliseum parking lot, where 40 cousins, aunts, uncles and siblings roll in from Vallejo and Sacramento to tailgate for Raiders home games.

“If the Raiders left again, a lot of people who followed them the last time they went to L.A. wouldn’t follow them again,” said Spencer, an Oakland resident who owns a black Raiders shirt that reads, “Never Will Say L.A.”

A few tables away at Go Sports Bar in downtown Oakland, Kori Bias watched Sunday’s 37-29 victory over the Chargers and wished the Raiders had the stability of NFL franchises in Green Bay and Pittsburgh, whose fans don’t have to deal with constant separation anxiety.

“And I don’t want to be sharing a stadium with the Chargers — c’mon, that’s embarrassing,” said Bias, who works with children who have autism. “They’re our rivals.”

The feeling is mutual, said Chargers fan Edgar Elenes, sitting nearby. “No Chargers fan is happy about that, either. And they’re not happy about having to drive to L.A. to see a game, either.”

Fans willing to pay

That said, Elenes, an Oakland resident who works at a biotech firm, would be fine with paying a little more in taxes to keep the Raiders in town.

So would Robbie Hall and his girlfriend, Stacey Olson, who both plan to be at Thursday’s meeting at the Paramount.

“I’m not a fan of the Warriors moving to San Francisco,” Olson said. Just as Oakland’s economy is improving and businesses are flocking here, “it seems like we can’t keep our sports teams.”

One thing is for certain. Hall said. Even if the Raiders were to move, “no place could replace the Black Hole.”

The overall goal of Thursday’s public hearing remains unclear, since the fate of these football teams might not be decided for a while, said Stanford University economist Roger Noll, who specializes in the business and economics of sports.

He said he believes the NFL is trying to generate excitement and competition between the football teams, and ultimately get each city to offer a better deal.

Rachel Swan and Joe Garofoli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan, @joegarofoli

To be heard

At hearing: The NFL invites public comment at 7 p.m. Thursday, Paramount Theatre, Oakland.

In writing: Send e-mail to oak.hearing@nfl.com.