The A’s longstanding saga to push forward their proposed Howard Terminal project has encountered another hitch. On Monday, as six Bay Area counties announced “shelter in place” orders for all residents, four stakeholders within the Port of Oakland filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court against the A’s, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the city of Oakland. The lawsuit claims that the team’s planned streamlining of its Howard Terminal project review process, something the A’s believed they were awarded when AB 734 was passed in 2018, was unauthorized since it was unable to demonstrate to the state that it met the criteria for limited environmental review by the original Dec. 31, 2019 deadline.



According to the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, missing the Dec. 31 deadline meant the Howard Terminal project would not be eligible for judicial streamlining. But the deadline of the EIR — a process...