OAKLAND — A big black hole sits at the center of the negotiating table in Oakland. While Ronnie Lott, his investors and local lawmakers work to avert another move for the Raiders, the empty chair in the room belongs to team owner Mark Davis.

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Thompson: Beast Mode leading Raiders’ Oakland farewell party? Epic idea This week, the city’s head negotiator on the deal, Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio, said Davis hasn’t met with her directly for more than a year, when he shifted his energies to a Las Vegas stadium plan. They didn’t even talk two weeks ago when Davis listened to Oakland officials make a pitch in Florida to other NFL owners.

Days away from an NFL owners meeting where a move to Las Vegas could be approved, fans here are threatening legal action. People familiar with both plans say Oakland could still have a chance to win over enough owners, and questions remain about funding infrastructure in Nevada.

But Davis appears dead set on Vegas. Once he began negotiating with that city, he stopped engaging with Oakland, and has never made a public comment on the Lott plan.

The lack of information has sparked speculation and wonder at what is motivating Davis.

To be sure, East Bay fans have been frustrated. Jim Zelinski of Save Oakland Sports recalled how after signing a new Coliseum lease in January 2016, Davis said his heart still was in Oakland.

“Two days later, he was in Las Vegas,” Zelinski said, adding that loyal fans are in a difficult position.

“Do we continue to support a team, and do we buy season tickets knowing full well in a week or two we are helping to support a new stadium for a team that has turned its back on the community not once but twice?” Zelinski said.

Even Amy Trask, the former Raiders chief executive, expects the team to go, given Davis has tried to move to Los Angeles and now Las Vegas over the past year and a half. “The team’s actions are very clear: It wants to leave Oakland,” she said on the Rich Eisen Show on AT&T’s Audience Network.

To be fair, Oakland has given Davis plenty of reason for frustration: It has stumbled for years trying to come up with a stadium plan. Its previous leading effort, involving developer Floyd Kephart, collapsed utterly in late 2015. Mayor Libby Schaaf has been resolute that the city will not subsidize a sports facility. And Lott’s group, which emerged last year, has operated almost entirely in secret, leading to skepticism from key NFL officials and making it difficult for the public to evaluate whether Oakland is doing enough to keep its team.

And while the group has shared the plan with the NFL, it has been met with skepticism by key league executives.

Las Vegas and the state of Nevada, in contrast, have opened their wallets and their hearts, and Davis has responded. Local government has started collecting on a hotel room tax that would repay the sales of bonds to contribute a whopping $750 million to the construction of a new $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium adjacent to the Strip planned for completion by the 2020 season. Bank of America has agreed to secure a $650 million loan, and the team and NFL would contribute $500 million.

Davis did not return a call for comment for this story, but in October he told NFL reporters that he had given Nevada leaders his word that he would follow through on the move.

“When I met with (Nevada) Governor (Brian) Sandoval for the very first time, he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Are you using us for leverage to get a better deal somewhere else?’” Davis said. “I told him I’ve never done that with a city and that if they come up with what we’re talking about, that we would be moving or doing our best to come to Las Vegas.”

However, few supporters in southern Nevada have talked about added infrastructure costs that could amount to another $900 million in public money, according to a state transportation department report assessing the impact a new stadium would have on traffic.

The questions, it seems, have been about Oakland’s plans.

NFL executive Eric Grubman told USA Today that a presentation two weeks ago in Florida by Lott and Oakland officials lacked new information on how to resolve issues involving the Athletics, who share the Coliseum with the Raiders. Davis was present, according to Cappio, but did not engage in conversations with her, Schaaf or Lott.

The A’s are working on their own timetable while exploring four Oakland sites for a new ballpark, including the waterfront and the Coliseum.

Grubman also previously criticized the Lott proposal, saying it resembled the failed effort by Kephart.

With the clock ticking, the investors have pressed ahead anyway, presumably because they think their plan compares favorably with the Vegas proposal. For example, the current site in Oakland is 130 acres, more than double the so-called Russell Road parcel where the Raiders want to develop in Las Vegas.

Longtime sports executive Andy Dolich said the Coliseum site ranks among the best in the nation, given its proximity to BART, the Oakland airport and Interstate 880.

Despite Oakland’s need for a Hail Mary pass to keep the Raiders, the city’s proposal is still months away from reaching the end zone. City and county leaders in December approved a term sheet and currently are working out an agreement so they can begin to negotiate the details of the plan. The process could take anywhere from six to eight months, Cappio said, pinning the city’s hopes on a delay in the relocation vote by the NFL next week in Phoenix or convincing at least nine owners Oakland is the better option. The Raiders need 24 of the 32 owners to approve the move.

Earlier concerns of placing a football franchise in a gambling mecca seem a faint memory, perhaps because NFL owners have a big incentive for allowing the Raiders to leave Oakland for a second time: money. The St. Louis Rams paid the league $550 million to move to Los Angeles last year. The Chargers’ relocation fee to move from San Diego to L.A. was $650 million. Owners earned $38.71 million each off those moves.

“Our obligation and objective is to put (a plan) forward in the clearest way; at the end of the day, that’s all I can do,” Cappio said.

As it stands now, the Oakland plan calls for an investment of $1.3 billion for a new football stadium as part of a mixed-used development of the parcel where the Coliseum and Oracle Arena sit. Lott declined to discuss details of the plan, as did a spokesperson for his investor, Fortress Investment Group.

Lott, a former 49ers and Raiders star, has partnered with one-time quarterback Rodney Peete to build a 55,000-seat stadium, with 35 acres devoted to retail development. Together, they formed Oakland City Pro Football Group and are backed by New York-based Fortress, which has $72 billion in assets, according to its website.

The firm has sports ties: Its founder, Wesley Edens, co-owns the Milwaukee Bucks. In 2013, Fortress was part of a loan deal to help keep the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes in Arizona. The investment firm also has worked with David Beckham to try to bring a Major League Soccer team to Miami.

As the relocation vote nears, Raiders fan Ray Bobbitt has formed the Oakland Coliseum Economic Impact and Legal Action Committee to organize a protest against the move. Bobbitt’s group drew about 100 fans to a rally last weekend at the Oakland Airport Hilton.

“It’s very important for the NFL and owners to understand the last thing that will happen is that we will allow them to pack up the vans in the middle of the night and have us go in front of the Coliseum and burn a few jerseys,” the Oakland native said. “That’s not going to happen. We’re going to have an organized, orchestrated, spearheaded approach to take every legal action that we have to in order to block relocation.”