Raiders get new lease at O.co and it comes with a steep...

Few tenants, it seems, have escaped the escalating rental costs of living in the Bay Area these days. Add the Raiders to that list.

The NFL team’s lease for O.co Coliseum in Oakland and a training facility in Alameda includes a steep increase from last year’s rent of $925,000: It’s now $3.5 million for both venues.

On Friday, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority unanimously approved the team’s new one-year lease, which includes options for two one-year extensions. The price hike was needed, the authority said, to plug a deficit.

“We just sat down and took a look at the finances,” said P. Scott McKibben, who heads the authority. “This was the amount of rent that was required to get us back to being neutral.” He said the Coliseum has long been operating in the red.

Raiders owner Mark Davis announced he would stay in Oakland at a news conference in February, just days before his previous agreement with the Coliseum Authority expired. The new lease still needs approval from both the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, which may take about three weeks.

McKibben said he was optimistic that the Raiders will do everything they can to stay in Oakland. Davis said in February that he had hired Larry MacNeil, former chief financial officer of the San Francisco 49ers, to represent the team’s interests in talks with the city and county. MacNeil helped put together the Levi’s Stadium deal in Santa Clara.

The Raiders spent much of last year pushing for a new $1.7 billion stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson that they planned to share with the San Diego Chargers. Davis withdrew his bid in January after the plan failed to win approval from NFL owners.

“I take Mark at his word,” McKibben said. “He’s told me several times — and I believe him — that his first option is to stay in Oakland.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

Sticker shock

An August 2015 report on rent hikes showed Oakland’s year over year increase of 20 percent was highest in the nation. That increase is nothing compared to the Raiders’ new lease:

2015 lease$925,000

2016 lease$3,500,000

Increase278.38 percent