The typical questions I’m getting now are “Where is the site?” and “How far is it from BART?” I’ve put together a couple of photos that give a pretty good representation.

First up is wide view of central and south Fremont. The yellow line represents the planned Warm Springs extension. The extension would run 5.4 miles, south from the existing Fremont terminus to Warm Springs. There is also an optional station that could be built in Irvington, roughly halfway between the two ends.

The aerial distance between Warm Springs BART and the Pacific Commons eastern boundary is 1.25 miles. Driving distance is 2.25 miles because there is no straight-line route. The next picture shows potential routes, yellow representing a bus/car route and pink an elevated guideway route for a BART, people mover, light rail, monorail, or aerial tram.

Now let’s look at possible infill transit options. The assessment of positives and negatives is based on data I’ve seen for other transit projects and should be judged as speculative since there are no formally studied cost estimates. It also assumes that the Warm Springs Extension will be built, which is no certainty yet. BART could be extended west to the Pacific Commons site, but it could cost at least $200 million per mile. Because of the cost I will leave a BART extension off the list of solutions in the poll.

• Light Rail (LRT) could run on either surface streets in the area or on an elevated guideway to the area. Cost: $40-70 million per mile. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-7 minutes.

  

  Positives: Use of existing street infrastructure, familiarity, proven technology.

  Negatives: If street-based, would be the slowest system due to train sharing the road with cars. Some impact on businesses in affected area as roads are fitted with rails.

• Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) are buses an “express” variant of the a bus route, with high-tech features (GPS) and fewer stops. Cost: $5-10 million per mile. This would involve separate lanes for buses either along the median or along the curb. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 8-10 minutes.

  

  Positives: Usually will bypass unnecessary stops. Can use existing bus fleets if necessary. Traffic signals can be programmed to detect buses and let them through. Lower infrastructure costs than rail or dedicated guideway options.

  Negatives: May not elicit the same kind of public response as a solution with a dedicated guideway. Shares roads with other traffic.

• Shuttle bus. Cost: unknown. This option would probably use as much existing infrastructure as possible without building new infrastructure. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 10-12 minutes.

  

  Positives: Lowest startup and capital costs. Can accommodate the most stops. Can use existing bus stock, though new buses may need to be ordered as new routes are added. Buses can be easily added to accommodate demand.

  Negatives: Lesser public perception of buses when compared to rail-based service. Can add to short-term congestion before and after games.

• People movers are used throughout the US in airports for inter-terminal automated transportation. Cost: $30-60 million per mile. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-7 minutes.

  

  Positives: Less required right-of-way than BART. Lower construction costs when compared to other elevated guideway systems. Often fully automated. Can operate on high frequency headways.

  Negatives: Requires dedicated guideway which may be expensive.

• Aerial tramway (gondola) Cost: $40-70 million per mile. A project is underway in Portland, OR to ferry passengers between two sites using such as system. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-8 minutes.

  

  Positives: Possibly lower right-of-way and construction costs than rail options. Less environmental impact than other options. Could have lower maintenance costs. May become a tourist attraction on its own.

  Negatives: May hold an image as less safe than other options because the Bay Area is Earthquake country. Not a mainstream technology that immediately comes to mind as a mass transit solution.

• Personal or Group Rapid Transit (PRT/GRT). Cost: $30-60 million per mile. PRT uses numerous small, 4-8 person cabs on an elevated guideway. GRT uses larger cars that can hold 30 or more. Can run fully automated. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-7 minutes.

  

  Positives: Good on-demand potential. Supporters tout low startup costs.

  Negatives: May not be suited for event-based, high-demand usage such as baseball games. Not a widely deployed solution.

For now I’ve ruled out a pedestrian bridge option because of the 1.25-mile distance between WSX BART and Pacific Commons. The Warm Springs extension could open as early as 2012 should funding materialize. If this funding does not come through, or if the San Jose extension is not funded, the only solution for BART riders would be a bus that runs from the Fremont station. The trip would take 20 minutes. BART carries 15-20% of A’s fans on any given game date. I have not included a monorail in this discussion for the time being because its benefits and costs are covered by other options like the people mover.

In what can be construed as the only positive news to come out City Hall re: the A’s in some time, Oakland officials and the Coliseum Authority agreed to a three-year extension for the A’s. The extension could potentially keep the A’s in the Coliseum through 2013. The structure of the deal is such that the pre-existing deal, which was guaranteed through 2007 and had one-year options through 2010, now guarantees the A’s stay through 2010 and push the options out to 2011-2013. Some of the finer points:

• The lease allows the team to leave with 120 days notice without penalty if it moves to a 40,000-or-more capacity stadium in Alameda County.
• Should the team leave the area, it would have to pay the remainder of its lease and a $250,000 penalty.
• Whether the 2011-2013 years are optional or guaranteed has not yet been finalized.
• The payments will be higher than in the pre-existing lease, totalling $4.7 million over the last five years. The A’s payment for 2006 is only $500K.

On the surface this sounds like a nice reciprocal goodwill gesture, but as I wrote earlier on this matter, simply pushing the options out three more years mostly benefits the A’s since they get a nice safety in case a new ballpark is beset with delays. I suppose it makes City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente look better during an election year, and he certainly needs the help.

Taking off my cynical cap, it’s possible that once the election’s over, Oakland pols can get to work on a good Oakland site. Council member/mayoral candidate Nancy Nadel nixed my Broadway Auto Row idea. I think it deserves a second look.

A second Argus article by Chris De Benedetti has Wolff fielding questions about the seemingly endless rumor mill (yes, I’m partly responsible for this) regarding the A’s intentions. Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty comes to Wolff’s defense:

“I don’t think in any way are the A’s playing us against another community,” said Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, who represents Fremont and grew up there. “The Wolffs are genuine people. They’re the most sincere people I have ever met.”

Wolff tried to quash the rumors as well:

“We don’t have any hidden agenda,” Wolff told The Daily Review last week. “Anyone who’s a sports fan thinks everyone has a hidden agenda. Even if I wanted to go, I couldn’t go.”

Both Wolff and baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, a longtime friend and former college fraternity brother of Wolff’s, also have said they have no intention of challenging the Giants’ territorial rights in Santa Clara County. But supporters of bringing the A’s to the South Bay point out that Wolff has several real estate holdings in San Jose.

The Mulcahy-DiNapoli connection was downplayed as well, simply as longtime business associates:

… the day after meeting with Fremont leaders, television cameras showed Wolff at the A’s-New York Yankees game in Oakland, sitting next to San Jose mayoral candidate Michael Mulcahy.

Mixed messages?

“There is no intention of that,” Wolff said.

He said there was little significance to their visit during the game, adding that Mulcahy owns A’s season tickets near Wolff’s seats and the two have known each other for years. Mulcahy’s cousins are John and Jason DiNapoli, who own a small interest in the A’s and have partnered with Wolff in some San Jose real estate deals.

“I’ve been a friend and a business partner with Lew Wolff for 30 years,” Mulcahy said. “He’s a supporter of mine.”

Finally, Wolff issues a “firm” denial:

“We really want to stay in California, in the Bay Area, in the East Bay,” he said.

“I don’t know how many times I have to say that.”

So are you satisfied with the responses? I know one thing: when this saga has finally played out and the A’s have a new home, this blog will make for some interesting – and at times painful – retrospective reading.

Props to De Benedetti for tackling the rumor mill head-on.

The Argus’s Chris De Benedetti reports that Fremont City Manager Fred Diaz is exuding confidence regarding the city’s chances of luring Fremont.

“I think we are the lead candidate for the new home of the A’s,” Diaz added. “If there’s a deal to make for both the A’s and the City of Fremont, then we’ll find it and make that happen.”

Though little news has emerged in the last week, the article appears to further confirm Fremont’s now frontrunner status. Lew Wolff even has a few words for naysayers who dislike the current lack of transportation options at the Pacific Commons site:

“Everybody is looking for the negative here,” he said. “There are lots of issues, and we’ll deal with all of them. I don’t have all the answers this minute.”

There will have to be three or four distinct mass transit solutions.

• Shuttle from the existing Fremont BART station
• Shuttle from the planned Warm Springs BART station (if it’s built)
• ACE/Amtrak to the planned Pacific Commons station
• Bus/shuttle from Santa Clara County

Wolff also reaffirmed the notion that he’s not looking for a public subsidy.

The long, bitter battle between Santa Clara County and San José appears to finally be over. A $33.5-36.5 million settlement to be paid by the City will go towards a new crime lab (excellent idea IMO). City and County had squared off in dueling lawsuits over County’s desire to build a 7,000-seat, House of Blues-run concert hall on the County Fairgrounds. City wanted the concert hall downtown, either next to the new City Hall or across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The settlement doesn’t mention anything about the concert hall, which leaves County with a dilemma: Do they go forward with it? Frankly, putting a swanky auditorium on County Fairgrounds makes little sense due to its location and lack of ancillary development, and when accounting for rising costs and litigation expenses, the concept may be less feasible than before. There happens to be one other venue that, because of a similar white elephant status, is now closed: Henry J. Kaiser Center in Oakland. SF’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and SJ’s Civic Auditorium have also struggled at times. Here’s a suggestion for County: a soccer/football stadium with adjoining fields.

Beyond the concert hall, there are a few important impacts. Chief among them is that City will be able to go forward on its North San Jose development plans. City will still need to contribute other money for transit projects and it has issues to iron out with neighboring Santa Clara and Milpitas, but this is basically a green light. While most of the first phase of 5,000 housing units is spoken for, plans eventually call for up to 32,000 homes and 26.7 million square feet of office space. The glut of available commercial space makes office expansion unlikely, but homes can work should related infrastructure be built accordingly.

This potentially opens the door for the A’s, who would have difficulty putting 2,000 homes anywhere near the Diridon South site (my guess is about 800-1000 tops). As part of a ballpark deal, SJ Redevelopment could local steer local tech firms with excess land towards the A’s. That would allow the financing of a ballpark to take place and, more importantly, create a more palatable ballot measure for June 2007 that looks quite similar to the deal SF made with the Giants – only the A’s wouldn’t be overly dependent on ballpark-based revenue streams to pay the mortgage.

One problem with the deal: the settlement will come out of City’s Redevelopment funds – the same funds that are being used to buy Diridon South. Will City have to sell additional land to finish the Diridon South purchase? Or will the payment occur after Diridon South is purchased?

Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal just posted their interview with Wolff that appeared in the April 7 print edition. Lots of non-answers to the questions that were posed. At some point these interviews will start to look like the lecture scenes in “Real Genius”.

So my eyes weren’t deceiving me when San Jose mayoral candidate Michael Mulcahy appeared next to Lew Wolff in the first row on Tuesday. The Merc revealed that Mulcahy’s cousins, John and Jason DiNapoli, are in fact part of the A’s ownership group.

(pause to allow this to sink in)

Each adult member of the immediate Wolff family (that’s five if you’re counting) has given $500 to the Mulcahy campaign. You may remember my December post in which I mentioned Wolff selling a portion of downtown San Jose’s Park Center Plaza to a group headed by two other DiNapolis. Naturally, the parking garage that’s part of that block next to Hwy 87 has a Mulcahy banner hanging from the roof.

What’s more interesting is the portion of the block that Wolff kept. In the southwest corner, across the street from the Adobe headquarters, is a rather nondescript, low-slung building with a sizable amount of surface parking. According to the Santa Clara County Registrar, this parcel is owned by a firm fronted by Wolff. Until recently the building held San Jose’s first charter school, Downtown College Prep. In December, DCP moved into a more campus-like facility along the Alameda, west of downtown. The building found a new tenant quickly – another Latino-focused charter school called Escuela Popular. Unless Wolff is interested in allowing nonprofits to keep using an underutilized property in perpetuity, it’s likely that the building will eventually be replaced. One of the biggest concerns San Jose residents have regarding the ballpark concept is the lack of parking, at the very least in relation to the requirements a new ballpark would entail. The 2-acre parcel could be extremely valuable at some point in the future. Wolff could build a 1,000-space parking garage (with Redevelopment’s financial help, of course) there to handle the increased demand should a ballpark be built there. Or he could do a swap with Adobe, who’s gunning for the SJWC property across the river/87. Or if he’s bidding on the SJWC parcel and gets it, the school parcel could be a sort of gateway to the ballpark village. Housing may not be doable because of the SJC flight path overhead, but there probably aren’t too many limitations on what could be done in terms of commercial use.

Going back to the DiNapoli-Mulcahy links, it’s pretty obvious now that any talk of moving the A’s out of state would have to come after all Bay Area opportunities are exhausted. With the combination of San Francisco interests (Fisher) and South Bay interests (Wolff-DiNapoli), it would appear that San Jose will have something to say about the A’s future, whether by bringing the A’s to San Jose or by pledging its support for Fremont.

Today’s Tracy Press has an article on the A’s ongoing talks with Fremont and Cisco. Quotes come from Fremont city manager Fred Diaz, who appears to be up to his eyeballs in negotiation work.

The deal is still very much in the talking stage, and that places Fred Diaz, Fremont’s city manager and Tracy’s former city manager, right in the middle of the conversations.

“Everything is very positive right now,” Diaz told me over the phone this week. “I’ve met with Lew Wolff (the A’s owner) a number of times and more often with his son, Keith. They are very serious about this.”

…

Diaz said negotiations between Wolff and Cisco are nearing the final stages.

“Figuring out naming rights for the stadium is one of the last unresolved issues,” he said.

I had heard that Wolff already had a naming rights sponsor in mind when he entered these talks. Perhaps things have changed now that Cisco is officially in the picture. The San Jose-based networking firm already has a heavy advertising presence in the college basketball TV and pro football markets. The naming rights market has gotten sophisticated enough that much more than just the stadium can be sponsored. Club seating sections, lounges, and other architectural elements can all have a corporate name attached, as seen by Comerica’s recently inked deal with HP Pavilion.

Good links:

• A great technical document describing the noise problem for the University of Minnesota’s planned football stadium is available. It contains an explanation of the impact of concert noise, which the San Jose Draft EIR has basically glossed over. I have yet to find anything that properly explains the impact of the inversion layer on sound, especially in the warm months. For those that wonder why I’m focusing on the noise issue so much – it’s because any Bay Area location will probably have a huge environmental noise impact on surrounding neighborhoods. This is true whether it’s in Oakland, Fremont, or San Jose.
• Marc Normandin’s Beyond the Box Score blog has a nice interview with economist Andrew Zimbalist, who recently penned a book that I have purchased but haven’t had a chance to read: In The Best Interests of Baseball: The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig.
• On the heels of the opening of Busch Stadium III is a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about the Ballpark Village concept that is going up alongside the ballpark. Cleveland State economist Mark Rosentraub, who like Zimbalist has written extensively on the problems with publicly-financed sports venues, extends some hope that a properly planned development can work for St. Louis in a better way than other stadium-based resurgence projects in other cities. Incidentally, I don’t count San Diego and San Francisco as good for comparison, since for both of those cities it’s generally thought that their ballparks are but one factor in causing accelerated development, in conjunction with soaring land costs and other unrelated encroaching development.

Next week I’ll be attending two mayoral debates/forums. San Jose’s next event will be on Monday, April 10, 7 p.m. at the San Jose Stage Company (490 S. First St., San Jose). The forum’s theme is Creativity & The Arts, and it’s sponsored by a number of arts-related organizations including 1stAct. Oakland’s next event is on Thursday, April 13, from 6-8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum’s James Moore Theatre. The forum is sponsored by the Marcus Foster Educational Institute and the League of Women Voters.

China Basin noise data gathering happens on Wednesday.

The measurements made last night will provide a baseline for measurements I’ll make outside the Coliseum, China Basin, and other ballparks. The decibel (dB) scale is logarithmic like the Richter scale, so 70 dB can be interpreted as twice as loud as 60 dB. (There’s a good primer on sound and noise propagation at quietsolution.com.) Last night I measured crowd noise in the bowl at three different points: Section 137 of the LF bleachers, the concourse behind Section 107, and the 4th row of Section 203. I don’t have a very sophisticated sound level meter that has real time logging or analysis capabilities, so take these measurements with a decent margin of error (± 3 dB) and several grains of salt. I used “A-weighting” for the measurements.
The ambient crowd noise in the seating bowl was in the 70-75 dB range when the crowd was idle. Drums and chants brought the noise up 5-8 dB. Between innings, the PA caused the range to be 75-82 dB. Compare that to the interior of a BART train (60 dB stopped/71 dB moving).

Readings from the bleachers (first three innings):

• Giambi intro/BALCO chant: 92 dB
• Giambi groundout to 1B: 99 dB
• Matsui HR to RF: 96 dB spike, 92 dB roar
• “Let Go ___” chant: 90 dB
• First 2-2 pitch to Sheffield: 90 dB
• Sheffield HR: 95 dB

Concourse behind 107, where a group of shrill young girls (A’s fans) were chanting back-and-forth with another group of slightly less shrill young boys (Yankees fans).

• Jeter drop/error: 101 dB
• Bradley single, 2 RBI: 104 dB
• Payton single: 104 dB
• “Let’s Go Oakland” chant: 96 dB
• Kendall beats out DP: 102 dB
• Bradley walks, scoring Ellis: 107 dB
• “Yankees Suck” chant: 95 dB
• Waiting in line for dollar dogs: 82-84 dB

Section 203. After the Scutaro single, many Yankees fans departed. The Thomas double begat a mass exodus. The readings:

• Damon grounds out to Duke: 92 dB
• “Take me out to the ballgame”: 82 dB throughout, 88 dB climax
• A-Rod K’s: 94 dB
• Giambi intro: 83 dB
• Giambi flies out: 93 dB
• Sharks highlight on DiamondVision: 91 dB
• Bradley triple: 99 dB
• Cano error, Payton safe: 104 dB
• Kendall single: 98 dB
• Scutaro RBI single: 101 dB
• Thomas double, 2 RBI: 101 dB

Other readings taken elsewhere in the stadium:

• Concourse behind the bleachers: 82 dB
• Section 103 aisle during Dot Racing climax: 95 dB (proving that Dot Racing isn’t the most cheered event at A’s games)
• BART bridge almost underneath southbound tracks before the game: 88 dB
• BART bridge before game, middle: 75 dB
• Standing platform in RF near flags, end of game: 89 dB
• BART bridge after game near saxophone player but not while he’s playing: 67 dB
• When the sax guy is playing (I really should ask him to play “Take the A Train” more often): 77 dB

It’s important to note that very few of these “events” lasted for more than 2-3 seconds. There was a slight trickle of people leaving as early as 9:00 p.m. Roughly half the crowd was left at the end.

I’ll make the next measurements in the Giants-Astros series next week, on the promenade outside the ballpark and McCovey Point (the little park across Mission Creek from the stadium). These will be important because unlike the current Coliseum, China Basin is an open design that doesn’t trap or absorb noise as well as the Coliseum.

Update: This post just got a mention in the SFGate “A’s Drumbeat” blog. Sweet!

Now that the first three games are in the books, it’s time to do a comparison between the new, smaller Coliseum and last year’s larger model. Having the Yankees series at the beginning of the year creates a disadvantage for the A’s because Opening Day usually brings in 40,000+, so to have a Yankees game on Opening Day effectively eliminates one potentially high attendance date from the schedule. The Coliseum’s stated capacity this year is 34,077 plus 1,000 or so standing room admissions. Last year the capacity was 48,219.

First, let’s look at the first series this year vs. the first series last year:

• 2006 (vs. NYY): 35,077 / 31,284 / 30,165. Total: 96,526. Average: 32,175 (94.4% of capacity)
• 2005 (vs. TOR): 44,815 / 10,106 / 15,860. Total: 70,781. Average: 23,594 (48.9% of capacity)

The drop-off in 2005, as noted by local media at the time, was precipitous to say the least. A small dropoff has occurred this year, though it really amounts to 6-7%. That should at least get the press off the A’s backs for now. The next homestand against Texas and Detroit will paint a more realistic picture. Since the first series was against the Yankees, let’s look at how May 2005’s Yankees series stacks up against the last three days:

• 2006 (vs. NYY): 35,077 / 31,284 / 30,165. Total: 96,526. Average: 32,175 (94.4% of capacity)
• 2005 (vs. NYY): 38,636 / 41,180 / 37,237. Total: 117,053. Average: 39,018 (80.9% of capacity)

This puts the A’s over 8,000 ahead of last year’s pace but almost 7,000 behind last season’s Yankees series. Those that decried the third deck closure referred to reduced capacity as reduced revenue opportunity. However, the new pricing tier structure appears to be meant to establish two things: a greater amount of revenue per ticket sold, and a less elastic demand curve for A’s tickets. The first goal will be reached by default simply through the removal of 10,000 $9 seats per game, many of which turned into $1 seats on Wednesdays. There’s too small a sample size at this point to know if the second goal has been reached, but I would expect that the last year’s game-over-game standard deviation, 10,511, could be cut in half with these changes.

I didn’t attend Tuesday’s game, but Wednesday’s game showed how effective the structure has been so far. Most of the empty seats were in the furthest reaches of the Plaza and Field levels, along with hundreds of Plaza Bleacher seats. That’s exactly what the team wants on a regular basis. The removal of the third deck from inventory was not about staffing or security concerns. Excess inventory was a factor in creating the perception of reduced value – not just of any A’s ticket, but of all pricing tiers as well. Once pricing tiers and their value are well-established, demand should rise and that terrible standard deviation figure should drop, perhaps as much as 50%. That should, in turn, create a stable fanbase to which the A’s and their sponsors can market.

Of course, this completely ignores on-field performance. That’s what it’s supposed to do, because records can vary from year to year. Some years teams make the playoffs. Then again, they could lose 100 games. Whatever the case, this fanbase stability is supposed to provide a built-in insulation against record fluctuations. Premium seats are often sold in 5-7 year increments with the promise of controlled price hikes. The same could be said for luxury suites. The hope is that should the A’s leave the Coliseum in the next 3-4 years, much of the fanbase will be precommitted to the new ballpark, wherever it is in the Bay Area.

When looking at the model from a distance, it bears a kinship with the “Moneyball” philosophy. It’s about identifying market inefficiencies and exploiting them whenever possible. If basic microeconomic ideas can be applied successfully to the running of the baseball side of a franchise, it only makes sense that they also be properly applied to the place they were developed in the first place: the business side.

Coming tomorrow: Crowd noise measurements