For those who are wondering where all the South Bay community leaders are regarding the San Jose ballpark project, they’ll be at City Hall tomorrow at 1 p.m. for Mayor Chuck Reed’s press conference. Reed will undoubtedly tout the revenue and growth potential cited by the week-old economic impact report. Here’s the press release: Mayor [...]

Large group at San Jose’s Parkside Hall B to discuss the Diridon Station & Ballpark plan. It’s a workshop, which means that lots of reps from City, transit, and consultants are all over the place to answer questions. Updates will be posted here as they come. 1:20 pm – No real ballpark news. This was [...]

The Merc’s Tracy Seipel has a new article featuring quotes from economists questioning some of the projections in the San Jose Economic Impact Report. Here’s one of the better takeaways from the article: But experts who study the economics of ballparks reviewed the numbers for the Mercury News and raised plenty of concerns. Chief among [...]

Tonight’s contribution comes from frequent commenter gojohn, who in a previous thread had some thoughts on the future makeup of a San Jose A’s fanbase. I told him that it looked like he needed some room to flesh out the concept, so I gave him this post to do it. I’ll add my own thoughts [...]

That’s Phoenix, as in Municipal Stadium, not Oakland. In January I wrote about the A’s discussing renovations to Muni with City officials. Apparently the officials couldn’t wrap their brains around the radical concept – team pays for it up front, gets reimbursed or compensated later – so that went nowhere. Hopefully this time Phoenix and [...]

Picked this up from V Smoothe @ SFGate’s in Oakland blog. The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce is distributing a letter to member businesses, imploring them to show their support for “a new, state-of-the-art, transit-friendly ballparkwithin its currently defined MLB territory” by signing the letter and sending it back to the Chamber. The Chamber will [...]

While everyone’s focused on the economic impact report (and rightly so), the City of San Jose managed to slip in one other document under the radar. This one’s a Frequently Asked Questions (PDF) document, which seems to be timed specifically to provide ballpark proponents two new weapons for their arsenal. You can download the document [...]

I’ll get into the nitty gritty later tonight. For now I’ll make a few observations on the new Economic Impact Report: 1. The firm used for this version, Conventions Sports & Leisure, is the same one used by the City of Santa Clara for their 49ers stadium study. I will be looking carefully for unrealistic [...]

Might as well post this before someone puts it in a comment. A new site, oklnd.com, is selling baseball-style shirts with traditional Oakland A’s colors, but sans the “A’s.” Part sociopolitical statement, part middle finger to management and baseball. Some will say it’s clever, some will say it’s pointless. To me it looks like a [...]

Everyone likes trains, right?This short video was shot yesterday afternoon between Jack London Square and Howard Terminal. There’s no better illustration of the impact of trains through the area. They are the lifeblood of the port’s operations and an important conduit for commuters on Capitol Corridor. Should a ballpark be planned for Howard Terminal, multiple [...]