When San Jose started on its quest to assemble land for a downtown ballpark, its plans were ambitious. Initially, the City’s project area included the ballpark site you see in the rendering above, plus the “triangle” on the other side of Park Avenue and the strip between Los Gatos Creek and Autumn Street. Dwindling funds [...]

CORRECTION: Apparently I misinterpreted the news wrong. From the LA Times: The court issued an order delaying enforcement of most provisions of the new law until a ruling on the merits of the case, but said redevelopment agencies could not incur new debt, transfer assets, buy property or enter into new contracts in the meantime. [...]

Saw this tweet come across the internets: No surprise here. Ever since Mayor Chuck Reed’s failed bluff, the City has had this stance regarding the referendum. What this means is a potential June 2012 vote, now that the state legislature has pushed back the upcoming primary from its previous February date. In all likelihood, that’s the last [...]

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a MOU (memorandum of understanding) between the City and AEG, allowing the NFL stadium project to move forward. Approval of the stadium plan would kick off nine months of intensive negotiations with AEG, which has promised to pay for the new stadium and two parking garages on its [...]

Back to the grind. Go to either Google News or Twitter and do a search for redevelopment. You’ll find that a growing number of cities all over California are giving in and paying their ransom payments to keep their redevelopment agencies alive (of which funds are largely being diverted to local school districts). Last week [...]

I know, I know. A lot of you aren’t happy. The relaunch of 95.7 as KGMZ or “The Game” hasn’t resulted in more A’s-focused programming. The shift to a sort of KNBR Jr. is more than a little upsetting. And I can even infer that from Lew Wolff’s response to my question about the radio [...]

Part 5 of 5 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) LW: How about redevelopment? Don’t you want to talk about that? ML: I’m getting right to that. Actually let’s talk about T-rights for one more question. If there was a dollar value attached to the T-rights here, is that something you’d consider? Is there a [...]

In 2005, Gwen Knapp proposed that the A’s trade Barry Zito, he of the Cy Young award and two All Star appearances to date, to the Giants for the territorial rights to Santa Clara County. I had remarked that the concept wasn’t that far-fetched, though readers noted that Knapp was probably was writing with tongue placed [...]

Part 4 of 5 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) ML: Now lets move onto everyone’s favorite topic – tarps. They’ve been a bone of contention ever since they’ve been up there. What have you learned from having them up there, whether they were an experiment or another initiative, do they help? Hurt? Does it [...]

[Ed. - Before I start again I have to mention that there are some blogs out there who are cutting and pasting huge chunks of this interview for further commentary. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with the fact that I haven't received a single request to use this interview [...]