While I would just as soon prefer the A’s saga not get played out so publicly in the media, it makes sense for members of the ownership group to circle the wagons when they get attacked. And so minority partner Guy Saperstein wrote into the Trib with a strongly worded rebuttal of City Attorney John Russo’s letter last week. Saperstein, a retired Oakland lawyer who contributes to several left-leaning websites, doesn’t quite fit the profile of collusive carpetbagger many have bestowed upon Lew Wolff. I will be curious to see if, oh, Zennie Abraham and Rich Lieberman devote as much blog space to Saperstein’s letter as to Russo’s.

Saperstein ends with a sentiment echoed by this blogger and many others (though not all) throughout A’s fandom:

What is most noteworthy about Russo’s commentary is what it fails to identify: A single viable stadium site in Oakland. Russo writes a long commentary claiming that “feasible options for a new ballpark” exist, and that it only takes “imagination” to find it, then fails to identify a single feasible option, or indeed, any stadium option.

The time is long past for platitudes and empty rhetoric from grandstanding politicians who aspire to be the next mayor. If you have a secret stadium site and plan that no one else has yet seen, Mr. Russo, let’s see it.

The key word there, of course, is viable. I guess we’ll find out if it exists in a week. Can’t wait.

On a related note – how many more lawyers are we going to hear from? I’ll put the over-under at 3.

Matier and Ross report that there may be three locations presented by the Oakland Stadium Task Force. One is the Coliseum parking lot option, the other two unclear, though M&R are pointing to Howard Terminal and Oak-to-Ninth. Yes, this is all familiar territory.

Quick refresher: Howard Terminal (aerial view) was reopened in 2004, with shipping giant Matson signing a 25-year lease. A related deal, finalized only last year, has SSA Marine operating the terminal on behalf of Matson.

O29 is a bit more complicated. The largely residential development on the Estuary had its EIR certified in January (PDF), after 3+ years of legal wrangling. Unfortunately for developer Signature Properties, the timing coincides with a horrible decline in the housing market. The Ghielmettis have long maintained that they would be willing to share the site with the A’s for a ballpark. However, the devil is always in the details. If putting a ballpark in means a significant drop in open space (which was what much of the legal wrangling was about), any plan would be likely be DOA, if not beset by renewed lawsuits.

Both sites would require new EIR processes to begin, as is common with new development.

At least the task force is aware that it can’t just throw a couple of sites out there:

Planning Commissioner Doug Boxer, who is part of a public-private group led by Mayor Ron Dellums working to keep the A’s in town, confirmed that part of the parking lot at the Coliseum would be offered as a ballpark site. But he said there has been no final decision on which two waterfront sites will be presented to the baseball poobahs May 12.

“We don’t want to provide them with the same old sites that are going to have some of the same issues that have been identified as problematic,” he said.

In other words, they’re still sorting it out.

When the HOK study was completed in 2002, Howard Terminal and O29 emerged 4th and 6th, respectively.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the task force’s presentation, which is scheduled for May 12th.

P.S.: Rich Lieberman comments further on the M&R report, though he must not have gotten the memo that the Marlins’ ballpark plan has been approved, not killed. Miami-Dade County expects to sell the bonds in the next two months. The site has been cleared, the Marlins planted flags there over the weekend, and a very detailed site plan has already been circulated (thanks Transic and M Festa). The constant drone I’ve been hearing from Oakland partisans is “It’s too hard to go anywhere else, just get it done here even though the potential isn’t as good.” It somewhat fits with the path of least resistance M.O. I ascribed to Wolff in the past. I understand the reasoning behind this, but it’s not exactly an overwhelming sales pitch.

Years ago, when the High Speed Rail project was only slightly more than a pipe dream, I had a dream of my own. It involved a few friends and me going on a quick weekend trip on HSR. We’d pack light, walk from my house, and board an HSR train on a Friday afternoon. Three hours later, we’d be in Anaheim, just in time to catch the first game of a division rivalry weekend series at Angel Stadium. We’d bunk with some other friends in the O.C. We’d reciprocate the hospitality when they wanted to come up here, of course.

This was before the final alignment was decided. Since then, the East Bay has been shut out of the initial phases of HSR, making such a trip from the East Bay less convenient than what I just described (a transfer from BART in SF remains possible). From San Jose, the dream is not only alive, it’s within grasp. And according to comments by SJ city planners and HSR planners, it can work for them too.

“Engineering hasn’t been done, and decisions haven’t been made,” said Hans Larsen, San Jose’s deputy director of transportation, “but there’s nothing to indicate — that we’ve seen — any chance of a conflict between the two projects.”

Added Mehdi Morshed, the rail authority’s executive director: “The more activity, the more development, the more things that are located in and around the station, the better it is for our riders. We would go out of our way to work with them, to do everything we can to match our station design to fit the city’s priority.”

Now that sounds like the spirit of cooperation to me! Each independent working group knows what the others are doing, they appreciate what the other could bring to the table. Hopefully, they’re also thinking about sharing infrastructure along the lines of what I suggested last month.

Eventually, HSR could be a boon for all sports teams situated near it. An A’s or Giants fan in Fresno could conceivably get to SF or SJ about 90 minutes. A Padres fan who wants to attend a Pads-Dodgers game in LA but doesn’t want to deal with LA traffic would have a solution that gets him end-to-end in just over an hour. Baseball fans from all over could join cool train-based ballpark tours, visiting all 5 major league parks as well as several minor league parks along the route if they wanted. The potential is staggering.

It’s a development that doesn’t really make a difference in putting a ballpark plan together. Still, civic leaders and pols pushing for a ballpark will undoubtedly point to San Jose’s newly minted seven-figure population.

Kevin Starr, a professor of history at the University of Southern California and a former state librarian, said 1 million people is a distinct urban threshold.

“When a city reaches a million, it reaches a certain transformative population,” Starr said. “You are dense enough then to get anything done that you want to get done. So let those people that don’t want San Jose to be a big city move to Redding — seriously. This place was destined to be an important American city right from the beginning.”

I don’t know if San Jose will ever “arrive” the way Tom McEnery had envisioned in the past. Reaching 1 million is certainly a step towards that. In the meantime, at least San Jose can say it has more tall buildings than San Antonio. Woohoo! – er, um…