Quick housekeeping note: I will not be attending Wednesday’s Good Neighbor session as I will be out of town on business. If any readers are attending and want to drop some observations, contact me. I plan to attend the 5/1 Oakland community meeting.

Woe is Dave Newhouse, great defender of all things Oakland:

Sometimes, I feel alone in defending Oakland, though I know that’s not true. But I’ve been doing it considerably longer than others in my line of work because I’ve been around considerably longer.

I know my preachings have gone way beyond repetitious, but I believe so strongly in Oakland — the most misrepresented city in America — that I’m about to deliver yet another sermon, although wishing I had Elmer Gantry’s oratory.

Well, at least he admits he’s repetitious. Have to give him credit for that. Newhouse criticizes other media for “cheering” a Warriors’ move back to San Francisco (yes, I’m as guilty as anyone). It’s a move that at this point lacks substance or detail, especially since we don’t know who will own the team in the future.

Newhouse also asks a pretty important fundamental question: How many large-scale arenas one area can support? It’s a very good question worth considering before anyone starts the development process. Most markets have one large arena (17,000-20,000) to service the population and the various acts that might tour or take up tenancy. Usually, that’s plenty enough. Large markets with multiple winter sport teams could have two arenas, but three? It would seem that the built-in competition for events would create diminishing returns for any arena operator in that environment. Let’s take a look at which cities have multiple modern arenas:

Bay Area: Oracle Arena (NBA), HP Pavilion (NHL)

We have a perfect situation right now, with the Pavilion consistently among the busiest arenas in the world and the Arena geographically situated to capture as many NBA and W’s fans as possible. There’s little reason to change this, other than SF trying to boost civic pride. The market here is too thin to have two hockey teams, leaving a second NBA team as the only real option. There’s little chance of that happening for Oakland and SF since they are too close and would cannibalize each others’ fans. San Jose is a possibility, but not the way it’s set up now with a prospective NBA team playing second fiddle for dates and revenue. Beyond the franchise move politics, there is a question as to whether or not our market size (7 million population) can support three arenas.

NYC: Madison Square Garden, Prudential Center (Newark), Nassau Coliseum (L.I.), Izod Center (NJ Meadowlands), Barclays Center (Brooklyn, future)

Obviously there’s some serious overkill here. However, Izod Center will lack a major team tenant next season, and Nassau has been outdated for at least a decade. It would appear that in the near future enough consolidation will occur that the area will have three arenas – a revamped MSG, The Rock, and Barclays, which could host the Nets and perhaps the Islanders. This is the one market where three arenas is just right, whereas two may be not enough given the spread of the regional fanbases.

LA: Staples Center (downtown LA), Honda Center (Anaheim), LA Sports Arena (South LA), Anaheim Convention Center, Long Beach Arena

The latter two are old, small venues attached to convention centers, so they’re not going to attract major sports. The old Sports Arena probably gets more use as a stand-in for other arenas in movies than it does attracting actual events. Staples Center has established itself as the home to three winter teams and the Grammys, while Honda Center has covered a lot of concert dates that Staples isn’t able to do. Combined with the Hollywood Bowl and the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, the market is well-covered, just as the Bay Area is, but with twice the population.

As for the other Top Ten markets? They usually have a mix of a one modern arena and one older arena, though there are some cases where there’s only one arena or two new ones have been built (usually with poor results).

• Chicago – United Center (new), Allstate Arena (old)
• Dallas – American Airlines Center (new), Fort Worth Convention Center (old)
• Philadelphia – Wachovia Center
• Washington, DC – Verizon Center
• Houston – Toyota Center (new), Reliant Arena (old)
• Miami – American Airlines Arena (new), BankAtlantic Center (new)
• Atlanta – Philips Arena (new), Arena at Gwinnett Center (new, small)

Before anyone starts to go crazy working on plans for a San Francisco arena, it’s worth looking at the other markets and running the numbers. If there’s a potential for oversaturation, this is the place for it.

One more thing about Newhouse’s column: he states that Lew Wolff failed to build a soccer stadium in San Jose. Um, what? He just got approved and consummated the land deal. The Quakes should be starting construction within a year. Dave, stick to your purview – Oakland and SF. Apparently you don’t know squat about the South Bay.

Mark your calendars for:

May 1, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Peralta Elementary School

City Council President Jane Brunner is hosting a community meeting regarding keeping the A’s in Oakland on May 1st at Peralta Elementary School. Members of the Oakland Community are welcome to attended in what should be a good discussion on what has been going on so far and what is to happen next

Scheduled to Appear:
Oakland Planning Commissioner Doug Boxer will be discussing fan support and an economic study

Oakland Community and Economic Development Chair Eric Angstadt will be discussing site options and the next steps.

If you care about the process of Keeping the Team in town your are more than welcome to attend!

We’re planning to be at the meeting, though it will conflict with A’s @ Jays @ 10 AM, Rogers Centre.

More information can be found in Brunner’s quarterly newsletter and on the Facebook event page. There’s a personal side to her pursuit:

Why I Support the A’s

People ask me why I am such a strong supporter of the A’s. One reason is a personal story. When I was raising my son and daughter, my son was the sports fan in the family. He liked to watch baseball and introduced me into the world of the A’s. We went to hundreds of games over the years and I learned to love baseball. It was our time together.

Now my son is grown up with his own family on the way and we have baseball to thank for bringing us closer together.

You know how President Obama eventually sold the health care plan in part by highlighting personal stories and anecdotes? Well, keeping the A’s in Oakland will require a similar appeal. Baseball is heavily nostalgic, more so than any of the other major sports. I felt it driving home from work tonight when Roy Steele visited the radio booth. There’s some of that nostalgia spread out among the Oakland supporter sites, but there may be something to having a unified place for all of it.

Just arrived here at Fremont City Hall. Plenty of other business on the agenda tonight. A smattering of A’s fans too.

City Manager Fred Diaz’s quote of the night: “The report is expected to be released the coming weeks, but I’m not holding my breath.”

$158,000 has been spent so far on studies. No action other than to receive the NUMMI reuse report. And now the public speaks.

So far, six out of the first ten speakers are anti-stadium. I recognize most of them as FCN members. Unfortunately, one of the speakers has gone off the deep end regarding the crime angle.

Totals: Six speakers for, six against. Now the council has their questions.

The Federal grant ($333,000) authorizes four separate studies, covering immediate local and regional concerns and impact. Bob Wieckowski appears to trying to confirm that the process is not, in fact, rigged in favor of the A’s. Anu Natarajan echoes one of the speakers in calling for a rational, academic approach to the redevelopment process. She also hits back hard at Vinnie Bacon’s assertion that Fremont let NUMMI workers down by doing nothing to stop the closure. She also points out that the opponents’ stance of claiming incompatibility between a ballpark and manufacturing is a false dichotomy given that SVLG supports the A’s move. (She concedes that more study is needed.)

There’s a 10 minute break. Some of the Chamber members greet me, as does Councilman Bill Harrison, who mentions that he saw me on the KTVU iPad piece. Which reminds me – if Fremont had a ballpark as an anchor, they’d also have an Apple Store in all likelihood. Instead, residents have to go over a bridge to Palo Alto, down the Sunol Grade to Stoneridge, or down 880 to Valley Fair.

Back from the break. The place has pretty much emptied out. Harrison starts off by defending the city and its handling of the NUMMI closure. Suzanne Chan wants clarification on the timeline. Apparently a council action would occur in July, followed by a “Notice to Proceed” on planning.

Methinks Vinnie Bacon might have to offer up an apology for his off-the-cuff comment. He’s gonna have as hard enough fight in November to begin with, the last thing he needs is to be known as a mudslinger. Mayor Wasserman has the dais now. He’s basically saying that the critics don’t know what they’re talking about regarding NUMMI, to put it mildly.

That’s drama in Fremont, folks!

Today, for the 16th time in the last 22 seasons, at least one Major League Baseball team had a home opener in a brand new yard. This time it was the Twins turn. In the few shots I saw on TV I saw enough to see that the place is an absolute palace. (Here are a few local reviews, Finance and Commerce, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press)

The first pitch was thrown under partly cloudy skies and, luckily, the temperature was a downright balmy 65 degrees. The nice temperature and lack of a roof clearly aided my perception of the place as a palace. That is not to say that Target Field doesn’t have quirks, they just don’t include losing a can of corn fly ball in Teflon coated glass.

The most obvious quirk: Right Field has a very unique set of seats that hang out over the top of the fence. It is kind of reminiscent of old Tiger Stadium, where the upper deck in Right Field hung 10 Feet over the playing field. I imagine a fly ball  hit at the right trajectory could make it to these seats even if it wouldn’t normally travel the 331 feet to the wall just like balls that may have been caught on the warning track in Tiger Stadium would land in the upper deck.

For the record, Target Field has the following, slightly asymmetrical dimensions: 328 to Left, 371 in the gaps, 402 to Center and 331 to the wall in Right.

Some notables first time occurrences:

• Marco Scutaro had the first hit (Hooray for Marco!)
• Marco Scutaro promptly became the first player Caught Stealing (Booo Marco!)
• Adding insult to injury, Dustin Pedroia followed the first Caught Stealing with the first Extra Base hit (a double)
• Denard Span scored the first run and Michael Cuddyer drove him in.
• David Ortiz was the first Strikeout victim and Carl Pavano struck him out.
• Nick Punto was the first guy to not get thrown out trying to steal.
• Jason Kubel hit the first bomb.

Fittingly, the Twins won. Making for a few more notable firsts: Carl Pavano was the first to win a game, Jon Rauch the first to earn a save and Jon Lester was the first to get the ‘ol “L.”

I am envious Twin fans.

LA Times baseball writer Bill Shaikin chimes in on the lack of progress up here, just as he did last June. This time, he spoke to Lew Wolff, who revealed at least one important new nugget.

He says the A’s would not strike it rich in San Jose, not when they would build the ballpark themselves and face what he says would be $18 million to $20 million per year in mortgage payments, but could do well enough for fans to develop a rooting interest in Brett Anderson and Kurt Suzuki rather than watch General Manager Billy Beane trade them away.

“We’re in this so I can give Billy enough money to keep players,” Wolff said. “We’re still not going to be in the free-agent market.”

First off, what Wolff says last is all that I (and many other fans) want. I’m not looking for the A’s to have a $100 million infield, I just want a $100 million payroll. Second, the revelation that the mortgage would run $18-20 million should settle much of the talk about the ballpark cost, as I had seen absolutely ridiculous projections ($50 million/year) in the comments. Throughout this excruciating process, Wolff has been talking with financial institutions about the costs and viability of the project, should it take one form or another. .

Shaikin sums up the current situation concisely in this short paragraph:

Can Selig endorse San Jose and risk losing an election? Can he endorse Oakland without land in hand? Does he spend a few more months trying to pacify the Giants, who vow not to go quietly, or the A’s, who say they exhausted their efforts in Oakland years ago?

I really don’t have anything else to add.

More news out of Fremont and San Jose. Fremont’s City Council will get a report next Tuesday (7 PM, Session agenda PDF) on potential re-use of the undeveloped northern end (sounds like a contradiction, no?) for an A’s ballpark plus additional development. This is a study session and a completion of the work presented in January. Like the earlier session, no action is expected to be taken at the upcoming session, as no decision from MLB is forthcoming. Once that happens, Fremont can either move forward or drop the effort. As usual, at the core of any discussion is the debate about Fremont’s growth and suburban nature: does a decidedly urban development make sense in a city lacking a downtown? At the very least, Fremont deserves credit for due diligence on its part. The skinny:

7.1 REPORT ON NUMMI SITE REUSE AND REVITALIZATION

Report on NUMMI Site Reuse and Revitalization Activities Including Response to Interest by Major League Baseball in Possible Establishment of a Fremont Ballpark

Contact Person:

Name: Brian Millar

Title: Consultant

Dept.: City Manager’s Office

Phone: 510-284-4008

E-Mail: bmillar@fremont.gov

RECOMMENDATION: Receive the update of costs incurred to date in support of NUMMI site reuse and revitalization activities. Provide feedback and policy direction on future activities in support of NUMMI site reuse and revitalization.

Update 4/9 10:30 PM: Fremont received a $333,000 federal grant to further study potential uses of the NUMMI site. Among the suggestions: NASCAR track, UC campus. Now before you think certain ideas are crazy, I’ll point out that the entire Mission Bay development in SF is just over 300 acres. NUMMI is 370 acres. There is room for a vast mix of uses.

Down south, San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency may have nearly completed the puzzle for its Diridon ballpark site acquisition efforts by negotiating the sale of two key downtown parcels for $20 million – the same amount as the expected cost to acquire the remaining Diridon parcels. Is it essentially a “favor” from one of the longtime San Jose power families? Maybe. My guess is that the sale was one of the key topics when Bob DuPuy met with Chuck Reed and Lew Wolff on Monday. Assuming that the sale goes through and SJRA buys the remaining Diridon land, there remains the reconfiguration of the PG&E substation, which to date hasn’t been estimated (AFAIK). Additional money will be required to cover the required work, though it shouldn’t be anything approaching the $30.8 million cost to relocate the substation in the 2006 EIR. While it may be technically possible to fit in a ballpark without disturbing the substation, space would be so restricted that it might not be worth it.

Like clockwork, Forbes is out with their new franchise valuations as part of their annual “The Business of Baseball” analysis. The biggest losers? The Toronto Blue Jays and your Oakland Athletics. Both teams saw a drop of 8% from 2009 valuations. While the Jays’ drop can be attributed to immense costcutting, the A’s got a more broad-ranging set of indictments:

The Oakland A’s franchise continued to get hammered last season. In 2009 the team posted its third-straight losing season, winning only 75 games. Attendance collapsed to 1.4 million at McAfee Coliseum, an embarrassing average of just 17,392 per game, worst in baseball. All attempts to find a new ballpark have failed. According to Baseball Prospectus, the Athletics have seen $54 million worth of players salaries go down the drain over the past three years due to injuries, most of it because GM Billy Beane overpaid for Eric Chavez, the always hurt third baseman. Further proof that the team’s brand has been greatly diminished since the glory years of Moneyball was the 0.82 rating the A’s generated in 2009 on CSN California, the regional sports network that carries their games, down 53% from 2008 when the games were shown on another network.

Those guys at Forbes don’t pull punches, do they? They make it sound like the A’s are in some sort of death spiral, when in reality there are plenty of good things around the corner – both on and off the field. The A’s new valuation is $295 million (29th in MLB), putting them at 2007 or pre-recession levels. Sure, MLB and the A’s will grumble and complain that the numbers are inaccurate if asked. Still, when teams get sold it’s remarkable how close the actual sales prices are to recent valuations, so take whatever the officials say with a grain of salt.

In any case, it’s not like the team is getting sold anytime soon, so the 2010 valuation doesn’t really matter much other than to highlight that the A’s are seriously underperforming from a revenue standpoint.

First off, I have to apologize for being an absentee blogrunner the last couple of days. This is a busy week at work, so busy that I haven’t been able to do rudimentary moderation. All will be back to normal tomorrow (unless something blows up). On a tangential note, I’m exploring new ways to do some blogging and simple work tasks (yes, that was my ugly mug on TV Saturday night).

On to the news. As reported Monday, Fremont’s wondering what the fate will be of the now shuttered NUMMI plant, which I drove by Friday morning as a crane was getting ready to take the plant’s sign off. If history is any indicator, it’ll turn into a mall. Oakland’s Chevy plant shut down in 1963 and was demolished to make way for Eastmont Mall, which itself was closed and reused as a mixed government/retail center. The Ford plant in Milpitas was reused as a large outlet mall, with numerous references to its storied past. Reporter Matthew Artz notes that cleanup cost for the Ford plant was $12 million ($20 million in today’s dollars, though it’s impossible to tell just how much it’ll cost today until an assessment is made. Mayor Bob Wasserman thinks that the land will fetch $1.5 million per acre, or $555 million for the whole shebang. Last July, I wrote about how no one should start thinking that any of the land could quickly be turned over for a ballpark because of the planning and development process. This article, among others, confirms this. If neither San Jose nor Oakland fall out, Fremont may become a good option, but it’s unlikely that anything could start there until the middle of the decade.

12 miles south of NUMMI, MLB second-in-command Bob DuPuy visited San Jose City Hall, meeting with Mayor Chuck Reed and Lew Wolff.

“We talked about baseball and opening day,” said Reed, adding that DuPuy, with whom he has talked on the phone before, “wanted to see San Jose in person.”

DuPuy is one of two people to whom a special committee appointed by baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to study the A’s stadium options is reporting. The other person is Selig himself, a college fraternity brother of Wolff’s.

Reed said baseball officials “like San Jose, and they are doing their due diligence. We just have to be patient.” The committee is expected to make a recommendation to Selig in the near future; San Jose officials have said they need a decision by late July in order to schedule a November ballot measure on a proposal to let the team build on city-owned land.

Wolff told the Mercury News the meeting with DuPuy “was really more of a hello —nothing earth-shaking. The process is still the process.”

I know that many San Jose partisans are getting excited about this – don’t. The key phrase is “due diligence.” The three amigos didn’t even visit the ballpark site, choosing instead to get an obstructed view from the 18th floor. As my 8th grade social studies teacher, Mr. Gredasoff, used to say when he got fed up with the class’s behavior, we’re “moving along at a feverish pace.”

Relationships can be complicated. Especially in business. What may seem like a simple, straight line path to getting things accomplished can often end up needlessly difficult and mindbogglingly frustrating thanks to various rules among governmental and non-governmental bodies. So it goes for the Sharks, A’s, and City of San Jose. A report by the Merc’s Tracy Seipel on Friday alludes to just how difficult it is.

“All we’re asking for is a plan,” said Greg Jamison, chief executive of SVSE. “We’ve had meetings and discussions and we are still waiting for the layout and overall strategy as to what is going to happen” with traffic and parking.

Don Gralnek, Sharks executive vice president and general counsel, added that the team also worries about the impacts of other future projects in the Diridon Station area, including plans to add BART and high-speed rail.

“It’s not a comment on the A’s proposal,” Gralnek said. “This is about trying to protect our customers’ experience at the HP Pavilion.”

The sentiments above appear to belie the Merc’s headline (“Sharks join chorus of groups concerned about plans for ballpark in downtown San Jose”), no? To get to the heart of the after, it’s worth reading the comments submitted to the City’s planning department, all of which have been complied into a single, 147-page PDF.

This problem could be pretty easily remedied if MLB simply got off its ass and made a ruling on territorial rights. Right now the City and Diridon area affected parties (such as SVSE) can only talk in theoreticals, since they don’t have the opinion of the party that will actually affect everyone, the A’s. That’s extremely problematic when you’re trying to lock in not only an EIR but also a larger development plan for the area. (Both processes are happening in parallel, with frequent overlap.)

SVSE/Sharks want above all two maintain the viability of HP Pavilion. Forget for the moment about the various family ties between Tom McEnery and Lew Wolff. Favors can only go far before you start to give up too much. In this case, there are over 3,000 spaces that are at stake. Without guidance, the City is entertaining the idea of not having any parking built, or any other new road infrastructure for that matter. That’s what is raising the ire of SVSE and many others. It seems impractical that a new TPMP (Transportation and Parking Management Program) could alone mitigate the new stresses that would be placed existing roads around Diridon.

The simple solution could be to build a new garage where the existing arena main lot is located, west of HP Pavilion. The garage fits the multiple-use strategy by its placement close to the train station. Unforttunately, even a very aggressive construction schedule could heavily affect the arena’s parking availability. Somewhere, temporary replacement parking would have to be built. Many are residents would prefer that no parking garages be built in the six blocks between the arena and the ballpark site. The Downtown Association would prefer that a new garage be built within the downtown core on the other side of CA-87.

And that’s not all. Since the area is expected to have a major uptick in terms of pedestrian traffic, many are calling for grade separating people from cars, an infrastructure change that would create the need for perhaps several footbridges.

The easiest way to handle both the foot and car traffic issue is to incorporate both parking and grade separation into the six block area. Transform one-way Montgomery Street into a pedestrian throughfare, while giving development rights to a potentially interested party (I’ll give you one guess) as long as the developer commits to building both the pedestrian bridges some of the backfill parking that will be needed. Of course, those conversations can’t take place right now except in the ether and maybe in some back rooms. Grant T-rights, and suddenly everything can be done out in the open, with cost estimates, scheduling, and impact assessments. No worries about sunshine law violations. No awkward situations where the A’s, who would clearly want and need parking if a ballpark were built, might have to “nudge” their friends at the Sharks to make a request on their behalf, one that would clearly benefit both. Until MLB makes a decision, so much of the planning process remains up in the air. It’s too bad.