This may be the only post of the week from me. I’ve got a lot of work to cram before I head out on the trip.
And now for the news:
The Merc’s Scott Herhold analyzes the political calculus of San Jose’s efforts of the last week.
Matier and Ross report on AT&T playing hardball with San Jose on the $12 million Diridon property.
City Councilman Sam Liccardo, whose downtown district includes the ballpark site near Diridon Station, says it’s troubling that a company “that depends so heavily on public good will” would attempt to “rake taxpayers over the coals.”
Nonsense, says AT&T California spokesman Ryan Rauzon. He says the center – which employs more than 100 people and serves as a maintenance and storage yard for a fleet of vehicles – is vital “to making sure we take care of our customers.”
“The land obviously is not for sale,” he said.
Councilman Liccardo might be better served finding a suitable landing spot for AT&T. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been in work centers like the one that’s in question here. They are not central offices, so they don’t have tons of expensive switching equipment. They are, ironically, offices, with training facilities and conference rooms. More importantly, they have large parking lots to hold the various trucks that run around the service area. San Jose will either have to put resources into finding another centrally located spot with enough parking to make it work, or use eminent domain, which would be approved with the March vote. Note: AT&T is a sponsor of both the A’s and Giants, so it’s not a situation where the company is beholden to one team or another.
Over at The Biz of Baseball, Maury Brown’s covering the Rangers’ ownership debacle like a champ. There’s coverage of Mark Cuban and FOX perhaps being bidders on Wednesday. Get your popcorn ready. There are even threats that the Rangers would lose Josh Hamilton and Cliff Lee if the Greenberg-Ryan group were not the winner. Whatever, given the incredible job that FOX did owning the Dodgers, GOOOOOOO FOXXXXXXXX!!!!!
If you didn’t catch it last week, ESPN has a feature on health code violations by stadiums in the US and Canada. Bay Area facilities tended to perform among the best in the nation, though the Coliseum was the worst at 34%.
FWIW, I’m bringing in food tonight.
newballpark.org 
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Eminent domain would be approved in a March vote? It’s just that easy? Now you’d have the Giants and AT&T campaigning against the ballpark.
Rangers fans beware (A’s fan rejoice!): Not only did Fox screw up the Dodgers… They bought Myspace for $580M and now it probably isn’t even worth that. Let’s hope Fox wins and the Rangers become Myspace part 2.
Jesse, eminent domain isn’t something that AT&T can do much about once it is approved. They can campaign all they want at that point, but no ballpark wouldn’t mean AT&T would stay put.
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Really, ballpark or no, San Jose and AT&T should be working together towards a new spot for them to set up a garage. It seems clear that San Jose wants to expand Downtown to the other side of 87 and that means AT&T will move one way or another.
“Councilman Liccardo might be better served finding a suitable landing spot for AT&T.”
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Very true. And now that all the posturing is out of the way I hope that’s exactly what SJ is doing. That should be the relatively easy part though. The financials will be the interesting part of the negotiation.
because if there’s one scarce resource in Silicon Valley, its office parks.
Yeah, ATT has to move no matter what SJ decided to build, ballpark or not. They’re just being shrewd.
R.M.,
Two questions. Re: the Rangers auction, if somehow the Ryan/Greenberg group loose out on the bid and don’t become the new owners of the team, what effect if any would that have on MLB’s anti-trust exemption? It would basically be implying that MLB doesn’t in fact have the power to choose who owns one of their teams. Last question: are you driving?
@ Tony D – That would be for a court to decide as it’s too complex and limited scope an issue to be addressed by a simple interpretation of the exemption.
Am I driving on the trip? Only limited amounts. Mostly it’ll be on the train.