Monthly Archives: February 2011

02.02.11
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Quan speaks out in defense of redevelopment

We’ve been waiting for comments from Oakland Mayor Jean Quan about redevelopment, and now we have them courtesy of KGO-TV’s Alan Wong.

ORA apparently has $52 million in cash on hand, $20 million for Victory Court’s development area. Quan was quick to talk up the benefits of redevelopment, specifically pointing to the renovation of the Fox Theater as a glittering example done under Jerry Brown’s watch.

Updated: More from Oakland North’s Laura Hautala:

Currently, the city council is the governing body of Oakland’s redevelopment agency and directs its actions, but (CEDA director Walter) Cohen said the successor agencies might turn out to be cities themselves. If so, the council might continue overseeing the projects normally carried out by Oakland’s redevelopment agency, but with less funding.

Quan told the council that she and the nine mayors from California’s 10 biggest cities will meet with Brown’s finance director next week to discuss details of how the proposal would work. “The scary thing is that folks in Sacramento have not a clue what redevelopment is,” Quan said, adding that even Brown, formerly Oakland’s mayor, seems to have forgotten the extent to which the redevelopment agency provides funding for the city. “We have a special responsibility to make this real,” Quan said.

When the subject shifted to the A’s, things got a little more uncertain. Let’s Go Oakland head Doug Boxer took the question.

When asked if this was the nail in the coffin for the Oakland A’s, Doug Boxer — Co-found of Let’s Go Oakland — says, “I don’t like to think of it like that. It’s very difficult to move a franchise. The Giants were on their way out, quite frankly, including Canada.”

Not exactly confidence inspiring. And there’s an important distinction to make here. In nearly every case of the A’s or Giants wanting to move, the owner was looking to sell the franchise.

  • 1976 – Horace Stoneham looked to sell Giants to brewing giant Labatt’s, who would move the team to Toronto. A court injunction stopped the sale and the team was sold to Bob Lurie.
  • 1978-79 – Charlie Finley tries to move the A’s to New Orleans but is bound to his lease by the Coliseum Commission.
  • 1980 – Finley tries to sell to Marvin Davis, who would move the team to Denver. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn struck down the move. Finley was held to his lease again. (Thanks, MB) Finley would sell the following year to Wally Haas.
  • 1992 – Lurie tries to sell the Giants to Tampa Bay interests after striking out several times in his efforts to get a new stadium built in SF or the South Bay. NL President Bill White intervenes and allows time for Walter Shorenstein to assemble the saving ownership group.

Legal obstacles (ironclad lease, sale acting as a gating mechanism) prevented the moves in all cases. Talk of a lawsuit against the A’s emanating from a clause in the lease has been all but debunked. That leaves Wolff/Fisher with the thing we already know as the last true obstacle: T-rights enforced via the commissioner. We can debate all day and night about how sacrosanct T-rights actually are, but let’s be clear – they’re the only real obstacle left.

02.02.11
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Brown may make June special election vote-by-mail

Governor Jerry Brown’s efforts to balance the budget have taken a new twist. According to Matier and Ross, the June special election, which would’ve had a referendum to extend current tax rates for five years, would be done by mail. The change would require a supermajority in the Legislature.

This doesn’t bode well for the chances of a ballpark initiative on that same ballot. The same kinds of resources that would normally be mobilized to bring out the vote in favor of a ballpark won’t be as effective for the mail-in vote. There’s also a danger for Brown in that mail-in vote tends to skew older and more conservative (anti-tax), and that the turnout may be poor due to people being unfamiliar with the process. The savings to the individual counties would be huge, however.

Can I hear it for a November ballpark election? Get your wallet out, Selig.

02.02.11
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Are you ready for some football stadia?!?!

Ed Roski may have an EIR done, but AEG has the glitzy package in downtown LA, which may translate into the largest naming rights deal in sports history. The deal with Farmers Insurance starts at 30 years, $700 million and could escalate to at least $900 million over the same period if two NFL teams play there. It’s an absurdly, staggering large amount that actually has a chance of paying off if enough additional events provide the requisite exposure. Here’s a list of what they’re putting together:

  • At least 10 Chargers NFL home games every year
  • A new or relocated college bowl game (non-BCS) or a playoff game if a system is introduced
  • The Pac-12 championship game
  • A place in the college basketball site rotation (Final Four/regional finals)
  • A future NBA All Star Weekend
  • The X Games
  • At least one high profile boxing/MMA event every year

Plenty of “one-off” possibilities are out there, such as World Cup games. Other soccer/rugby exhibitions are likely. It won’t hurt that the stadium is planned to be a extension of Los Angeles Convention Center, and that it’ll get a frequent broadcast nod after groundbreaking thanks to national exposure from Staples Center events such as Lakers games and the Grammys.

Even though Roski is putting up a fight for his City of Industry stadium concept, he can be forgiven for setting his sights elsewhere. Today he was a four hour drive away in Las Vegas, to unveil a unique stadium-arena concept at UNLV.

The stadium, which from the rendering above looks more like one of the vessel sinks my brother just installed at his house than typical sports architecture (not necessarily a bad thing), can function as either a 20,000-seat arena or a 40,000-seat stadium. It does this via a novel moving stand (the orange bowl) which retracts in and out based on the event. In arena mode, the stand moves in more than 200 feet and matches the other end, creating a round/oval seating bowl. For football the stand pulls out and exposes sideline seats, suites and club levels.

Roski’s partners in this venture are UNLV and Silverton Casino owner Craig Cavileer. The idea is first and foremost to have an on-campus home for the Runnin’ Rebels football team, which currently plays its home games eight miles away near the edge of town at Sam Boyd Stadium. The current venue also hosts a bowl game which would greatly benefit from being in an indoor venue, as a December night game in the desert isn’t always comfortable. Plus there’s nothing around the stadium.

Cavileer and UNLV are pitching the idea as a way to improve the campus, as it’s tied to an improved circulation plan, 3,000 new campus housing units, and a sizable retail/commercial component. Right now it’s common for travelers to pass the campus on the way to/from McCarran Airport, and the most prominent features are Thomas & Mack Center and the ocean of parking in front of the arena. If the plan comes to fruition, all of that parking would be turned into a new master planned community, with the new stadium as its anchor. Thomas & Mack would stay put as it’s still serviceable. No funding has been identified for the plan, so right now it’s in the earliest planning stages.

Given the site’s proximity to the airport, I’m curious if FAA height restrictions might come into play since the stadium may be only 1/2 mile from one of the runways.

When I first got word of the unveiling (thanks Dennis M.), I wasn’t sure if I had seen something like this before. Turns out I had, though not in person. Audio of the presentation had Cavileer mentioning renowned architect Dan Meis, who had done something like this before in Japan. The Saitama Super Arena is very much the same concept and was completed in 2000. While it doesn’t have a soccer/football tenant, it is unique in that it was designed to be able to stage American football exhibition games. That may sound weird but it makes perfect sense. If you go back to the 80’s/90’s you may remember that the Detroit Pistons played home games at the Pontiac Silverdome and the San Antonio Spurs played a few years at the Alamodome. The Georgia Dome was split into two venues for the 1996 Olympics, one half holding basketball and the other gymnastics. This unintentionally works well because an American football field’s width is 160 feet. Add 20-30 feet of buffer on each side to the width of the field and you basically get the length of a hockey arena or a regular indoor arena floor. All that needs to be done to stage basketball/hockey games is to put in the proper surface and add some portable seats.

At the Super Arena, an entire end is moved into place instead of collapsible risers. The change can take as little as 20 minutes to move the 15,000-ton, 9,000-seat stand.

As cool as it is, it’s not entirely ideal. 40,000 seats works for a second-tier NCAA football team and bowl game. It obviously won’t work for the NFL, not that the NFL is coming the Vegas anytime soon. There’s also an issue in the elongated configuration in that there are too many end seats and not enough sideline seats. Current design trends have end seats at a minimum. There’s probably a way to expand the footprint of the building in order to stuff more seats in there, but that’s not relevant to the UNLV concept.

I’m much more interested in the UNLV concept than Farmers Field, simply because it’s much more novel. If all of the involved parties can pull this off, it’ll be a great feather in Vegas’ cap. The preso describes a redevelopment (TIF) funding plan plus ancillary revenues. I never thought I’d see the rebirth of the “ballpark village” but there it is. Curiously, there is one thing missing from the preso – any mention of a pro franchise, like oh, the Sacramento Kings.

02.01.11
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It’s a buyer’s market: SJRA land bidding short of target

The Merc’s Tracy Seipel has the scoop on the six downtown property sales, and it’s not as good as expected. SJRA had the cumulative appraisal of the properties at $26 million, whereas the combined bids submitted (deadline 4 PM Monday) was $19.6 million. The lower sum may be enough to acquire the remaining ballpark site, but it won’t cover the Autumn Parkway project or mitigations, which are just as important to the execution of the project.

Lew Wolff did not have any of the winning bids:

One bidder who won’t be considered: A’s owner Lew Wolff, a prominent developer, who made an offer for the annex and parking garage at the Fairmont hotel, which he already owns. But instead of bidding on each property separately — as required — Wolff made a combined offer for an undisclosed price that the agency won’t consider, agency chief Harry Mavrogenes said.

Was Wolff only in there to get the bidding up? In any case, SJRA reserves the right to pull any of the parcels off the market if it feels the highest bid isn’t high enough, which may be the case for the Fairmont garage. Hopefully they won’t have to dip into existing cash reserves to get everything done.

Among the highest bidders are the biggest builders in the South Bay, specifically Barry Swenson and Sobrato. The good news is that they have proven track records of delivering on big projects in and around downtown San Jose. And it wouldn’t be surprising if they were pulling for the ballpark effort since the ballpark’s success could have an indirect effect on their ability to further develop and sell in the area.

There’s some question as to whether or not SJRA should hold off completely until the market improves, but there’s no telling when that will happen. Besides, does anyone remember how much the land was supposed to cost when the agency started acquiring land? There’s a fair price and then there’s a fair price.