Even though the official groundbreaking has yet to occur, the San Jose Earthquakes announced today that they have sold out their entire allotment of luxury suites – 12 in all. In addition, the club announced that they are now selling club seats to the public. A total of 576 club seats will be made available, all at field level, just like the suites.
Club interior
There always was room for premium facilities to be built, so it makes sense that they’d wait to introduce club seats until other premium options such as suites were sold out. The key thing I noticed when looking at the renderings is the lack of walls. In last year’s big Lew Wolff interview, he mentioned how expensive it is to fully build out a space with air conditioning. The sold-out luxury suites are the only premium option that is fully built out. The club here won’t be behind walls of any kind and doesn’t appear to be air conditioned, which should reduce operating costs a good amount. The amenities don’t look any less plush than at other venues, and patrons will have in-seat service.
Four separate club areas consisting of four three-row sections apiece will be spread throughout. Two will be located near midfield, two towards the ends. Priced by the row, tickets will range from $90 to $125 per seat in season ticket packages, 20% more for single game purchases.
Patio suite exterior and interior
The Quakes are also selling patio suites, which are like the luxury suites except with no walls (or A/C). This option effectively splits the difference between the club seats and the luxury suites.
View from Patio Suite
I have a feeling that Lew and Keith Wolff are using Earthquakes Stadium as a testbed for future offerings at Cisco Field. If they can get the mix of hardcore Quakes fans, general soccer fans, and casual fans right, there are numerous lessons that are applicable to the construction and deployment of similar amenities at Cisco Field. For now, the stated capacity remains 18,000, though as we can see in this case, market conditions can change quickly.
newballpark.org 
Who cares about the Quakes, when are you going to give us news about the A’s???? I’m tired of always looking at your blog and there is nothing to report, I thought you were called Newballpark.org? Get with it and try to get some news for us, isn’t that what you do?
@A’s Man – I follow the news cycle. If there is news I’ll pass it on. If not, I’m not going to start making things up.
i only looked at the pictures and havent read the captions yet but when is this park set to break ground?
ah nevermind. first sentence says that we still dont know. i wish they would have asked wolff about that during his interview on 95.7 the game last week
A’s Man, how do you expect him to get news when there isn’t any? Oakland’s leaders are still dilly dallying, Selig is still dragging his feet, Wolff is still waiting, the A’s still suck on field, the Giants are still towing their hardline, and nothing has changed. What do you suppose he should report on? The fact we’re now 1185 days since the Blue Ribbon Panel started their work?
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As for the Quakes stadium, this is an interesting development, and a welcome one. It’s nice to see amenities being added every time they revisit what’s going into the stadium compared to the barebones design they started with. However I wish they’d hurry up and decide on the elements and get the building permit approved so they can start work. At this point the only thing holding up the Quakes stadium is the Quakes ownership. And like A’s fans, Quakes fans have waited far too long for their new stadium (with the added pain of losing their team to Houston and then having to fight for 2 years to get it back) as well as the actual physical pain of having to squeeze into Buck Shaw Stadium week after week. They really should start construction, even if just a perfunctory groundbreaking ceremony, by the MLS All Star Break to give Quakes fans some hope.
It’ll be interesting to see how these open club areas handle the humidity during the wet season.
@Dan- really- it’s a year to build the stadium- why not take the rest of this season to really define the key elements of the new stadium- and you say ” give the Quakes fans something to hope for”- wtf- we are in 2nd- 2 pts out of first- a new stadium is on it’s way- luxury suites have sold out- and quake fans need something to hope for- some people love bitching for the sake of bitching- can never understand that attitude- oh well
So when is Lew going to start building? I drive past that place almost every day and it’s still an empty lot next to Lowe’s and In and Out Burger. No activity at all. Construction season is right now
GoA’s, if it had been “only a year” to build the stadium you’d be right. It however has been 5, not one.
@Dan- and how long did it take ATT to get built- how about the ‘9ers, look at the A’s situation- W’s in SF- 5years- privately financed stadiums don’t fall from the sky- have some appreciation for those willing to take the risk and invest their own funds- btw- dynamo stadium in Houston took alot longer than 5 years
OT: didn’t see this mentioned but Santa Cruz Warriors released their logo and announced naming rights for their arena “Kaiser Permanente Arena”
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http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_20842270/warriors-unveil-logo-and-arena-sponsor-santa-cruz?refresh
@Mike – Oh the irony on so many levels.
Yea especially after it was mentioned earlier how they were missing from the Knauss meeting. Guess south bay wasn’t evil kryptonite for them. Funny how there isn’t even a Kaiser in Santa Cruz County.
None of those situations had the unique hurdle of TR. The periods of time mentioned apply to the “expected process”. The TR stumbling block is tacking on a lot of time to that expected process. If and when TR is overcome, the good news is some of the expected process appears done. I’d expect (or hope) that if the public vote in SJ is successful (I strongly suspect it will be), breaking ground on Cisco field will occur (hopefully much) sooner than the other situations — though the inevitable legal filings from the ‘no stadium, no way, no tactic to stop it is off limits’ crowd is an unknown (though history suggests these type maneuvers are usually quashed fairly quickly).
GoA’s, it’s been 5 years for the owners. It’s been 15 for the fanbase along with a bump in the road where the team was stolen from the fans for 2 years. Quakes fans have waited just as long as Niners and Giants fans did for their stadiums. They have every right to be testy at this point, especially with the team so tantalizingly close and yet doing the opposite that most teams do. Take the Niners, their stadium wasn’t even completely funded yet but they held a ground breaking and started construction. The Quakes have shown anything but expediency in getting a stadium they need built more than the Niners need a replacement for Candlestick.
Ouch. Kaiser really dug the knife in deep there. Can’t say I like the name for the team though, I’m not a fan of minor league teams having the same name as their major league counterpart. Too unimaginative. Then again I guess they didn’t have a lot of lead time with this either.
Dan, it’s about building the brand regionally.
could only imagine how fast those luxury boxes especially in that rf structure at a cisco field in sj would be bought up the moment they would be up for sale and how they’d be consistently sold out imo no matter if the a’s were playing well or not on the field. how many of those 75 ceos that signed that svlg and other private citizens would buy up a box or two in a brand new sj baseball park. south bay companies alone i think would buy up the majority of those boxes to pass among their workers and have business meetings while watching an a’s game.
Oh I get that for sure, especially putting the team in the south of the south bay. The Warriors are quite obviously marking their territory for any would be groups who think San Jose should be the next home of an NBA team (hell the Santa Cruz Warriors were nearly the San Jose Warriors according to some reports until they couldn’t come to terms on a rental of the SJ Civic Auditorium). But just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it’s a good name. Or that it really made sense at all to take a popular local team like the Dakota Wizards (who despite being in the D-League’s smallest market had the 8th highest attendance in the league with 2,714 and were reportedly finally in the black) and move them into the backyard of their parent team where they’ll go from playing in an arena to a glorified tent.
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Don’t get me wrong, business-wise it made sense both from a brand spreading perspective, a territory marking perspective, and a travel perspective for players sent down to the D-League. But I doubt any of that is comfort to the folks in Bismark who’ve lost their 4th sports team in recent years (having previously watched their minor league baseball team and then two arena football teams leave).
Yes, why would EB companies want to sponsor LW and the A’s when they can sponsor a team that is moving to SF and built their D-League in SC….makes perfect sense! :X
As a Quakes fan, it worries me that LW makes every decision based upon what it will cost. It is as if he can’t afford to build the place. Will he value engineer this thing so much that it becomes a second tier MLS facility?
@ martin – if he wanted to minimize his risk (read: money), he would of taken the join venture with SJSU to make a new stadium, but he didn’t. He pursued his own course and paid quite a sum for the former abandoned FMC site. Food for thought.
@anon, I hope you are right. I wish that he at least makes it modular enough to upgrade as time moves forward.
@martin – It’s quite modular and the right way to go if you’re unclear at the outset as to the upper limits of attendance and revenue streams. That isn’t what Quakes fans want to hear, but it’s the responsible way to go especially because of the lack of public funding.
@ martin – i hope that the Quakes have that type of problem for him to face in the future! 🙂
Martin, not only did he take the more expensive route by going it alone, he also has done nothing but ADD features to the Quakes stadium over the last two years. Remember originally the stadium they designed was bare bones. It had only 15,000 seats, a roofette instead of a roof, no luxury suites, no club seats, no patio areas, no terraces and no bar. All of those things have been added over the intervening years as well as capacity being raised up to 18,000. At this point they’re designing a stadium that will be on par with some of the best stadiums in the league. Not sure what more you want from Wolff on the stadium front other than what I want, for construction to start at long last.
GoA’s, Pac Bell Park was approved by voters at the end of 1996, construction started near the end of 1997 and it opened in March 2000. So that is less than 4 years from approval to opening. That is less time than has passed since the Quakes stadium was approved.
@dan. wolff is most likely going to do the same thing with cisco field. in his last interview he said that he has a lot of awesome things in store for that stadium that havent been announced yet and those are in addition to the already awesome stadium renderings. also, more renderings have come out each year than the original few so i think hes just going to keep adding to it and making it more awesome just like the quakes stadium.
@Ted – Efforts by Giants ownership and the City of SF to put the Pac Bell Park deal together started in 1993. They also had the benefit of the dot-com boom as opposed to an historic recession.
Thx ML- no need for me to respond to ted’s inane comment