Monthly Archives: April 2018

04.24.18
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Port of Oakland set to vote on Howard Terminal ENA

Does this read like deja vu?

That’s because it is.

The Port of Oakland is getting ready to approve a one-year window for negotiating with the A’s on Howard Terminal. To help pave the way, they will also approve a feasibility study for the site. I know you’re asking, wasn’t a study done a few years ago? And I’m here to tell you, no, it was never done. Not one released in public, at least. The A’s shared their findings with the City and Port. Neither the Port nor City furnished their own study or EIR. Neither did Oakland Waterfront Ballpark, the group that championed Howard Terminal oh so long ago. Here’s the agenda item:

1. CLOSED SESSION (1:00 p.m.)
1.1
Closed Session discussions and materials may not be disclosed to a person not entitled to receive it, unless the Board authorizes disclosure of that confidential information.
CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATOR – (Pursuant to California Government Code Section 54956.8)
Property: One Market Street, Oakland, CA (Howard Terminal) Negotiating Parties: Oakland Athletics and Port of Oakland
Agency Negotiator: Pamela Kershaw, Director of Commercial Real Estate Under Negotiation: Price and Terms of Tenancy
Property: Oakland International Container Terminal (Berths 55-56 and Berths 57-59) and Matson Terminal (Berths 60-63 – Port of Oakland
Negotiating Parties: SSA Terminals (Oakland), LLC; SSA Terminals, LLC, and Port of Oakland
Agency Negotiator: John Driscoll, Director of Maritime Under Negotiation: Price and Terms of Tenancy
File ID: [141-18]

Not much has changed in the intervening years. Obstacles remain for any project at HT. There’s the lack of BART serving the area. It’s still polluted. It’s still on the wrong side of the tracks, as mentioned by former city administrator Dan Lindheim:

“The reason was it was on the wrong side of the tracks,” Lindheim, now an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Policy, said recently. “Major League Baseball feared in the event of a catastrophe. their illustrious fans and players would be stuck. They didn’t want 40,000 people stuck over there.”

And don’t forget the A’s finding that Howard Terminal is appreciably colder than other sites in Oakland. Or the constant pounding noise coming from Schnitzer Steel at night.

Maybe the A’s-led effort will resolve the myriad issues plaguing the site. You have to give the parties credit for giving this a good old college try. However, I’m afraid that thanks to MLB backing the A’s into a corner, the team will have no choice but to kick the can down the road. We’re all familiar with that routine by now.

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P.S. – You noticed how third parties came out of the woodwork to hopefully bid on the Coliseum, but none have done the same with Howard Terminal? I wonder why.

04.18.18
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The A’s fortunes won’t turn on a dime

This sums up my thoughts on the Portland Oregonian’s John Canzano’s clarion call to recruit the A’s to Portland (or convince MLB to expand there):

The Portland Diamond Project group, which made two separate offers on land in the Portland area, is not considered a potential ownership group, according to Forbes’ Maury Brown.

Portland’s biggest problem is that it actively pushed aside AAA baseball to entertain MLS soccer years ago. No matter how much the market may have improved statistically, it’s still guilty of putting baseball on the back burner. Its only baseball team is the short season Hillsboro Hops, a team that pulls slightly more than 3,000 regularly in a stadium built to hold 4,500. PDX now has to go the Phoenix route, hoping that a spec-built stadium will be sufficient for an expansion team or a relocated team. In either case the club will have to wait at least three years for the stadium to be developed.

Brown also argues that any stadium in Portland should have a retractable roof like Seattle’s Safeco Field. After seeing from afar how inclement weather has affected early season games in the Northeast and the Eastern Seaboard, I have to agree. Teams can’t afford to lose revenue dates if they can help it.

Sure, it’s easy to crap on the A’s attendance so far in 2018. Those columnists don’t seem to understand the concept of loss leaders. That’s what last night’s 10-2 win over the ChiSox was. It attracted >20% fans who have never been to the Coliseum in its 50 years as a ballpark. Some of those fans may be the next generation of A’s fans, or those whose interest was recently piqued. The process to build a fanbase is a long, slow one, not triggered by one event or game date. The A’s have to earn the fan base’s trust, which will not happen overnight.

04.13.18
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Tram-a-lam-a

For those who haven’t yet dismissed out-of-hand the idea of an aerial tram linking Downtown Oakland (12tb Street BART) to Jack London Square/Howard Terminal, I’ve put together the following chart comparing the proposed transit option with other existing trams and other non-bus, non-subway modes.

Chew on that over the weekend.

And if you want further related info, check out a study done for the City of Hercules for its own circulator, which could have included its own aerial tram. It’s worth a read.

With that, have a good weekend everyone.

04.11.18
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Kaval pitches gondola to link Howard Terminal, Downtown Oakland

That’s right. Matier and Ross are reporting that, absent a BART link to Jack London Square and Howard Terminal, A’s President Dave Kaval is proposing a cable car or gondola to link the waterfront to Downtown Oakland.

Oakland and BART have experience working with this type of transportation before, having built the $500 million Oakland Airport Connector from the Coliseum to the airport. It was built by Doppelmayr, an Austrian firm with plenty of experience building similar systems for ski lifts and other urban environments.

The need for an alternative may be guided by this revelation:

then BART General Manager Grace Crunican recently slammed the door on the idea of building a new BART station near Howard Terminal, claiming it was technically infeasible — not to mention that the price tag would be in the stratosphere.

Many transit advocates were hoping for a Howard Terminal BART station to be useful for a second transbay BART crossing. It still remains to be seen if that will ever get beyond the planning stages. The 2004 JLS Feasibility study covered BART and streetcar links to JLS, but it didn’t investigate an aerial tram.

A possible JLS gondola would have to soar from 50-60 feet above I-880 as the freeway travels above downtown. That would make for a very scenic, but brief trip to and from the ballpark. The Airport Connector ride costs $6 each way atop your regular BART fare, so I would imagine that a ride for the shorter JLS line might cost $3-4 per person each way.

The question is, who pays for it? Riders could if they were locked into the fare gate system as they are at Coliseum BART. The experience would be different for JLS-downtown, as you’ll invite patrons who might want to park downtown and then take the gondola. An A’s ticket surcharge would help during games, but what about others who go to JLS/HT for other reasons? And who would foot the construction cost? This Cable Car is Over My Head, indeed.

04.06.18
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Personal Update #2

Okay.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you may know that I was discharged from the hospital a week ago. Since then I’ve been holed up in my twin brother Caesar’s house only a few blocks away – the better for making appointments.

While I still suffer some short and long-range effects from my stroke in late January, I’m working on becoming fully mobile and able-bodied. I can stand unassisted and can get in and out of bed, which is real blessing compared to three weeks ago when I wore a binder on my chest and bed straps on my arms (I had trouble processing the whole ordeal). Now my brothers are kicking my ass therapeutically, from advancing my walking to feeding me practically no carbs throughout the day. I joke that I’m walking like a newborn baby. I think that’s just because of lack of practice.

Mentally I feel like I’m working my way up a mountain. My sharpness is coming back quickly, though I’m still finding I have holes in short-term memory and vocabulary. I’ve made a lot of progress with speech therapy and so-called executive functions, but there’s still a ways to go. Unfortunately, my employer-provided health insurance has ended, so I’m having to do outpatient therapies via Arizona’s version of ACA, called MercyCare AHCCCS, or “Access.” Personally, I can say that I’ve been rather fortunate. So far the old health insurance has paid approximately 98% of my claims (percentages subject to change), leaving the YouCaring account (still open!) Caesar set up to pay for out-of=pocket costs. Thank you to all who have contributed, from old friends to baseball media backers to long-time readers I have only met through emails or the comments section.

The best thing that has happened so far is that after suffering a series of seizures with my stroke, I haven’t had a seizure since (or another stroke for that matter). That allowed the doctors to focus on two key problems: hypertension and adult-onset (type 2) diabetes. The blood pressure is under pretty good control thanks to the drugs and especially because of diet so far, and my blood sugar is so good one of the doctors started to wonder if I actually had diabetes (I do, don’t kid yourself). The point is that it’s becoming manageable with a single oral drug and no insulin injections so far. To me that means there’s hope. I was also taken off the seizure medication, which I was informed had weird interactions with the blood pressure meds.

That’s all the gory details I have so far. Have a good weekend everyone, and be good to your friends, family, even those you don’t consider friends or family. This game runs nine innings, and sometimes those innings take more than 2:30 to complete.

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If you get a chance, watch the HBO documentary “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling.” Truly inspirational.

04.06.18
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The Caldecott Derby

Folks, today we’re gonna talk about something I’m sure (only) some of you are interested in: minor league soccer.

In an interview with the SF Business Times’ Ron Leuty, East Bay developer Mark Hall made a full throated pitch to add not one, but up to two USL soccer franchises in the East Bay. One would be in Concord, the other in Oakland at the Coliseum.

The strategy is smart in that it has a built-in hedge. Perhaps Hall, who was granted both franchises, is only able to execute on one. So be it. If Hall can get two sites in the highly competitive Bay Area and get the support needed to fill both sets of stands, bully for him. He’s also bidding for the Coliseum arena, where futsal, the indoor soccer variant played on a court the size of a basketball court, could be a winner.

Hall could prove his teams’ worth now. The problem is all his talk so far is speculative. There is no USL team actively playing in Oakland or Concord, no futsal or lacrosse clubs. Hall doesn’t say if the clubs would start up right away or wait until their venues are built, whenever that is. Beyond that, these teams are decidedly peripheral or minor league. USL is the second tier pro soccer league in the US, and it is already experiencing growing pains given what’s happening in Cincinnati and Phoenix. There are success stories, such as Seattle and Portland. Even so, FC Cincinnati, Phoenix, and Sacramento have their eyes on a higher prize, an MLS expansion franchise, and roadblocks have been put up to stop them. FCC plays in the University of Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium. Phoenix Rising and Sacramento Republic play in pop-up stadiums. All three franchises’ move to MLS (Major League Soccer) are pending the completion of new, permanent venues.

Does Hall endeavor to have a MLS team in the East Bay? Or stick with one or two teams that average 7k fans per game. The community cluster plan that Hall espouses has been done for decades – but not in American soccer. It’s the domain of high school football. That’s America’s community grown, grass roots sport. I admire the soccer crowd for trying to advance a community-based version of their sport, but it shouldn’t aim for 18-20,000-seat stadiums like Avaya Stadium or what Hall wants in Oakland. Manchester United just announced the 2018 pre-season tour, which will include a match and San Jose. At Levi’s. Which, when you think about, is the only stadium whose size and amenities could properly hold the match.

And with this soccer-related interest in the Coliseum site, there is interest from Tesla, which already has the 310 acres of the NUMMI plant in South Fremont. They want to expand, but they can’t make enough Model 3 cars to fend off their furious cash bonfire. What about the two groups who want to launch new pro football leagues, the reborn Vince McMahon-led XFL and the Alliance of American Football? Should Oakland and Alameda County keep options open for the Oakland Invaders? The AAFL will try to launch in 2019 after they pick their first eight franchise cities.