While the A’s have a team of people working on future concepts for a new ballpark…

A day in the life at @Athletics HQ! Designing a new ballpark for Oakland is a full team effort. #RootedInOakland pic.twitter.com/ouUsqMg6Xv

— Chris Giles (@chrisgiles01) July 2, 2018

… legislation to blunt the impact of potential legal challenges continues to progress through the California legislative calendar.

Here are the simple facts you need to know about what’s happening.

• The two items above are only tangentially related for now. As mentioned in the previous post, the Coliseum site is already entitled, in that a new stadium is already approved there once everyone figures out what to do with the old stadium and the rest of the land. Howard Terminal has a ways to go before it’s entitled; that’s why the legislation is being considered – to limit the ability of those seeking to create roadblocks. Planning for the actual ballpark structure and its features is a different discussion and will take months to years regardless of site.
• The legislative calendar is on a pretty tight schedule. You may have heard that AB 734 made it through two committees so far, the Finance and Judicial committees. The bill has been referred to the Appropriations committee next. The idea here is that by having the bill sponsored and through to this point, the heavy lifting for it has already been completed. There shouldn’t be any showstoppers from here, though that doesn’t mean the A’s could start clearing either site once the season ends. If you want to keep track, here are the key dates for the bill:
  • July 6 (last week): Legislature went into a monthlong recess
  • August 6: Legislature goes back into session
  • August 31: Last day for legislature to pass bills
  • September 30: Last day to get governor’s approval for any bill

  There are a few more rules to this, but I’d rather keep focused on the key dates and not burden you with a bunch of legislative mumbo-jumbo. If you need more details, please ask.

White line is the extent of the complex for potential sale

One other thing I wanted to point out. The Coliseum land being considered for possible sale to the A’s is only the original Coliseum parcels which include the stadium and arena, assuming the arena’s own financial responsibilities are settled. The land doesn’t include the Malibu or HomeBase lots near Hegenberger Road, which were long assumed to be part of planning for the aborted Coliseum City project.

Last thing to mention is that in AB 734, the bill specifies LEED Gold certification by the National Green Building Council as part of the package. To me this is exciting and could make the A’s a sort of trailblazer, because most baseball stadia built over the last few decades have been certified Silver, not Gold or Platinum. Getting to Gold or Platinum often requires greater conservation efforts, though I sometimes wonder about the scoring on that. For example, Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta was certified Platinum last year, though it is a heavily air-conditioned domed stadium that employs artificial turf. Outdoor grass baseball parks haven’t been able to reach that standard.