Author Archives: Marine Layer

12.24.12
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Mount Davis specifications

With all this talk of lease extensions, I decided to go back into the original 1995 lease the A’s had at the Coliseum (for my own edification). The document, which was signed by Wally Haas as he was selling the team, goes over two specific scenarios: what happens for the A’s if the Raiders return, and what happens for the A’s if the Raiders don’t return. That latter part will be covered soon. For now, take a look at the language that eventually resulted in what we now know as Mount Davis, the 10,000-seat, 90-skybox grandstand in the outfield. The language is copied verbatim, typos and all.

B. CENTER FIELD GRANDSTAND STRUCTURE PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATION

Design Intent:

Constructed in the 1960s, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum has its origins in the symmetrical, reinforced concrete modernist style engineering structure that was prevalent throughout this period. Of these parks, Oakland is singularly the best baseball park. This is a great place to see a game with the fan close to the action and comfortable in spite of the facility’s size. Seating surrounds the field, is intimate and humanly scaled. Circulation reinforces one’s location and orientation to the field at all areas nd levels.

The proposed centerfield grandstand structure must reinforce this environment. It cannot be a monolith looming over the outfield fence. Other than the playing field, it will be the natural focus of the stadium. Therefore, the structure’s size, shape and mass must provide a positive contribution to the stadium’s overall design.

Mass:

Mitigation of the structure’s mass, vacant stadium seating and vacant luxury boxes must be part of the overall design concept. The upper level seating shall be covered in the baseball configuration, this level and potentially elements of the vertical elevation shall incorporate team graphics, back-lighted advertizing signage and regional artwork to break up and reduce the structure’s scale. These elements shall become an integral part of the structure’s overall appearance. However, mitigation cannot rely on coverings and signage alone.

The structure shall relate to the existing stadium’s size and proportion, not exceeding it in overall height. This structure shall incorporate league scale design elements: a diverse, articulated, angular building profile with strong shadow lines, which diminish the overall mass of the structure. It shall present an appropriate character of scale, proportion, facade detail and material to compliment the park. The structure shall also incorporate small scale design elements to enhance the seating, circulation and the overall pedestrian environment through texture, materials, color and detail.

Scoreboard and video boards shall be placed on the structure for optimal baseball viewing. These will include:

• A scoreboard/message board fully populated scoreboard, zone mapped and broke out as required for both video and text display.
• A separate video board.
• A manually operated out-of-town scoreboard.

BART Entry:

This must be an appropriate statement of entry, creating a welcome statement with a sense of place, even though it is not the main entry to the stadium. The BART bridge shall terminate at a formal gate and lead to a roomy concourse(s). The plus 33 concourse should connect flush with the rest of the stadium at that level or by ramp. The plus 6 level must be continuous around the entire stadium. The BART entry shall present a pedestrian scaled environment low height lighting, attractive street furniture with integrated signage, attractive fencing to screen from view the slew/industrial beyond and mitigation of the overhanging upper deck structure. These pedestrian areas shall be part of a cohesive circulation system that leads the visitor to all services, facilities and concessions stands.

Program Elements:

Program elements shall be considered which influence the massing and appearance of the building. The outfield fence shall maintain its general configuration, 8 feet high padded, 300 down the lines, 375 at the power alleys and 400 at deep centerfield. An asymmetrical angular fence is encouraged. The 5000 “bleacher” seats shall be as close to the field as possible. These seats must have unobstructed sight lines of the field consistent with the existing seating areas. This seating shall be continuous behind the fence, interrupted only by the batter’s eye. The batter’s eye shall match the existing 40 feet high x 96 feet wide; height to be confirmed. Best efforts will be made so that the first row of seating shall be no more than four feet above the top of the fence, possibly separated from the fence with landscaping.

Two years after the structure was completed, Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann sued the Coliseum JPA over lost revenue related to the Mt. Davis addition and the compromising of the Coliseum as a baseball venue. The parties eventually settled, resulting in the sweetheart lease the A’s currently have.

12.22.12
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“Temporary”

So what does “temporary” mean anyway?

For Lew Wolff, it means five years after 2013 spent at the Coliseum, followed by what he hopes is a smooth move to San Jose.

For Mark Davis, it means five more years at the Coliseum while a new Coliseum and village are built next door.

For the Coliseum Authority (JPA), it means… well, they haven’t exactly articulated what that means, have they? It may mean one new stadium, or two. It means having the Raiders and A’s pay more to stay temporarily at the Coliseum in order to reduce the subsidy Oakland and Alameda County currently pay to keep the place running. How much more? We don’t really know. It’s a delicate balancing act. In the previous post I alluded to Davis and Wolff not wanting significantly higher rents at the stadium, yet that’s exactly what will be required if the JPA is to reach its goal of offsetting costs better.

The Merc’s John Woolfork and the Chronicle’s John Shea have dug into the lease matter more, getting reaction from local pols.

Woolfork found that the lease extension talk started in July 2011, when A’s President Michael Crowley first requested a lease extension. With the negotiations going very slowly, the surprise is the MLB tried to help act as an intermediary in the discussions but was rejected by the A’s.

Shea’s big find was that Wolff, while preferring to stay in Oakland over a move to a “temporary home venue”, admitted that “there are options” for such a transitional home.

Those two new pieces of information are huge. Whether or not you believe Wolff is bluffing with the temporary venue idea, he just played that card. He’s thinking about it. And you can bet that he has at least one location in mind. It’s out of the standard team owner playbook. Many will feel that the A’s are locked into the East Bay thanks to territorial rights, and that more than anything should dictate how the A’s and MLB act. Most of the time, these positions are merely negotiating ploys to extract concessions. Playing the temporary venue card is a sure sign of desperation, which Wolff has displayed for some time. If it forces MLB to act on his request or the JPA to commit to a Raiders stadium that would remake the Coliseum complex (per the letter), it will have been well worth it. If it results in a “mutually beneficial” five year lease, it buys everyone time to figure out the next step.

There is a value proposition in play. In the short term (the length of the extension), the A’s will be averse to a lease that hurts their revenue position. For instance, the Warriors’ lease at Oracle Arena had the team pay $7.5 million for the 2011-12 season. That figure includes revenue sharing of club seat and suite sales, which helped finance the arena. The A’s rent for 2012 is $1 million, and they get to keep parking and some ad/concession revenues. If the A’s were forced to pay something closer to what the Warriors pay while giving up revenue, that’s up to a $10 million hit to team revenue, or -6% or so annually. Suddenly the lease extension isn’t just a matter of convenience, it’s a real question of cost-benefit. There is a point at which it costs too much to stay at the Coliseum, especially if there are no agreements on improvements to the old stadium such as scoreboards or even plumbing (those resources would be used on new stadia). I don’t think the A’s should get the sweetheart deal they’ve been on since 1995, but this seems like too much considering the age and state of the Coliseum.

That’s how the specter of a temporary home comes closer to being real. If the A’s are faced with having to forego $10 million in revenue each year for five years, would it make sense to invest that money in a different option? A temporary option?

One more to consider: If you attended a Warriors home game this year, you probably noticed the lovely, brand new high-definition, center-hung scoreboard. It’s part of an $8 million improvement plan at Oracle Arena that was implemented to upgrade technology. Half of the project was paid for by the W’s, and the rest was split between the JPA and AEG, the new arena operator. The bidding process for a new operator for both the Coliseum and Arena included a requirement that the winning bidder pay for improvements at Oracle Arena. The vendor for the arena’s technology package? Cisco. For whatever reason, there was no request to make any additional improvements to the Coliseum. New anything at the Coliseum could help convince either of the tenants to stay.

12.21.12
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A’s ask for 5-year Coliseum lease extension (Updated to include Wolff’s letter)

At the end of the 2012 regular season, the Chronicle’s Matier and Ross wrote that the Coliseum Authority sent A’s owner Lew Wolff terms of a five year lease extension at the Coliseum. The purported catch was a $50 million exit fee should the A’s leave early for San Jose. Now the LA Times’ Bill Shaikin reports that Wolff has sent a letter to the Coliseum Authority (JPA) asking for – that’s right – a five year extension.

In a letter to the body that governs the Coliseum, A’s owner Lew Wolff agreed to keep the team in Oakland for at least five years “regardless of the outcome of our efforts to obtain a new facility in the City of San Jose.”

In the world of stadium negotiations, these are chess moves. It’s important to try to look multiple steps ahead. There are a lot of ways this could play out, though there is a complicating factor which I’ll get to in a bit.

First, as onerous as a $50 million early termination fee sounds, if Wolff is pushing back the opening date of Cisco Field to 2018 it’s not that big a deal, since Wolff won’t have any motivation to get it done early. On the surface, the JPA may be insistent on including the clause. Wolff may be just as determined to get it removed, simply because of the flexibility it provides. Why be encumbered by $50 million when you don’t have to be, and when historically that hasn’t been the case?

If there’s a threat, it comes in the form of something else Wolff alludes to.

“The A’s organization certainly prefers to remain in Oakland for the next five years rather than being forced into looking elsewhere for a temporary home venue. If possible, we should retain the 130 full-time jobs and the almost 800 union jobs that encompass a full baseball season, the fun of the A’s, and Major League Baseball in Oakland for five more years.

“I believe the A’s have a great deal to contribute to the area for the next five years, and even thereafter.”

“Being forced into looking elsewhere for a temporary home venue” is the threat. In August I wrote about the possibility of the A’s not being able to come to terms after 2013. It forces Commissioner Bud Selig’s hand. From the looks of things, MLB so far hasn’t been involved in lease discussions. This may force Selig to get involved directly, from negotiating the extension to figuring out a long term solution, which has been going on since Wolff joined the A’s in 2003.

Even if the parties (including MLB) only focus on the short-term, there is one other factor that comes into play: the Raiders. The Raiders have had more productive talks with the JPA regarding a lease extension, and something was supposed to be announced this fall, yet nothing has. The A’s currently pay higher rent than the Raiders, but the Raiders are obligated to share a small amount of in-stadium revenue annually, making their lease payment technically higher than their Coliseum-mates. Both the A’s and Raiders are keenly aware of each others’ desire to make whatever lease at the Coliseum as low as possible. Yet the JPA wants to rework the terms to help pay off more of the debt service and operating costs, which Bloomberg mentioned yesterday amount to a $17 million annual subsidy.

If the A’s are being asked to pay a $50 million exit fee, are the Raiders being asked to do the same? Are the terms on the table for both teams comparable, or do they favor one team over another? Neither owner wants to feel they’re being ripped off, and neither wants to feel locked in if it isn’t necessary. Strangely, the Raiders have more leverage than the A’s, since they could bolt for Santa Clara or even LA if things don’t work out. The A’s don’t have that luxury.

Just as the City of Oakland and Alameda County have to approve lease terms for Coliseum tenants, MLB has to at least informally green light any lease terms for the A’s. Selig will frown upon anything that looks like it’s trapping or penalizing the A’s, since a bad lease could negatively affect the A’s franchise value.

Maybe an A’s lease extension that’s agreeable for both them and the JPA will materialize quickly. Maybe not. If I’m reading the tea leaves on Wolff’s statement, though, he’s forcing the situation. And he’s doing it by not formally doing much at all.

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Update 2:45 PM – BANG got Wolff’s letter and posted it. I’ve copied the whole thing for your convenience:

December 21, 2012

To all concerned and interested:

I believe our organization has been and continues to be a positive member of the City of Oakland and Alameda County community.

Our policy regarding the JPA is to agree on the most mutually beneficial lease relationship to remain in the O.co Coliseum. To that end, we seek a lease extension that will allow us to remain here for the next five seasons. Our president, Mike Crowley, who has administrated our lease for the past 16 years, has full and complete authority to enter into a lease agreement that we hope will be beneficial to our fans, the City and County, and our organization.

Yes, we need a new baseball venue, and sadly, we have not found any path to one in the City of Oakland or in the City of Fremont. None of the three City of Oakland administrations that we have operated under has ever presented a realistic approach for a new ballpark to us. The lack of viable options here is not the fault of any public administration or private party, but rather is due to broader circumstances that impact the elements needed for a Major League Baseball venue.

Regardless of the outcome of our efforts to obtain a new facility in the City of San Jose, we would remain at our current venue for a minimum of five years. If an opportunity arises for the JPA to implement a new or renovated stadium for the Raiders or any other tenant, our lease would have a cancellation clause in favor of the JPA.

I stress that the A’s organization certainly prefers to remain in Oakland for the next five years rather than being forced into looking elsewhere for a temporary home venue. If possible, we should retain the 130 full-time jobs and the almost 800 union jobs that encompass a full baseball season, the fun of the A’s, and Major League Baseball in Oakland for five more years.

I believe the A’s have a great deal to contribute to the area for the next five years, and even thereafter. I further believe, and hope that having the benefit of a five year income stream and the jobs our organization brings in will be viewed as a benefit to the City and County. Simply, Mike Crowley needs an authorized party with whom he can negotiate and complete a new five year lease between the JPA and the A’s.

Thank you for any time and consideration you can afford this request.

Sincerely,

Lewis N. Wolff

LNW: sk

I have to reiterate that the JPA had sent the A’s lease terms before the end of the regular season, which Wolff obviously has not found acceptable, otherwise we’d have an announcement about a lease deal. The ball is now in Oakland/Alameda County’s court.

12.21.12
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Bills reach deal for 10-year lease extension and $130 million renovation

The Buffalo Bills announced that they have reached an agreement with Erie County and the State of New York to make $130 million of improvements to almost 40-year-old Ralph Wilson Stadium. The deal also includes a 10-year extension to the current lease for the Bills, which was originally scheduled to end next summer.

Oakland/Alameda County and the Raiders aren’t talking about renovating the Coliseum, they’re talking about a new Coliseum. If they were considering renovation, they probably wouldn’t be happy with the amount of public money that’s involved. Here’s how the whole deal breaks down.

  • $35 million from the Bills
  • $41 million from Erie County
  • $54 million from the State of New York

Improvements include a new scoreboard, changes to concession areas and gates and technology. $130 million doesn’t go as far as it used to.

A report in the Buffalo News digs deeper into the deal, and finds that the Bills can leave after year 7 of the lease by paying $28.3 million to buy out the remaining years. The report by Tim Graham also found an interesting loophole:

If a new owner bought the Bills and wanted to move them, then the county and state would have two remedies, as allowed by the lease agreement. The first is to file an injunction to prevent a move. If a judge declines to order the Bills to stay, then the Bills would have to pay $400 million in liquidated damages with the exception of a window after the seventh year of the deal.

An unlikely chain of events would create this scenario. The key is the health of Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who at 94 is the oldest owner in the NFL and has had trouble attending games over the past couple of years. If the Bills were sold, it seems like the new owner would wait until the “window” or after the lease expires to make the move.

It’s unclear if the Bills will apply for G-4 funding from the NFL. No mention was made of the NFL’s stadium loan program in today’s announcement. It seems possible that the Bills chose to go the cheaper route to avoid having to pay back the loan (no matter how small) when the team is sold, which is the current rule.

Bills CEO Russ Brandon was careful to characterize the improvements as short-term, with an eye towards a new permanent home sometime towards the end of the extension.

“The investment, while significant, is modest in contrast to building a new stadium or engaging in a major retrofit, far less than what the interest alone would be on a new stadium over the term. We look forward to the opportunity to execute this plan and to join Governor (Andrew) Cuomo and County Executive (Mark) Poloncarz as we work toward a shared vision for the future of the Buffalo Bills beyond the term of this deal.”

This eliminates the Bills as a Los Angeles relocation candidate, which is no surprise as they weren’t high on the list anyway. While Bills fans and local pols should be pleased by the deal, let’s not make more of it than what it really is: kicking the can down the road.

12.21.12
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Santa Cruz Warriors Arena Ready To Go

The D-League Santa Cruz Warriors held their first practice at Kaiser Permanente Arena in downtown Santa Cruz on Thursday. Their inaugural home game at the arena is sold out. They have a mascot – a sea turtle with a vaguely familiar ninja look. Blake Griffin’s less-talented brother, Taylor, is a starter at forward. And the Warriors lead their division despite not having played a home game yet. All of that has created a great sense of anticipation as the first game is played at KPA on Sunday.

The “tent arena” will hold just under 2,500 fans, smaller than any of the NCAA Division-I arenas in the Bay Area. Individual tickets are priced from $15 to $35, with more expensive courtside seats apparently already sold out for most games, if not the entire season.

While the debate over the fiscal soundness of the arena deal will continue in politically hyperactive Santa Cruz, the other big issues are how long the novelty of having a pro sports team in Santa Cruz will last, and what happens when that novelty fades. For now, there’s some real excitement about the Surf-Dubs. For that, congratulations to the team and Warriors ownership. They got it done quick and had real partners in the City of Santa Cruz and the Seaside Company. Without that partnership, there’s no way the arena gets built in 100 days. I’ll be out there in the New Year to catch a game or two.

12.20.12
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FanFest 2013 on January 27

Today the A’s announced that FanFest will be held on Sunday, January 27, 2013, from 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM. It appears that, like the 2012 event, the FanFest will be held mainly in Oracle Arena, with the A’s clubhouse in O.co Coliseum open for tours. It was a good setup, though lines tended to be long for autographs.

Tickets will be available to the public on January 11 for $10. Those who have placed a deposit on season tickets can buy tickets a week earlier, on January 4, for $5. Children 6 and under will be admitted for free.

The FanFest page warns that the event may sell out, which seems unlikely but with around 10,000 showing up for a team that at the time was pegged to lose 90+ games, interest should be greater coming off a blockbuster season. Oracle Arena’s capacity is 20,000.

I’m happy to pay the $5, but if there’s a blogger interview session like last January, I’m doing that (hint-hint, Adam Loberstein). New shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima is expected to attend. It would also be great if Yoenis Cespedes was available for the blogger session too. Remember that Cespedes was signed in February after FanFest, as he was working on establishing residency. Cespedes will be at FanFest, along with half of the bullpen including Grant Balfour, Ryan Cook, Pat Neshek, and starter Tommy Milone.

Now, if you’re wondering about the Coliseum stadium, you should know that an AMA Supercross event is scheduled for the stadium on January 26. That’s practically an annual event on the tour, which allows the Coliseum’s grounds crew to plant new grass for the baseball season during the downtime between the end of the NFL season and MLB Opening Day. The arena is holding a concert by the British band MUSE on January 28, the day after FanFest.

If you didn’t have a chance to go to the last FanFest, you really should go to this next one. The level of optimism in the building should be off the charts high. The event is also an hour longer this time around.

12.19.12
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News for 12/19/12

Update 9:00 PM – In case you missed it, the good folks at Next Media Animation in Taiwan posted their pithy take on the A’s signing of Japanese shortstop Hiroyushi Nakajima.

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News is fairly light, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.

  • After the summer defeat of multiple bills attempting to revive redevelopment in some form, another has surfaced in SB 33, introduced by State Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis). The bill’s purpose is to create infrastructure financing districts, in which projects could get infrastructure such as roads, sewers, and other public facilities built. There is no stipulation about building stadia. Regardless, creation of an IFD could be an important piece of the puzzle as some stadium projects require utilities to be moved or other unsexy work.
  • The Dodgers are working with Fox Sports and Time Warner Cable on their ultra-rich upcoming TV deal. The sticking point is the structure of the deal, which has to work within the confines of a federal bankruptcy court’s decision to cap the Dodgers’ TV money subject to revenue sharing at $84 million. To work within the rules, the network may “force” the team to acquire an equity stake in the network, which would allow the network to pay an annual TV rights fee and a dividend. This is a similar arrangement to what the Giants and Yankees currently have with their respective networks. The Angels and Lakers are each paid a flat fee annually, which to date has been the normal arrangement. [LA Times/Bill Shaikin]
  • The cost of the mostly unseen renovations at Dodger Stadium will be $100 million. Key to this is expansion of clubhouse facilities, including the visiting clubhouse. [LA Times/Steve Dilbeck]
  • Robert Bobb may return to Oakland again, this time as the compliance director for the city’s negotiated settlement to prevent Oakland Police Department from falling into receivership. Bobb could potentially oversee all of OPD and report to federal judge Thelton Henderson on reforms being implemented throughout the department. Bobb was last hired by Oakland to fix its budget a few years ago. The position is meant to be temporary. [SF Chronicle/Matier & Ross]
  • Somehow the Oakland City Council had an hours-long discussion over whether to approve a dog park at Astro Park, and adjourned without making a decision. Think about it. A dog park created gridlock and indecision. [Oakland Tribune/Matthew Artz]
  • I don’t normally keep track of international soccer economics, but this was an eye-opener: Premier League champions Manchester City incurred a $158 million loss during the 2011-12 season. $113 million of that was transfer fees to buy players from other teams. That loss was actually half of the $307 million loss in 2012-13. Remarkably, the club is debt free because the owner, oil tycoon Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has funded all expenditures out of pocket since he bought the team in 2008.
  • CSN Bay Area/California’s Brodie Brazil took a tour of the under construction 49ers stadium, which is a third complete.
  • Unable to come to an agreement in the Nats-O’s struggle over MASN, MLB may be bringing in buyers for the TV rights for the two clubs. Remember that the whole point of creating MASN was to placate Peter Angelos when the Expos were moved to DC. Commissioner Selig probably has this mess in mind while considering what to do with the Giants and A’s. [Washington Post/James Wagner]
  • The Rays ballpark plan at Carillon is for all intents and purposes, dead. At least that’s what the developer who pitched the plan says. There currently is no plan in the works for a new ballpark within St. Petersburg, where the Rays are locked into a lease at Tropicana Field. [Tampa Bay Times/Stephen Nohlgren]
  • The Sacramento Kings have to commit to Virginia Beach by January if a deal to move there is to commence. [KTXL-40/Dennis Shanahan]
  • The Edmonton Oilers have a deadline of six weeks from now to reach a deal on a new arena to replace aging Rexall Centre. Like Virginia Beach, Edmonton’s arena plan has a nine-figure funding gap.
  • The Yankees are going with Ticketmaster instead of MLB subsidiary StubHub as its official ticket scalper reseller. They’re also instituting a price floor on resold tickets, because otherwise their normal first-sale gouging looks worse by comparison. [Deadspin/Tom Ley]

More as it comes.

12.18.12
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Gameplan: Outside Northern California

Update 4:52 PM – Twitter follower @edwardjohnCA pointed out Peter King’s recent Monday Morning QB column, in which he rules out any team moving to LA in 2013 due to the short time required to make progress on the temporary and permanent stadium deals.

Los Angeles

That big city to the south has all of its ducks in a row.

The company trying to build Farmers Field, AEG, also has substantial holdings in Downtown LA, so they have a vested interest in making the project work. The biggest obstacles are the NFL (and one or two teams) and the fate of AEG, which could be sold for upwards of $8 billion. It’s expected that AEG will be sold whole instead of piecemeal, the better to maintain the integration and cross-promotion among its various groups.

A 45-day window for NFL teams to apply to move to LA starts on New Year’s Day. The NFL is in no hurry to approve any moves, and the new CBA ensures that no team will lose money thanks to nearly $10 billion in annual revenue and extensive revenue sharing. The league may want to wait for the AEG sale process to shake out before deciding what to do next, which may mean that no team will be granted a move (and could be discouraged from applying) in 2013. Should a team like the Chargers or Raiders decide they want to be a first mover, the opportunity is there.

2013 will mark a full decade since the Super Bowl has been held in Southern California, and 20 years since the game was hosted in LA. Much of the renewed effort in Atlanta, and Miami is to maintain those cities’ slots in the Super Bowl rotation. AEG’s LA bid shows its interest in entering the fray. It’s a major risk/reward proposition, but considering the ungodly amounts of private capital that are showing interest, there are a lot of rich folks who feel it’s worth it.

—–

San Diego

The election of Bob Filner as the next mayor could end up being the death knell of pro football in SD. Filner has shown no interest in opening the city’s wallet for the NFL, even using that stance as part of his election platform. Chargers brass has shown patience so far, but they may be relegated to working with Chula Vista or another suburb. San Diego needs champions in both the public and private sectors to pull off a stadium deal. So far there’s no indicator who those champions are.

—–

Baseball stalking horses

For now, all of the major relocation candidate cities (Portland, San Antonio, Charlotte, Las Vegas) are busy attending to other things.

  • Portland has a mayor uninterested in pulling the necessary strings, and the city allowed its MLS franchise to displace its PCL team, probably not a feather in the city’s cap when dealing with The Lodge.
  • San Antonio is focused on bringing its Texas League (AA) team closer to downtown. Meanwhile, ticket sales for the two exhibition games at the Alamodome are said to be brisk. San Antonio is clearly a market that’s too big for AA, yet is small for MLB.
  • Charlotte broke ground on its AAA ballpark, which will bring the IL Knights back across the border from Fort Mill, SC to uptown Charlotte. In committing to the Knights, the city appears to have accepted its stature as a AAA, not MLB, market.
  • Las Vegas gets a sports facility plan every 4-6 months, so watch this space. Recently, all of the pitches have been focused on everything except baseball. UNLV has a football stadium plan. There was a private multi-stadium plan. Now that Oscar Goodman has retired from his prominent Vegas mayoral post (replaced by his wife, no less), active pursuit of pro franchises has practically dropped to nothing. A 10-year lease extension for the PCL 51’s to stay at Cashman Field was signed in October. Like Charlotte, Vegas too may have accepted its fate for now.

The last decade has taught cities and observers one valuable lesson about MLB: they have to pay (big) to play. Most of the small and mid markets were shown little interest outside of providing competition. The cost to build a venue and the lack of public funding for venues have become the biggest obstacles to bringing in teams. Who could’ve predicted that 20 years ago?

12.17.12
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Gameplan: San Francisco

Walter O’Malley famously moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn because Ebbets Field was too small, and there was little parking immediately around it. The former is easy to explain. The latter, back in the 50’s, was a matter of pulling in the more affluent suburban customer. Typically that customer was white, and followed Robert Moses’s new network of highways and expressways out to Long Island. While Ebbets Field was close to NYC subway lines, it was over a mile from the nearest Long Island Rail Road station. Attracted by free land on which to build a legacy ballpark, O’Malley headed west to Los Angeles with Horace Stoneham going to San Francisco.

The ever continuing trend of ballparks moving from the suburbs to downtown has been aped by arena development. No NBA arena in the last 30 years has been built outside a downtown area or urban core, as it makes sense to take advantage of existing transit and parking infrastructure. True to form, the Warriors’ planned arena is in downtown San Francisco, steps from Muni and within walking distance of both BART and Caltrain. There’s still worry about the amount of traffic the South Beach area will see due to the annually expected 2 million additional visitors. While the W’s will take care of the high-roller types (suite holders, VIPs), all other fans will be largely left to look for parking several minutes away, or more smartly, use transit. That will cause transit use to increase (good) while potentially negatively affecting service (bad).

And while the Giants and NIMBYs exercise a lot of concern over the impact of the arena, the City of San Francisco and the Warriors would do wise to take a page from what the City of San Jose did to get their EIR approved and certified. The solution is simple: Don’t approve any* new parking in the area and expand neighborhood parking policies to include arena events. When the traffic studies come out, they will envision multiple scenarios, including one in which practically no new general parking is built. That makes sense, because there is no land on which to build a large new garage (Seawall Lot 330 is too small). With no place to park, fans will be forced to use parking garages in the Financial District or the garages used throughout SOMA for Giants games. Most arenas would require 7,000 spaces to fulfill requirements. In the SF arena’s case, given the existing transit splits, that requirement could be easily cut in half. 3,500 spaces can be covered by existing garages within a half-mile or so.

This is a proven model in San Jose. which built a 1,600-space lot next to HP Pavilion, but depends on thousands of spaces elsewhere in Downtown which as much as 2/3 mile away. Piggybacking on this idea, the City approved the latest supplemental EIR for the Diridon ballpark by stipulating that there would be minimal parking around it. Existing neighborhood parking policy enforcement would continue, and in some cases, would have to be more strictly enforced. The onus would be on SF to ensure that enforcement is rigid. That’s been an issue in the past at HP Pavilion.

A two year gap exists between the planned openings of the Warriors arena (2017) and the Central Subway (2019). It’s expected that the Central Subway will take some of the commuters from north of Market Street and parts north off the congested Embarcadero line, which takes a roundabout 10-minute path to Caltrain. The T-Third line on the Central Subway is too far away from the arena site to shuttle Warriors and concert fans, but the reduction in commuters on the Embarcadero should free things up for those fans. And remember – the arena crowd is about 40% the size of a sold-out AT&T Park. The area can handle it.

The advice to SF, then, is: Don’t bend over backwards for anyone on this. Be patient, let the process move forward, take the necessary planning and mitigation steps, broker with the numerous governmental groups, and get it done. This isn’t your first rodeo.

12.17.12
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Save Oakland Sports meeting postponed again

An update at the Save Oakland Sports Facebook page shows that tonight’s scheduled meeting and presentation have been postponed. Today’s meeting was supposed to be a rescheduling of a November meeting. It is not known when the meeting will be rescheduled.

postponed

Oakland Police (OPD) has its hands full, with elevated security expected at schools in the wake of the Newtown massacre and last week’s settlement approval by a federal judge. The deal prevents OPD from falling into receivership, at least into next summer.

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Note: The last two installments of the Gameplan series will be posted later today. After what happened at Newtown, I figured it could wait. Here’s a list of places to donate in support of victims, their families, and the Newtown community: