Author Archives: Marine Layer

07.09.12
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Mayor Johnson press conference (updated with reactions)

Notes coming shortly.

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The mayor’s message here is if Oakland or San Jose don’t work out, Sacramento would make a great Plan C.

Additional notes:

  • This is the start of a 10-12 week exploratory process. No public dollars will be spent on any studies. It is assumed that Think Big Sacramento would pick up the tab. The process could end sooner than the 10-12 weeks if MLB says it’s not interested. This exploratory study would not include an EIR.
  • There may be discussions about bringing in other sports (NHL, MLS) but baseball’s considered the clearest path at this point due to the A’s situation.
  • West Sacramento and Raley Field are being considered, though the financial and political calculation there is unknown. The $255 million “pledged” for the Kings arena was brought up but not addressed directly. Per Think Big’s mission, this is very much a regional effort.
  • The last year negotiating with the NBA and the Kings has left the public and the media very jaded and skeptical. There were one or two questions about whether the public can go through this process again.
  • Kevin McClatchy, who is on board as an informal advisor, is not interested in owning the A’s. He’s there as a resident with unique insight as a former owner.
  • No formal requests or meetings have been requested with MLB or A’s ownership. There has been a long history of trying to bring a team to town, mostly dating back to Gregg Lukenbill’s efforts in the late 80’s.
  • Mayor Johnson was very respectful of what Oakland and San Jose are doing currently and clearly didn’t want to denounce or belittle their efforts.
  • There was a question about whether or not this move was gamesmanship targeted at he Kings and the NBA. Johnson denied that.

More as it comes.

Now word has come in from Lew Wolff via the Chronicle’s Susan Slusser: The A’s aren’t leaving the two-team Bay Area market.

Added 8:46 PM – West Sacramento Mayor Mike McGowan isn’t pleased with how Johnson and Think Big have handled this new exercise. McGowan was only notified Sunday night of the press conference. He also believes that Sacramento can’t support a MLB franchise.

07.09.12
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Sacramento switches focus from Kings to A’s

With hope fading to keep the Kings in town in spite of an uncooperative Maloof family, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and civic booster group Think Big Sacramento will officially start the process of luring MLB, and particularly the A’s, to the Capitol. The Bee has a report with quotes from the mayor and sports industry experts from Andy Dolich to former Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy, who is acting as an informal advisor to the effort. KFBK’s Rob McAllister tweeted that an announcement will be made tomorrow at 11 AM.

View from the northeast has rail platforms to the right and original train station on the other side of the arena.

The now-dead arena plan always had a stadium or other commercial component as a backup just in case the arena was derailed. The key component remains the same: $250 million in public funds from the sale of future parking revenues. $200k in EIR and other studies were approved by the City Council in April with this in mind. Johnson wants an anchor for the railyards, the 240-acre brownfield north of the train station and downtown proper. The ballpark will cost $500 million, leaving some question as to where the rest would come from. Even if the Kings leaving Sacramento is entirely ownership’s fault, it simply won’t look good that a city with a lone major sports franchise lost said team. MLB isn’t going to provide the money, leaving the rest of the financing on the shoulders of the team – a dicey proposition for a small market. The River Cats have historically been top attendance performers at Raley Field. The revenue demands for the A’s could be 4-6 times what the River Cats are pulling down at Raley, in keeping with higher attendance and premium seating requirements.

Lew Wolff has expressed zero interest in moving the A’s to Sacramento, having noted that he was friends with late River Cats owner Art Savage. They probably shared notes on the viability of Sacramento in the past, and Wolff, knowing that an invasion by the A’s would force Savage’s team to move in kind, probably considered such an effort out of bounds. McClatchy’s an interesting choice as a sounding board in that he’s sort of the perfect guy to be a consigliere here. Sacramento’s a small market with less corporate support than Pittsburgh, and McClatchy notoriously ran the Pirates on the cheap during his entire tenure, despite a brand new, publicly-financed stadium in PNC Park.

The timing of the announcement, just prior to the All Star Game in Kansas City, is designed to get the attention of MLB owners, all of whom are expected to be assembled for the festivities this week.

View of the Sacramento Railyards from the existing Amtrak platform

There’s a bit of a technical issue with the ballpark concept. The rendering near the top of the post shows the arena snugly fitting between the existing rail terminal and the new passenger platforms, which are under construction. The wedge-shaped lot where the arena/ballpark would sit is only around six acres in size. While that’s fine for an arena, it’s too small and compromised for a ballpark. The only way to make a ballpark work might be to build part of it over the new rail platforms, though that could prove costly. The pro-arena/ballpark group obviously prefers a new ballpark to a refurbishment of Raley Field due to the nature of the public financing aspect: Sacramento isn’t going to foot the bill for something happening in West Sacramento. Besides, as I’ve explained before, Raley Field may have been conceived to be easily expandable, but it wasn’t built that way.

It’ll be interesting to see how far this gets and whether this idea gets any traction. There will be many fans and citizens who are interested. Others may want to stick with the Kings until the end and consider the baseball interest a distraction. Whatever the reception, the effort adds yet another wrinkle to the ongoing saga of the A’s quest for a new ballpark.

07.07.12
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The fence dilemma

Last night, Brandon Hicks hit what looked to be an opposite-field home run to the 362 mark in right, only to be robbed by the 15-foot high wall. Over the years, many a hitter has been robbed by the high walls in both power alleys. It was merely Hicks’s turn. Until most recently, the A’s have been a power-starved bunch, which when combined with the already pitcher-friendly dimensions of the Coliseum, has had many a fan and media member calling for changes to the field. CSN’s Casey Pratt, in particular, has had issues with the high wall. Last night he brought it up after Hicks’s double, and radio play-by-play guy Vince Cotroneo mentioned it in the postgame wrap. It didn’t matter that the issue was rendered moot once Jemile Weeks singled home Hicks, and Chris Carter’s blast in the 11th left no doubt about what a home run looks like.

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Regardless of the outcome, there still remains a sense that the Coliseum’s deck is stacked too much in the direction of pitchers. You won’t find last night’s starter Tommy Milone complaining, that’s for sure. Then again, do you remember any M’s hitters reaching the warning track off Milone?

Pratt has long advocated that the high fence between the 362 and 388 marks in left and right should be taken down to the 8-foot height down the lines and in center. The high wall containing the out-of-town scoreboards could be kept intact, which makes sense since those are the most hitter-friendly parts of the park. I suggest going a step further by getting rid of the contrived “Jagged Edge” outfield fence design altogether, going with a fairly straight fence that lowers the alleys to eight feet and brings in the 367′ dimensions at the stairs in 10-15 feet. The out-of-town scoreboards would stay more-or-less intact.

The field would still play pitcher-friendly to fair, mostly because of the atmospheric conditions. Historically, the Coli hasn’t played as poorly as Petco, Safeco, or even AT&T. It may be Billy Beane’s desire to keep the ballpark geared towards pitching, since that’s been much easier to develop over the last several years. Yet it might make sense to change the dimensions to create a transition to a new ballpark, especially if the new place ends up with much more hitter-driven dimensions like Cisco Field. It’s easy to think that in the A’s current consecutive-games-with-a-HR streak, that power isn’t that hard to come by. Just remember the last two years of A’s squads. Power does come at a premium.

07.04.12
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News for 7/4/12

Stuff to read while you’re getting the BBQ going.

  • Late Tuesday, the 49ers successfully fought to keep $30 million in redevelopment funds out of the County’s hands until at least July 27, when another hearing will be held to determine the fate of the money. While the team was lawyered up, the County’s oversight board had no legal representation for the hearing in Sacramento. The issue is whether or not the $30 million (originally $42 million) at stake is considered an “enforceable obligation” between the 49ers and the City of Santa Clara. If it is ruled an enforceable obligation, the money should be safe to use for the stadium. [San Jose Mercury News/Mike Rosenberg & Steve Harmon]
  • AEG pulled out of a plan to help build and run a new Sacramento arena without the Kings as a tenant, effectively killing the plan outright. The next move is the Maloofs’, as they could apply to move from Sacramento before the end of the 2012-13 season (which is entirely expected). Will Mayor Kevin Johnson concede defeat and push for a different initiative, such as a stadium? Perhaps, but the teams that KJ would be interested in (A’s, Raiders) would have to show their own interest. So far they haven’t. [Sacramento Bee/Ryan Lillis]
  • Oakland’s Uptown was profiled in an All Things Considered segment as a positive example of how redevelopment can revitalize a neighborhood, while the death of redevelopment could halt further progress. [NPR/Richard Gonzales]
  • Another article from the Chronicle takes a stab at figuring out what will happen to Oakland’s three pro sports franchises. As usual, Mayor Jean Quan lacks specifics, instead using grandiose phrases such as “Staples on Steroids” to describe the Coliseum City project. She also seems to be gravitating further towards a retractable dome concept-cum-convention center, which new partner AEG would certainly champion. Careful hitching your horses to the AEG wagon, Madam Mayor. As we saw in Sacramento, AEG will ditch a city posthaste if they see no future there. Plus, all of the secrecy behind Quan’s supposed “secret committee” working on Coliseum City doesn’t help when it comes to taking her seriously, as she recently took a huge hit to her credibility with new data released about her “100 blocks” policing plan. [SFGate/Vittorio Tafur, Matthai Kuruvila]
  • Cities are looking for ways to resurrect redevelopment, and one popular one emerging is the establishment of revitalization zones via state legislation. The zones would have similar tax increment and bonding powers as redevelopment agencies did, plus they would be enshrined by state law. SF Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is pushing for the creation of an infrastructure financing district to serve the America’s Cup development along the waterfront. The problem with this method is that eventually any law passed by the Legislature still has to go to Governor Jerry Brown for approval. Brown has been steadfast in opposing any kind of old-school-style redevelopment for the past year, making it hard to see him signing any legislation that could undermine his redevelopment clawback efforts. [Sacramento Bee/Dan Walters]
  • Added 4:30 PM – Today’s the halfway point of the home schedule. Because the first two home games were played in Japan, the Attendance Watch box on the right has shown multiple representations of attendance, one with the Japan games included and one without. Projected over the rest of the season, the total 81-game attendance (with Japan) would be 1,733,521. The total 79-game attendance (without Japan) would be 1,599,938. ESPN and other statistics aggregators usually include the Japan games in their attendance tables. Based on games sold, the A’s consider today’s game #39. Attendance tends to pick up throughout July and into August, just before the school year begins, then drops off, the variance depending largely on the team’s record. At this juncture, three teams already have surpassed the A’s projected season attendance (both figures): Philadelphia, Texas, and the NY Yankees.

More as it comes.

07.03.12
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Useless site stats

I don’t usually share site statistics with anyone, mostly because I’m not actively monetizing this site so even I don’t look at them much. There is a subset of information that I consider interesting, even impressive, and I figured now is as good a time as any to put it out there.

During the month of May 2012:

  • Sites that most frequently linked here: Facebook (26.6%), Athletics Nation (17.6%), the old site (1.9%)
  • Number of countries that visited here: 78
  • Operating system share: Windows (53.8%), Mac OS X/iOS (33.2%), Linux (7.4%)
  • Browser share: Internet Explorer (24.6%), Safari (22.7%), Firefox (20.3%), Chrome (16.7%)
  • Referring search engines: Google (91.1%), Yahoo (5.2%), Bing (2.2%), Ask (0.3%)
  • The most frequent visitor was from: Boston
  • Most frequent length of stay: 30 seconds or less (70%)
  • Day of heaviest traffic: May 3 (the day of the Knauss/Clorox press conference)

Thanks to those of you who have been reading and spreading the word. I’ll keep doing this as long it takes.

07.03.12
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Walk-up observations

I didn’t get season tickets this year. I waffled about the decision all the way through April. In the end I chose not to get a package this year, forgoing the savings a package can provide. I’ve been fortunate to have a few friends who provided freebies on occasion. Most of the time, I’ve simply walked up to get tickets.

Years ago, before the advent of the internet and the mobile power that comes with smartphones, the A’s had freestanding booths for day-of-game tickets. The booths were located outside all of the main gates. Agents manning the booths were furnished with stacks of preprinted tickets, with different quantities for certain sections or price levels. The booths went away around the time the Wolff/Fisher group took control of the team.

For years, fans choosing to get day-of-game tickets just before the game had no choice but to buy from the permanent booths on the BART plaza and near gates C and D. This year, the booths have been supplemented with electronic kiosks, which, like the booths, charged no fees on any tickets sold (including advance tickets). This has helped alleviate some of the frequently long lines, along with providing multiple places to pick up will-call tickets.

Tonight I noticed something odd about the system. Every Red Sox game is a “premium” game, with slightly higher ticket prices compared to games against most other teams. The A’s charge higher prices knowing that demand is expected to be greater, though I’ve noticed that demand for Red Sox games has gone down precipitously in the last few years (Monday night’s attendance: 17,434). I kept track of what tickets online seller tickets.com had available through the website. By the early afternoon, I noticed that no Value Deck seats were available. There’s nothing special about the demand for Value Deck seats except when a group buys a large block of them (only 1,000 are available per game). I figured that because of the missing Value Deck tickets, demand was reasonably high. Running counter to that assertion was the fact that the team was also selling “Dynamic Deal” tickets, at $22 for Plaza Level and $10 for Plaza Outfield.

The crowd during the bottom of the 2nd.

I got one of the $10 seats, got some food, and sat in my seat at 7 on the dot. The bleachers were about half-full. So were many other sections. I thought that perhaps there might be a late-arriving crowd, but I was wrong. Based on the way the sections were filled, the place looked half full. 17,434 paid attendance seems to confirm that, though there were probably 2-3,000 no-shows as well. I looked up at the Value Deck repeatedly and noticed that those sections were also at best half full. Yet the advance tickets were sold out. So what gives?

I can’t come up with an explanation for what happened, and as a single data point it would be foolish to draw any specific conclusions from it. The A’s don’t have anything to gain from manipulating the availability of any ticket type, simply because the demand is so elastic that the gains would be worth peanuts. The observation has certainly made me want to pay more attention in the future to inventory and availability compared to the in-house optics. Next opportunity is Wednesday’s series-ender against the Sawx.

07.01.12
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Goodell LA memo: League has leverage, not teams or cities

We now have terms for how a NFL franchise could land in Los Angeles, thanks to a Roger Goodell memo revealed by the LA Times’ Sam Farmer. The memo went out to all 32 teams, a handful of whom could be relocation candidates: Rams, Raiders, Chargers,  Jaguars, Bills. Bullet points are fairly straightforward:

  • The NFL and the owners as a collective decide which team(s) relocate. No team is going to unilaterally decide to move. This makes sense because the NFL holds the purse strings for up to $1 billion of the stadium project (based on where it’s located).
  • While the league acknowledged the AEG’s Farmers Field and Ed Roski’s City of Industry concepts as potential stadium sites, Goodell left open the possibility of other sites. Recently, Dodger Stadium re-emerged as a potential site.
  • The NFL prefers two teams in LA and will require a new stadium to have space to host a second team.
  • Expansion to a 34-team league is not currently in the cards, which means that in all likelihood, the first team to be in LA will be a relocated franchise.
  • Franchises interested in relocation will have from January 1 to February 15, 2013 to apply for relocation.
  • A team like the Raiders would have to have to explain why it would make more sense to move to LA instead of sharing a stadium with the 49ers.
  • All avenues to get a venue in a team’s existing marketed would have to be explored/exhausted.
  • Arrangements would have to be made in advance for an interim venue while the new stadium is under construction.
  • Any franchise relocation would require a 3/4 approval of the 32 owners.

It’s a fairly clearcut process, and for the teams that may be involved, as fair as it can get. The Rams could be considered in the lead due to the state of their negotiations with St. Louis. The Bills have a $200 million refurbishment deal on the table that the NFL would prefer over relocation. The Jags aren’t going anywhere for at least a year or two while new ownership is still in its honeymoon period. The Raiders are working with Oakland/Alameda County at the moment, whereas the Chargers have failed at every turn to get something done in San Diego. The approval process will extend well beyond the six-week period, but it’s somewhat poetic that the applications will occur at the same time as the playoffs: the futures of the applying franchises will be at stake.

06.29.12
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Missed opportunities

Many, many years ago, just a few months after I launched this blog, I pitched this idea:

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View south towards Lake Merritt from the intersection of 27th and Broadway

I wrote to then-and-still-current Oakland Councilmember Nancy Nadel (District 3) about the potential of this site. After a bit of nagging on my part, I was told that other development was “in the pipeline”. Disappointed, I looked elsewhere.

The ballpark site was considered the southern end of Broadway Auto Row. In 2005, the City of Oakland was pushing to move several car dealerships out of the district, gambling on the idea that the area could become the city’s long lost retail mecca. The dealerships were meant to move to the Coliseum area (some did) or the Army Base (they didn’t). Now Broadway Auto Row sits either empty or with car dealerships still there, a fair albeit underwhelming use of land in the city’s urban core. It’s an area begging for redevelopment, but as a result of scuttling of the institution, it lacks the funding needed to make the sea change happen. A feature in the SF Public Press by Alexis Fitts chronicles much of the failed planning and good intentions.

There were dreams to build a retail district to rival Union Square, even as Emeryville ate Oakland’s lunch. Grandiose plans for a over 1 million square feet of retail with Nordstrom and Macy’s as anchors never materialized. It occurred to me that these massive scale plans from several years ago had much of the same lofty language being used now for Coliseum City. Oakland’s used JRDV as a master plan consultant back then, and they’re using the same firm for Coliseum City now. Sub in the Raiders, A’s, and Warriors for Nordstrom, Macy’s, and Target, and it’s very similar: big dreams, little realism.

Sights have shifted to include more housing in the plan, which is fine in that it’s in keeping with the region’s growth. The retail strategy could shift to a focus on hipsters with stores like American Apparel (the only A.A. in the East Bay is in Berkeley). Without public incentives to lure retailers in it’s a very tough sell.

It’s a similar tough sell for the pro sports franchises. During the S.O.S. meeting on Monday, I brought up the potential of infrastructure finance districts. They’re redevelopment in the new era, with less money to throw around and lower expectations in keeping with less money. I reported last week that the City of San Jose approved an extension of the Downtown Property and Business Improvement District. The PBID pays for Groundwerx, a downtown beautification program that cleans up litter and sidewalks, removes graffiti, covers utility boxes in vinyl wraps, and provides a welcome/concierge element to downtown with the crew of Segway-riding, neon-clad employees. Groundwerx will cost $2.2 million for 2013 and is worth the cost, as evidenced by the 91% approval among downtown landowners.

Before Oakland reaches for the stars again and starts dreaming about being San Francisco, it might want to see what’s feasible within city limits. If it wants to make Oakland more attractive to businesses and consumers, it should make downtown/uptown actually visually attractive to those contingents. This weekend, there are little gymnasts and their parents walking around downtown SJ, and the place looks clean, welcoming, and hospitable. Even with that image boost, there’s little hope for great retail there. Valley Fair and Santana Row have ruined downtown SJ for retail for next several decades at the very least, thanks to their free parking and safe, sealed environments. Whether Oakland goes mainstream or hipster or both, it’s going to take a long time to develop any significant retail in downtown or the Coliseum area. New measures are the new skin-in-the-game.

As for Broadway Auto Row, it’s too bad no one ran with the ballpark idea. There weren’t too many landowners. All it needed was a champion within City Hall.

06.29.12
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49ers get restraining order for $30 million transfer, hearing on 6/3

A Sacramento judge has given the 49ers a temporary restraining order, preventing Santa Clara County from doing anything with the $30 million of redevelopment funds that remains in dispute. Furthermore, a hearing to determine what to do with the funds will be held on Tuesday.

It strikes me as strange that the State Controller is involved in many of these disputes, figuring out who gets what and when. In this case, it’s going straight to the courts, with little or no Controller involvement. If it sounds like there are no clear rules, you’re probably right.

06.28.12
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Clawback, Part III: Diridon transfers to be reviewed in July

The post-redevelopment landscape remains somewhat chaotic as new legislation and decisions by the State Controller’s office fill in some of the information and procedural gaps. On April 20, Controller John Chiang sent a letter out to all so-called “successor agencies” that were assigned to clean up after the dissolution of each municipality’s redevelopment agency. The letter asked for all property transfers that occurred after January 1, 2011 to be returned to the successor agency so that they could be disposed of under the auspices of AB1x 26.

Following up that letter was another letter from Stand for San Jose’s law firm, San Francisco-based Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. The firm represents the San Francisco Giants, and Stand for San Jose’s astroturf war against the San Jose ballpark project has always been transparent, with the S4SJ throwing everything against the wall to see what will stick. The letter asks for all transfers to be reversed in keeping with the January 1 date, citing that SJRA transferred the land to SJDDA on March 8, 2011, and entered into an option agreement with the A’s on November 8, 2011.

Fortunately, the Controller will start a review of the case on July 9, with the process taking 4-6 weeks. While a decision on the land transfer won’t settle everything in the City and S4SJ’s ongoing legal battle, it should at least guide the next steps regarding use of the land, whether the transfer/option is allowed to move forward or the land has to be sold by the successor agency under new terms. For what it’s worth, the agency’s board consists of City and County pols. The chair is San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, with general counsel being City Attorney Rick Doyle. Next meeting of the oversight board will be August 9, after the summer recess. The Controller may have rendered a decision by then.

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In related news, at today’s oversight board meeting it was revealed that the successor agency expected to have all $86.9 million that the County withheld by this afternoon. This will allow the City to fulfill its August 1 debt service payment obligation. The resolution of this matter also allows the agency to get a letter of credit extension, which was completely up in the air until this week.

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Added: The San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County worked out a deal in which the County wouldn’t challenge the Diridon transfers. The Controller still has to make its determination.