Author Archives: Marine Layer

05.29.12
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A room with a view

One of the more lamentable facts about modern indoor arenas is that, unlike their outdoor brethren, most arenas do nothing to celebrate the environments and neighborhoods in which they reside. Cold and insular, arenas are all about focusing on the floor or action. Attempts to draw attention to the crowd such as the “Kiss Cam” are token distractions. Get in the crowd, get the show over with, and get everyone out ASAP. There’s no time to linger or savor an event.

It wasn’t always this way. Some of the postwar arenas attempted to bring in the outside. This was best executed at the old Portland Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which still stands next to its much larger successor, the Rose Garden. Memorial Coliseum was a simple, elegant square wrapped on all four sides by glass curtainwall. The round, undulating seating bowl inside the shell provided a clean visual line that gave the building its purpose and indicated where an observer was in relation to the seats.

Views of Portland were available on all four sides of Memorial Coliseum.

The pre-1997 Oakland Coliseum Arena also showed this kind of elegance. A larger arena than the one in Portland, the Coliseum Arena boldly used floor-to-ceiling glass, with a concrete exoskeleton to protect it. Like Portland, the rim of the upper seating bowl was clearly visible, though the Warriors and the arena operator chose to use dark curtains to prevent any clerestory effect. Both arenas were designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, a firm more known for skyscrapers (Sears/Willis Tower, WTC Freedom Tower) than sports properties.

Early cutaway drawing of the old Coliseum Arena

One of the key directives for the Coliseum Arena renovation was that the building needed to be stuffed with as many seats as possible, since the old 15,025 capacity was great for generating sellouts but poor for generating revenue. So they packed the place to the rafters with seats and redesigned the seating bowl to conform more to basketball instead of the neither-fish-nor-fowl multipurpose seating bowl of yesteryear. Over 4,500 seats were added in the process, an impressive feat of packaging and engineering. Lost in the transformation was the grace of the old design. New concrete entry lobbies were added to the exterior. The regular entrance from the plaza became a club entrance. The glass walls had to be retrofitted, cluttering the look.

In the Warriors’ unveiling of the Piers 30-32 site, the renderings ownership showed had an arena pictured, more as a placeholder than anything else. They were very clear to note that there were no detailed renderings or even a specific design at the moment. Considering the site’s pictureque waterfront locale, a great amount of effort may have to be undertaken to design the building so that patrons can appreciate views of downtown, the Bay Bridge, and the East Bay hills. If that doesn’t happen, the arena may be considered nothing more than a big concrete box. Nobody wants that. I don’t think the W’s will go back to the circular seating bowl, but there are still ways to open up the space to the outside. One way is to do what many new arenas have done – remove some cheap upper end seats, even entire sections.

North (left) upper tier removed, which should create an enviable Downtown-Bay Bridge panorama.

In addition, the concourses could be laid out to allow views of the action from concession stands. Mind you, implementing some of these ideas could prove costly because they may translate into greater amounts of costly square-footage being built to satisfy the vision. The W’s should know by now that they have a chance to build a truly iconic building, and to skimp would be wrong and practically indefensible. Arena architecture is not known for looking backward or in a retro manner. In this case there’s truly something to be learned from looking at the past, and it can only result in a better arena, one that celebrates everything happening outside its walls just as much as the events inside those walls.

05.28.12
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Pretty nice view

I went to the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning to pay my respects on the bridge’s 75th birthday. On the way back, I drove over to Piers 30-32 to check out the site of Joe Lacob and Peter Guber’s dreams, a rundown waterfront pier currently used as a parking lot. You may know the site currently as the home of Red’s Java House, the little shack that serves up quick, reasonably priced burgers. Fortunately for Red’s and their customers, the Warriors want to keep the venerable restaurant in place even as the new arena is built.

We talk a lot about how great the view is from AT&T Park. Frankly, it doesn’t hold a candle to this view from Pier 30.

Pier 28 in foreground, Bay Bridge in background. View looking north.

That’s just from sea level. Now imagine that you’re on an elevated deck overlooking Pier 28, with an unfettered view of the Bay Bridge. Better yet, imagine that you could see this from inside the arena bowl. How is that possible? I’ll explain later tonight.

05.27.12
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A city’s predicament

I fear for Trib reporter Matt Artz’s email inbox, because it’s about to get pummeled.

In today’s edition, Artz tries to explain why Oakland’s three teams are varying shades of noncommittal with regards to staying at the Coliseum, or even in Oakland in general. For most of us who follow the situation closely, the information is pretty much old hat. Still, it’s good to read someone in the local media deal it as plainly as Artz did, even if the truth is unpleasant.

As Oakland fights to keep its teams, industry leaders say it’s hampered by the fact that its main lure was a site more attractive 40 years ago than it is today.

“I think that’s a real problem,” Smith College economics Professor Andrew Zimbalist said. “The times have passed it by.”

Exactly. No one questions how devoted or hardcore Oakland and East Bay fans are, they are among the best in the nation. Unfortunately, the business of pro sports has become such a high-stakes affair that economically, Oakland is practically a AAA market while San Francisco and San Jose/Silicon Valley are major league markets. Nowadays money trumps hardcore seven days a week.

Yesterday I was looking into how Orlando’s Amway Center was built, hoping to understand how it surpasses Oracle Arena in terms of amenities. Oracle does well in having four premium seating options: courtside seats, suites, and two different club options. Amway Center has an astounding seven options: courtside seats, founders suites, presidents suites, legends (party) suites, MVP tables, 4- and 6-person loges, and club seats. All seven options are priced specifically to target certain well-heeled demographics, whether they are big corporations, prominent small businesses, or rich people who simply want more elbow room. A future post will go into how all of this works. For now let me tell you that there’s no going back. All four North American pro sports leagues are multibillion dollar outfits. So are NASCAR and NCAA football.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan talked Thursday about having a huge Cowboys Stadium-like facility in the Coliseum complex, to be co-anchored by a convention center. One thing she didn’t mention was the price tag for such a complex, or even just the stadium itself. Lest we forget, Santa Clara’s Stadium Authority is on the hook for $700 million of the 49ers stadium costs. Zygi Wilf and the Vikings will be paying 49% of the Metrodome’s $1 billion replacement, leaving the rest to public funding sources. Even if you buy the somewhat dubious argument that the 49ers are paying for the lion’s share of the cost (who runs the Authority, again?), Santa Clara had to put up $144 million in hard dollars initially. What price will Oakland/Alameda County have to pay to stay in the game? $200 million? $500 million? Quan cites the $200 million NFL G-4 fund, but that’s available to every team, every market. Any new stadium will cost at least $1 billion.

Also today, a sobering analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows how cities struggle to make their money back even with glistening new stadia, characterizing these efforts as an “arms race”. Good thing that the leagues appear to be bedrock solid for the foreseeable future, because if they weren’t municipalities would be wading into their own “mutually assured destruction”. So dream big, people, because it’s not your money! Until there’s a price tag. Then it’s definitely your money.

05.25.12
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Mayors go on the offensive, Wolff to meet with Knauss on Friday

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is having caviar dreams on a canned tuna budget.

Quan finally agreed to an interview with The Game’s Chris Townsend, though he had to travel to Oakland City Hall to do it. I listened to the exchange intently, looking for some semblance of consistent messaging throughout. For the most part the message was consistent, but probably not what the teams and fans are looking for.

Quan continued to tout Coliseum City as a massive development stretching over 500 acres that could attract 32,000 jobs, major hotels, corporations, and anywhere from one to four pro sports franchises. That’s right, four. When Townsend pressed her on what she meant by that, she said that the City was looking at teams outside of the current three tenants.

In the wake of the Warriors’ announcement that they intend to build a new arena in San Francisco, East Bay backers are already talking about luring either the Sacramento Kings or San Jose Sharks to Oakland. Oracle Arena is built for basketball, not hockey, so the Sharks are out of the question. The Kings are a more intriguing proposition since Oracle is miles ahead of ARCO/Power Balance in terms of modernity and amenities. However, you can bet that Joe Lacob and Peter Guber would fight tooth and nail to keep a second team out of the Bay Area. Even if the NBA were to allow it, the Lacob/Guber ownership group would get a tidy compensation check from whomever brought a team to Oakland. You can forget about that being the Maloofs since they’re broke. David Stern has also stopped Larry Ellison twice from relocating a team to San Jose, so you can glean from those vetoes that Stern considers the Bay Area a single-team market. Remember that Oakland’s gambit is to replace Oracle Arena with a new one if the Warriors stayed. There is zero chance of anyone building an arena in Oakland if the Warriors are in SF. They’ll just soldier on with the current arena, which again is a perfectly fine venue from a technical standpoint.

As for the A’s, Quan revealed a couple of things that are quite germane to Oakland’s efforts going forward. She seems fully committed to Coliseum City in whatever form it takes. When asked about a site in downtown Oakland, she said that if Clorox CEO Don Knauss wants to move in that direction and can figure out how to pay for the extra cost, it shouldn’t affect Coliseum City adversely. She didn’t exactly dismiss Howard Terminal or Victory Court, but by now she has to be fully aware of the nine-figure costs associated with either of those sites, which makes them quite difficult to develop. For that she deserves a lot of credit – Oakland’s advantages are that it has land and a potentially easier process to develop venues. The flipside to that argument is that Oakland’s not as desirable or coveted as SF or San Jose, so there’s a very good reason why it’s easier or more available.

Beyond that, Quan may be getting a bit too starry-eyed for her own good.

As long as we have one huge sports facility [plus] we will have a much bigger convention center than we currently have in downtown Oakland.

That sounds like a pivot to me. If Quan and the City are pivoting it’s probably no coincidence that AEG is on board to manage the complex and provide consulting for the next phase of the Coliseum, which would be to have something along the lines of what they are planning in LA: retractable roof stadium, arena, and convention center in one location. Maybe AEG will get a team to relocate there, maybe they won’t. What they can do is influence both LA and Oakland by shaping development there. It worked in LA, and it sure looks like it’s moving in that direction at the Coliseum. Two years I wrote about re-using the Coliseum for a convention center after teams vacated. It sounded preposterous back then, but it could make sense with AEG steering things. Though again, it’s important to note that AEG has never shown much interest in baseball. AEG could decide that it would be best to use as much available land as possible for a top-notch convention center. A large convention center can easily take up a greater footprint than two stadia side-by-side.

The “one huge sports facility” term has me intrigued. Now the thought of Cowboys Stadium doesn’t sound quite as far-fetched since it would be part and parcel with the convention center. The key would be the flexibility of the stadium. If you want to go full-bore crazy, Oakland should shoot for what Doha, Qatar is doing with one of its 2022 World Cup venues. Called Doha Sports City Stadium, it’s a retractable domed affair with movable seating decks and facilities built into the roof, not a mere steel or fabric shell.

Inside the 65,000-seat Doha Sports City Stadium, which is planned for a 2017 completion date.

The project picks up where Japan’s Saitama Super Arena left off, doubling SSA in size and scale (UNLV has a similar proposal to SSA). Let’s be clear about what DSCS is: $1.5 billion in state oil profits to be used for a showcase venue that could conceivably be used for a future Olympics gig. And if you think the picture above is nuts, save your jawdrop for the next image.

Exterior view. The stadium is only a part of the extremely large development, with ancillary features all under the "single" roof.

I suppose that the attitude here is that if this is going to cost $2 billion, might as well go all the way. Something like DSCS would certainly give Oakland the “one huge sports facility” that Quan alluded to.

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Meanwhile in San Jose, the City is quietly building up its case and legal team for a potential attack on baseball’s antitrust exemption. The call for such a lawsuit has only gotten louder in the last several weeks as the team continues to languish with no direction in sight. San Jose is not going to sue as long as Lew Wolff continues to follow MLB’s process. The buzz will only get louder. I’ve even heard that legal proceedings may not cost the City much if anything. We’ll see if that actually happens. I wrote last week that as long as Selig doesn’t make a decision, there’s no trigger for a lawsuit since Bud Selig can say he’s continuing to study the matter. That could be a big reason why Wolff’s position has been “any decision is better than none” since either a yes or no could provide a jumping off point for Wolff.

Wolff supposedly met or is meeting with Don Knauss today, according to the Chronicle’s Susan Slusser. Maybe they’ll share Diamond Level seats for tonight’s Yankees game. Maybe Wolff will host Knauss in the owner’s suite. Knowing what we know about what both sides want, I don’t expect any earthshaking news. If I hear something I’ll be sure to update this post accordingly.

Update 5/26 7:37 AM – BANG’s Joe Stiglich has this regarding the Wolff-Knauss meeting:

A’s co-owner Lew Wolff confirmed that he met Friday with Clorox CEO Don Knauss, who has been outspoken about wanting to keep the A’s in Oakland.

Wolff declined to share what exactly the two discussed, other than to say he enjoyed the chance to talk with Knauss.

“I think we had a nice dialogue,” Wolff said. “We just exchanged some ideas. That’s all I want to say.”

There you have it. 

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BTW, I’ll be tailgating at today’s Yankees game. If you want to drop by and chat, reply here or via Twitter. I’ll provide location info once in the parking lot.

05.24.12
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Peter Guber talks to Tierney & Davis

Warriors co-owner Peter Guber went on The Drive yesterday, and the 20-minute interview that came out of it was the most entertaining bit of owner-speak I’ve heard in a long time. Guber is not like most co-owners, sitting in silence. He’s a Hollywood producer with showmanship befitting the town. A big-money player may work as the managing partner, whereas Guber appears to have a running mate-like role, selling the team’s concepts and working over the media. Joe Lacob, like Lew Wolff, has had some difficulty establishing a rapport with the local media and fans. For Guber this is old hat. However, Guber is taking on a similar role with the Dodgers, one that will take just as much effort if not more, so I can see why he wouldn’t be a managing partner of any one team.

Guber explained the process of selecting a San Francisco site, why Oakland was passed over (which will fall on deaf ears in the East Bay, I figure) and his history of ownership stints dating back to Mandalay Sports Entertainment, a conglomerate of minor league franchises including the model minor league team, the Dayton Dragons. Curiously, he considered the Warriors the only Northern California NBA franchise, a clear indicator that the Maloof family is more than one-foot-out-the-door in Sacramento. He even got in a little shot at the Maloofs:

GUBER: We believe – it’s a belief – that we’re going to turn it [the arena] into reality. We believe we can accomplish it. If we didn’t believe it, why would I take the energy and resources in the third act of my life and put it into something I thought was folly? No. All of us believe – Joe [Lacob], the different owners of the group, there’s a large group of intelligent owners – believe this is a beautiful, successful endeavor that we can bring to fruition. If we didn’t, I would go play poker in Las Vegas.

TIERNEY: Which casino by the way?

GUBER: Let me put it this way. Not. The Palms.

Guber went on to talk about how Larry Baer brought the Lacob-Guber team in to buy the Warriors. Guber indicated that Baer could have ended up as part of the ownership group, but dropped out during the process.

GUBER: When Larry Baer – yes, Larry Baer – called me at home in Los Angeles and said, “How would you like to buy the Warriors?” I said, “Great!” It fit my compass. I wanted to be able to get to a place within an hour, that I could go there regularly and be part of the community. Before, I had worked with Bob Piccinini to buy the Oakland A’s. In fact, closed the deal, made the deal with Billy Beane at my house, gave him a piece of the equity, negotiated the whole thing. Then, lo and behold, Bud Selig said “we’re going to do contractions” back in 2002 or 2004. “Let’s do contraction!” You know what contraction is? Not the same as what women have before they have a baby. This is what the league said they wanted to do with the teams. They wanted to get rid of Oakland and Minnesota. Ultimately, they made a deal with Lew Wolff about a year later. My partner (Lacob) went after that team as well. So Larry Baer said, “Let’s try to get the Warriors.” We went after the Warriors. Larry dropped out. Joe and I teamed up to buy the Warriors.

There’s a problem in Guber’s timeline. The contraction threat came with the 2002 CBA negotiations, which were the greatest threat for a work-stoppage since 1994-95. Contraction talk had started in 1999, and dragged on contentiously until August 30, 2002, when a deal was put in place that pushed out the contraction threat to 2006. The 2006 deadline passed without a peep, and contraction hasn’t come up in any substantive discussions since. The new CBA, which was finally made publicly available today, has language that the league won’t talk contraction until after the CBA expires in 2016. I digress.

Again, Guber talked 2002. But the Dolich-Piccinini group was knocked out in 1999, not 2002, a fact confirmed by Piccinini himself. Either the group was kept in play until 2002 as Guber said, or he has his dates mixed up. Piccinini is now also a part of the Warriors’ ownership group. He was also part of Jeff Moorad’s failed bid to buy the Padres. From the looks of things, Larry Baer was very active in getting the group as far away from the A’s as possible. Contraction died, which foiled the Giants’ attempt to get rid of the A’s via subterfuge. Now there’s simply no economic justification for it, and the price to contract two teams (estimated $1 billion) is too high for the owners and MLB to swallow.

The only question I have coming out of this is one I’ve had for the last few weeks: Why on earth is the City of Oakland working with the Giants and Larry Baer? Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said yesterday that he is looking at the A’s situation closely, with Sacramento potentially there if something can’t be done in the Bay Area. Guess who’d love it if the A’s had no choice but to leave the Bay Area? Larry Baer.

Update 8:47 PM – Guber was referring to the “secret” 2001-02 negotiations done by his group, Mandalay, and Steve Schott. The group also included Bob Piccinini, which I was not aware of until the interview. At the time, Schott was pushing for a move to Santa Clara and was in discussions with the City Council. Because of the sale talks, the Council felt betrayed and terminated any further pre-development work. The ownership would have included, among others: Guber, Piccinini, Paul Schaeffer (Mandalay VP), and Billy Beane. It’s difficult to keep these ownership groups straight. 

05.22.12
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Oakland’s Prevent Defense

No statement I have seen better exemplifies Oakland’s strategy than this quote by City Administrator Fred Blackwell from the SF Business Times:

“San Francisco has given the Warriors a waterfront offer that they could not refuse,” said Fred Blackwell, assistant city administrator, in a statement. “And in the end, we will leave a space for the Warriors after they have are exhausted from the CEQA litigation and cost increases required to be on the San Francisco Waterfront.”

Replace “Warriors” with “Athletics”, “San Francisco” with “San Jose”, and CEQA litigation/cost increases with territorial rights, and you have Oakland’s attitude towards the A’s in a nutshell. Oakland has had counsel from the Giants to fight the A’s efforts to move. It wouldn’t be surprising if they went back to that well again just to make things more difficult for the W’s. The difference is that the W’s don’t have a Byzantine league statute to fight.

It’s as if the City of Oakland has no choice. Almost 50 years ago a group of civic, business, and government leaders had the foresight to build what was then a state-of-the-art sports complex for a reasonable cost. It had parking and a future transit link in the plans. The stadium was built initially for football but was designed to accommodate baseball as well, better than any other multipurpose stadium ever. With the Coliseum complex, Oakland and Alameda County built up a 30-year lead over the rest of the Bay Area. Over time that lead was diminished as other cities struggled and eventually succeeded to build new venues. If the Warriors and A’s get their new digs, that 30-year lead will have vanished with only one team, the Raiders, struggling to hold on.

All this posturing makes it appear that Oakland has no choice but this strategy. That’s entirely wrong. They do have a choice. But it starts with making the toughest choice. Instead of this “fake it ’till you make it” strategy of sounding like they’re committed to all three teams, commit to one first and make that team a positive example that the other teams will be attracted to. The resources definitely aren’t there to make Coliseum City fly as a redone, three-team complex. Why would a private developer commit to the W’s part of Coliseum City if they know that a more lucrative play is available across the bay? Even a two-team plan is sketchy due to the logistical complications (phase-in, what to do with the old venues). For now it looks as though Oakland’s putting its arrows behind the Raiders, since there is some prep work being undertaken. Until either Oakland decides or has the decision made for them, they’ll continue with the “fake it” strategy of saying they have several ballpark sites when in actuality there’s zero consensus on one. That’s a shame because it leads to false hope. That’s what organizations like Save Oakland Sports and Let’s Go Oakland are hanging their hats on. Rooting for someone else to fail works from a schadenfreude standpoint, but it doesn’t get anything built. Longtime East Bay fans are about to find that out.

05.21.12
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The Lemonade trip

I was originally scheduled to come back to the Bay Area last Tuesday, just after my brother and his new bride came back from their European honeymoon. Somehow I managed to screw up the last plane flight as it was reserved as SJC-to-SAN instead of SAN-to-SJC. I didn’t find out my mistake until I went to check in the night before the flight. Mistake acknowledged, I cancelled that flight for credit and sought out alternatives: land, air, and sea.

After finding $150-200 last minute flights not to my liking, I looked at renting a car or taking the train back. Last year, just to try it, I took the Pacific Surfliner up to Santa Barbara, which connected to a 6-hour bus ride up 101 to San Jose. The train trip was great. The bus, not so much. However, it was cheap at around $65 one-way, with no additional taxes or fees. There’s also an all-train option which had two segments: San Diego to Los Angeles on the Pacific Surfliner followed by Los Angeles to San Jose on the long-distance Coast Starlight with a 90-minute layover at Union Station.

Then I remembered that Amtrak offers a unique rail pass just for the state of California. Simply named the California Rail Pass, it’s structured like a Eurail pass in that it offers a set number of days travel over another set travel window. In the case of CA Rail Pass, it’s 7 days over a 21-day period. The pass includes all train and connector bus travel within the state, from Dunsmuir to the north down to San Diego. Regional/intercity trains such as the Capitol Corridor, San Joaquins, and the aforementioned Pacific Surfliner are included, as is the Coast Starlight. The only exception is the California Zephyr, another long-distance train that starts in Emeryville and travels east to Chicago via Reno and Salt Lake City.

The price of the pass is a mere $159. I bought it Thursday and started traveling Friday. That leaves me six additional days of travel. I’m using the rest of the travel days to explore a bunch of minor league parks, starting with a San Jose-Stockton game tomorrow at Banner Island Ballpark. The itinerary is as follows:

Not so much a long trip as much as a series of day trips

The game this Saturday vs. the Yankees is one for which I don’t expect to take the train. Instead, I may drive with some friends up there. There’s also an option to drive after the game to Raley Field, where the River Cats are taking on Reno at 7:05. We’ll see how it plays out the rest of this week.

All of the ballparks are close – most within walking distance – of Amtrak stations. The furthest is probably Banner Island Ballpark at 1.5 miles from the SKN station. I wanted to fit a Modesto Nuts game in but the schedule is pretty much all night games while they’re at home for the next few weeks, and I’m looking to avoid those.

It looks to be a fun series of games to check out. If anyone’s interested in joining me for one or more of the games, you know how to reach me.

05.21.12
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SF, Warriors set to announce arena deal

Just like that, Coliseum City is in jeopardy.

The interwebs are abuzz with reports that the Golden State Warriors and the City of San Francisco are going to announce a Pier 30/32 arena deal as soon as this week. The team has issued a non-denial denial, and the rumor appears to have multiple sources, which makes this news possibly the proverbial smoke that will lead to fire.

If true this is terrible for the Coliseum City project’s prospects. By virtue of an arena’s typical utilization, the arena part of the complex is a a major anchor that the project needs. Losing the Warriors removes at least 43 home games from the schedule, totaling 800,000 annual spectators. Oakland/Alameda County could refashion the arena to better attract more concerts and other types of events. The risk with that plan is that the old arena in Oakland and the new arena in SF will be only 11 miles apart, so they’ll be competing for exactly the same acts and events. The Warriors will have the advantage of new technology to make their venue superior and more flexible for staging. They’ll also have a great incentive to keep the arena as busy as possible since they’re footing the bill for the construction cost. This affects HP Pavilion to a degree as well since it will be overshadowed by its much newer competitor to the north. However, HP Pavilion is over 40 miles away, serving the South Bay. This sort of spacing is already evident in the Bay Area with Chronicle Pavilion in Concord and Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. The two major LA arenas (Staples Center, Honda Center) are also a good distance apart, allowing both to combine to serve the bulk of the LA market.

The W’s leaving means that the naming rights deal with Oracle, which runs through the 2015-16 season, has a very slim chance of being renewed. There’s little point for Oracle to do so, as the marquee tenant will be in the process of vacating while the arena itself will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to its competition across the bay. Even though Oracle CEO Larry Ellison lost out to the Lacob-Guber group when bidding on the Warriors two years ago, the SF Warriors brand should be more valuable than the GS Warriors, making a potential naming rights deal something that Ellison should consider.

Currently there’s about $95 million of debt outstanding at the Oakland/Oracle Arena. With each lease year completed $5 million comes off, leaving a shortfall of $70 million for the W’s to pay off if they leave at the end of the 2016-17 season. This amount would be payable by the team regardless of whether they played in SF or Oakland. This is because Oakland positioned Coliseum City as having a new arena to replace the existing arena. This effectively adds $70 million to the cost of the new Oakland arena because there’s little chance that Oakland/Alameda County will operate the new and old venues side-by-side. If you were Joe Lacob and you knew that you’d have to pay $70 million either way, why would you choose Oakland over SF?

This gets to the heart of Oakland’s problem in pitching Coliseum City to its tenants. All three teams want much greater revenues, and just as important, greater control over revenue streams and more independence from each either. They’ve been able to coexist with little friction over the last decade, but that didn’t come about without a good deal of previous strife as all three teams have had legal battles with the Coliseum Authority. Mayor Jean Quan has already put out yet another letter restating Oakland’s commitment to the Warriors, just as she did with the A’s. What she and the JPA need to do – which they haven’t done yet – is explain how Coliseum City will significantly increase each tenant’s revenues (W’s rank 13th according to Forbes) compared to other options. Instead we’re having discussions about whether or not Coliseum City can pay for itself, which is a major perception problem. Most of the City’s arguments have been about how Coliseum City will benefit Oakland, with little said about how each team will benefit. Only the Raiders part of the project has any traction, thanks to ongoing planning work designed around and with input from the team. Yet the Raiders continue to entertain options outside Oakland just in case Coliseum City doesn’t take off. All three teams and ownership groups know how difficult their respective plans are on their own. To tie feasibility and risk into other parts is unnecessary, even foolish.

SF has shown its willingness to speed up the environmental review process when needed, as it did with the America’s Cup project. A similar effort could be done for the Warriors’ arena, with the caveat that the impacts for an arena will be significantly different. The America’s Cup only occurs once every three years over a short, well-defined timeframe. An arena gets 800k visitors annually for NBA games plus another 500k or more for other events. Onsite parking at the W’s arena is expected to be only 1,000 spaces, leaving the team and city looking a few thousand more within the vicinity to meet demand. It’ll be a challenge to get the W’s arena approved and built. SF’s advantage is that it has successful precedents in AT&T Park and, coming soon, the America’s Cup. That’s experience that matters.

This new SF arena plan is in its infancy, so it’s premature to call this one “in the bag”. One thing’s for certain – the two parties are heavily motivated and appear to be making measurable progress. If only we could say that about an A’s ballpark…

05.19.12
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Asking for the moon

Thanks to a spectacularly bad lease negotiated by St. Louis pols, the Rams have the right to a “top tier” stadium as long as they stay near the Gateway Arch. This week, St. Louis found out just what “top tier” (top eight) means. The City gulped and tabulated just how much it’ll cost for the Rams to stay there: $500-750 million.

A PDF of the proposal was acquired by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It’s worth viewing if you want to follow along with the rest of the post. The St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission put together its own $124 million proposal (PDF), which mostly touts the incremental improvements that have been made over the past several years.

Mind you, that won’t pay for an entirely new stadium. Instead, two-thirds of the Edward Jones Dome would be blown out, including the roof. Only parts of the upper deck and one side of concourses would remain. The field would be moved slightly to accommodate new seating, and completely new seating decks and concourses would be built in the other two-thirds of the stadium.

Old Edward Jones Dome cross-section compared to new dome roof/seating deck arrangement

Edward Jones Dome sits in a very tight block in downtown St. Louis, hemmed in by the America’s Center convention facility to the west and N. Broadway to the east. Expanding the footprint of the stadium would wipe out N. Broadway, which happens to be half of a major thoroughfare. The extra space consumed by the fattened stadium would be used for new team locker rooms and premium amenities. The cross-section of the stand looks a little too much like Mt. Davis for my liking, especially the enormous upper deck. Field suites and field level clubs are a must-have.

Amazingly, the Rams’ proposal doesn’t include either a retractable roof or a Dallas-style center-hung scoreboard. The roof will have a panel that can slide open to let in more light, like a sunroof on a car. New scoreboards would be placed in the corners, replacing the end zone scoreboards that are not even three years old. I’m surprised by this. The team has the city over a barrel. They’re already asking for the moon, why not get some asteroids on the side while you’re at it?

I’ve never seen a game in person at the Trans World/America’s Center/Russell Athletic/Edward Jones Dome, so I can’t directly speak to how good a stadium it is. I’ve heard the field is poorly lit for some reason. I know it can get very loud inside. The concourses are wide, and the amenities fairly plush, befitting a $280 million stadium built in the mid-90’s. The top tier clause allows the Rams to escape the Gateway City after the 2014 season, which means the race is on to figure out a solution, or else owner Stan Kroenke could easily look elsewhere – like LA. The only thing that may give Kroenke pause is AEG’s insistence that it get a minority share of any relocated franchise in exchange for building the downtown LA stadium. Regardless, LA poses a significant threat, even though Kroenke is a born-and-bred Missourian.

The Rams don’t quite have the Mayflower trucks at the loading docks yet. Their proposal and one from the CVC will go to arbitration in the next year or so. Whatever the arbiter decides is the winning proposal, the County will have the option to commit to that package of improvements. If they do, the Rams will be locked in through at least 2025. If not, the Rams will have those trucks idling and ready to go.

As large and unnecessary as the Rams’ proposal sounds, it would be at best a top-four NFL stadium, surpassed technically by Cowboys Stadium and MetLife Stadium, and the AEG stadium if that comes to fruition. EJD and the Georgia Dome (1992) kicked off the boom era of new NFL stadia construction, so it’s not surprising that both were the first to be considered outdated by the league.

My question about any kind of NFL stadium expenditure, as usual, is How can anyone justify the cost? Let’s say that the project costs $700 million. Over 30 years at 7%, that’s $52 million per year in debt service. To make it worthwhile, the Rams and St. Louis would have to get an additional $100 million in new direct revenue every year. The stadium will compete with other domes for Final Fours and will continue to function as an extension of America’s Center, so that helps a bit. But most of the steady revenue will come from football games and related activities. To put it in perspective, the Rams are 30th among the 32 franchises in revenue at $228 million in 2011, according to Forbes. If they get another $100 million and apply it to 2011, they would catapult to #4 in the league, ahead of both New York teams. Does that seem likely, given the tiny St. Louis market and the Rams’ second banana status within the market? I doubt it.

05.18.12
by

The illusion of pendulum swings

There’s been a wide range of reaction from Bud Selig’s non-update yesterday.

  • Gwen Knapp: “No decision means ‘no’ to the A’s. They aren’t getting the rights to San Jose, not yet, not soon, not even over Larry Baer’s stone-cold corpse.”
  • Mark Purdy: “And no action was taken — although Wolff’s quotes do indicate the blue-ribbon panel’s findings back up his contention that none of the Oakland stadium ‘proposals’ amount to anything.” (Purdy also brought up a potential antitrust case on KNBR.)
  • Ray Ratto: “So [the owners] see no compelling reason to hurry toward a decision they don’t want to make anyway.”
  • Art Spander: “The solution to all this is for Wolff, who wants nothing to do with authorities and business people in Oakland, a place he doesn’t live, to reach a compromise.”
  • Robert Gammon: “…it seems clear that the Giants’ presentation was more persuasive and that the rest of the league has no intention of overruling the Giants’ opposition to the A’s move.”
  • Jon Heyman: “Some progress is seen in that a significant amount of discussion is being dedicated to the A’s to the point where the talk has moved from committees to baseball’s Executive Council.”
  • Buster Olney: “The time has come for Oakland Athletics owner Lew Wolff to start firing off lawsuits in effort to move to San Jose — or sell the team.”
  • Ken Rosenthal: “Do not get distracted by any of this. The A’s focus is still on San Jose. The focus of the entire sport is on how the A’s can get to San Jose.”
All of that came from a few rather innocuous quotes from Bud Selig. At this point it doesn’t matter what Selig did or didn’t say – the quotes have been twisted so completely that anyone can weave their own “truth” from owners meetings.

Here’s what we knew going into the meetings:

  • There would be no official action taken on T-rights.

That’s it. Both the A’s and Giants made presentations, which some believe is encouraging and some don’t. Former Giants managing partner Bill Neukom was present at the meetings, presumably to plead the Giants’ case. It seems likely that both teams will continue to make presentations at future owners meetings until a decision is made.

The decision thing is the issue. The sad truth of the matter is that MLB doesn’t have to decide anything anytime soon, just as Lew Wolff doesn’t have to sell the team anytime soon. The A’s will stay afloat via revenue sharing through the end of the CBA, and as long as Wolff and Billy Beane don’t get out in front of their skis in terms of payroll, the team should continue to make money. In that short-term vein, the “best interests of baseball” may be to keep the status quo. You could easily say that Selig is kicking the can down the road, where his eventual successor will have to resolve the dispute. You might also say that the tossed off comment about moving outside the Bay Area is strategic one meant to incite at least a little panic. That may have worked in Miami and Minneapolis, but it’s not going to work here. It never has.

Eventually that short-term position will end and be replaced by a long-term, permanent solution. That’s when some kind of decision will have to be made. Unfortunately for us A’s fans, we have no idea when that might happen. There’s certainly no urgency on the matter. Maybe MLB is waiting for the Giants to retire debt, though the prospect of the team refinancing some of the remaining debt creates a gray area in its own right. The post-redevelopment world hasn’t shaken out yet, and won’t for at least several months.

Until some of these variables settle, it’s in baseball’s best interests to keep both Oakland and San Jose in play. For Selig to kill either option would be poor strategy on his part. San Jose boosters and politicians may be frustrated, but at least the city has most of its pieces in place. Oakland is finally getting some momentum thanks to Don Knauss, though it’s too early to tell if that momentum is real and sustainable. As long as a decision isn’t made on San Jose that shuts out Oakland, another lease extension at the Coliseum can be negotiated. This vague flexibility even opens up the possibility that Fremont could re-enter the picture, perhaps as soon as the next elected mayor takes office in 2013.

The wildcard here would be if San Jose decides to unleash the legal hounds. Again, this is where I think Selig’s M.O. comes into play. As long as Selig can say, “We’re still studying this,” there’s no specific decision to point to that San Jose can build an antitrust case around. Sure, they can make threats, but until someone files a case it won’t mean much.

Until then, what we’ve got here is a Mexican standoff. How do those usually turn out?