Category Archives: Coliseum

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.

—

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.

12.20.12
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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.

11.16.12
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News for 11/16/12

Belated congratulations to Bob Melvin for winning AL Manager of the Year. While there’s no photographic evidence, Melvin’s daughter Alexi admitted to pieing him in the face recently. All in celebration, of course.

On to the news.

  • MLB’s big three national television contracts were approved this week during the owners meetings. Apparently this was so anticlimactic that only a single tweet about the news emerged, from Eric Fisher of Sports Business Journal.
  • As mentioned yesterday, all ballots in Alameda County have been counted. With that, Measure B1 appears to have been narrowly defeated by less than 700 votes. Perhaps the backers had a false sense of security due to the lack of fervent opposition. Back to the drawing board, I guess. [Contra Costa Times/Denis Cuff]
  • Fox is fixin’ to buy a big piece of the YES Network. Not the Yankees’ piece, the part owned by Goldman Sachs and Providence Equity. The network is worth as much as $3 billion, making the two-thirds share up for grabs worth $2 billion. [NY Times/Amy Chosick, Michael Cieply]
  • The Rangers have announced that they will play two exhibition games at San Antonio’s Alamodome in March. The stadium’s only full-time tenants are the UTSA college football team and the AFL’s San Antonio Talons. The seating bowl layout (see pic below) makes it even less baseball friendly than previous square/rectilinear multipurpose domes like the Metrodome and Kingdome because it has a very limited number of corner seats. It’s also a bit narrower along the football sidelines than the Metrodome and not all of the rows retract, making the right field line dimension perhaps as small as 280 feet. Backers of MLB to San Antonio see this as a good sign, but the arrangement is a double-edged sword. Just as the Cowboys staged training camp in the same Alamodome multiple times, the Ryans are doing this to reaffirm the brand throughout the state, not to promote MLB there. After all, the Rangers have some solid TV money to protect.  [San Antonio Express News/Josh Baugh]

Picture of one side of the Alamodome stands retracted for a 2010 Dallas Cowboys training camp session. Picture from Sports Nickel.

  • The ballpark for the Midland Rockhounds (A’s AA affiliate) will soon be losing its naming rights partner. Citibank has been the sponsor since shortly after the ballpark opened. The ballpark sits as part of the nicely designed and manicured Scharbauer Sports Complex, alongside one of the best high school football stadia I’ve ever seen. It is the land of Friday Night Lights. [Midland Reporter-Telegram/Sara Higgins | Bud Swanson]
  • The Mariners are going a different route to make a splash in the offseason, unveiling plans for what will be the largest video/scoreboard in MLB. The display will measure 57 feet tall by 201.5 feet wide, with a resolution of 3840 x 1080. Effectively that’s two Full HD screens side-by-side. At 11,425 square feet, the display will be 70% larger than the display the Astros had installed at Minute Maid Park last year, and 30% larger than baseball’s largest current screen at Kauffman Stadium. Panasonic will be the manufacturer, displacing Daktronics. The display is part of a $15 million capital improvements fund, negotiated by Seattle/King County and the Mariners prior to the opening of Safeco Field. [MLB.com/Greg Johns]
  • Chris Hansen released renderings for his dream arena in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle. The concept, penned by 360 Architecture, is reminiscent of 360’s Sprint Center project in Kansas City. It’s meant to house both basketball and hockey teams. Unlike Sprint Center, Hansen’s arena won’t be built without commitments from existing NBA and/or NHL franchises. Ironically, the opposite is what occurred in Kansas City, as the city chose to plow forward with an arena with no permanent tenants. That would put KC and Seattle in direct competition for any future franchise moves. [KING 5/Chris Daniels, Travis Pittman | 360 Architecture]
  • Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton (DFL) played to populist roots earlier this week by decrying the Vikings’ plans to sell PSLs at their $1 billion stadium. Most everyone throughout the Twin Cities expressed confusion at this sentiment, since it was pretty clear from the beginning that PSLs were a crucial piece of the financing plan. [MN Gov. Dayton | Minneapolis Star-Tribune Editorial Board]
  • Perhaps just in time for the start of the Mike D’Antoni era in LA, DirecTV and Time Warner Sportsnet agreed to a carriage deal of the fledgling regional sports network. (Laker fans weren’t missing much the last two weeks anyway.) Terms were undisclosed, but TWCSN has been seeking $3.95 per subscriber per month, making the channel among the most expensive RSNs in the nation. [LA Times/Joe Flint]
  • The City of Reno swore in a new City Council this week, and with that came swift action. They nixed the narrowly approved debt restructuring/refinancing plan completed just before the election. That puts both the team and the city in a bind. The team is threatening to leave without a tax subsidy. The Council clearly wants nothing to do with the debt liability. This snag gives the two sides about a year to figure out some sort of solution before Aces ownership figures out a move. If the Aces leave, Reno would be stuck with the debt anyway. Already the city has stopped making debt payments, pushing its credit rating into junk status. [Reno Gazette Journal/Brian Duggan]
  • Did you know about the Sacramento Sports Commission? If you didn’t , then it matters little as it’s about to be dissolved. The commission’s job was to attract different types of sporting events and maintain relationships with governing bodies like the NCAA, so that Sacramento venues could remain in constant rotation for major events such as NCAA championships. The task will probably end up with Sacramento’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. One of the reasons for the dissolution is that SSC failed to repay a $400,000 loan taken out for the 2011 World Masters Athletics Championships. [Sacramento Bee/Ryan Lillis]

That’s it for now. Feature on media coming over the weekend.

11.09.12
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Coliseum City announcement postponed (Update 11/12: Measure B1 at 65.83%)

From commenter CFL:

Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana and Assistant City Administrator in charge of Coliseum City Fred Blackwell had to postpone their 11/13/12 meeting with Save Oakland Sports. Save Oakland Sports will also postpone it’s announcement. We will reschedule this meeting to sometime before the beginning of 2013.

No reason was given, but I have to think this has to do with the fate of Measure B1, which has fallen short of passage so far. Without the $40 million in TOD funds earmarked for Coliseum City, the City of Oakland and Alameda County will have to scramble to figure out how to pick up a funding source to jumpstart the project. As of now, Coliseum City has to be considered stalled.

Update 5:00 PM – Support for Measure B1 has slipped further, now down to 64.85% voting yes. To pass, B1 would need to get an improbable 75% of the remaining 80,000 absentee ballots. In this light, it’s probably a good idea to cancel the appearance at the SOS meeting, since there’d be nothing to promote. However, an explanation of some kind would be welcome.

Update 11/10 5:30 PM – Alameda County’s Registrar didn’t take a break on Saturday, so we have new numbers. An additional 20,000 ballots were counted, and Measure B1 has made a solid comeback to finish the day with 65.31% voting Yes. The measure still needs 75% of the remaining 60,000 votes to pass.

Update 11/11 5:00 PM – Today the Registrar went into overtime, processing 37,000 ballots. That means they’ve counted 118,000 ballots since Wednesday. Yes on Measure B1 inched up further to 65.79%, which is encouraging. However, it appears that there are only 20-25,000 ballots left to count. Measure B1 would have to get 84% Yes votes among the remaining ballots to be counted in order to pass.

Update 11/12 6:00 PM – 12,000 more ballots were counted on Veterans Day. Measure B1 inched up a little to 65.83% approval. The bad news is that (if my math’s correct) all remaining votes would have to be Yes votes for B1 to pass.

11.08.12
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News for 11/8/12

Congrats to Billy Beane, who won the MLB Executive of the Year award at this week’s GM meetings. Out of 57 total votes, Beane garner 31. Second was the Nationals’ Mike Rizzo with 13. I figure Beane would gladly trade the award for the Earthquakes advancing to the next round of the MLS Cup, but that’s neither here nor there.

  • Alameda County’s Measure B1 continues to miss passage by the thinnest of margins. Through Wednesday, the measure had 65.63% approval,  just 12,000 votes short of passage. Roughly 140,000 absentee votes remain to be counted, which could allow the Yes votes to get over the hump. For that to happen, Yes votes would have to outnumber No votes by a 70-30 clip. The final vote tally should be ready before Thanksgiving. At stake is $40 million in transit funding that could help fund Coliseum City. [Oakland Tribune/Denis Cuff, Kristin J. Bender, Angela Woodall] Update 9:30 PM – Measure B1 has lost ground as an additional 24,000 ballots were counted today, with 65.38% voting Yes. The measure needs roughly 71% Yes among the remaining ~115,000 votes to get the supermajority.
  • As expected, Rebecca Kaplan kept her Oakland City Council At Large seat, defeating Ignacio De La Fuente 61-39 via Oakland’s instant runoff (ranked choice) voting process. That should keep one of Coliseum City’s biggest supporters out front and center, along with Larry Reid, who was also re-elected. [SF Gate/Matthai Kuruvila]
  • If Fremont were to re-emerge as an A’s stadium option, it’s important to know that the new mayor is expected to be Bill Harrison, who leads Steve Cho and Anu Natarajan at the moment. Harrison has a plurality of the vote at 35.28%, nearly 2,000 votes more than Cho. Apparently there is no runoff mechanism in Fremont. In addition, Vinnie Bacon, a known stadium opponent, won a City Council seat on Tuesday. [Fremont Argus/Chris De Benedetti]
  • El Paso voters approved a hike in the hotel tax to help fund a $50 million stadium, which will be the future home a relocated Padres AAA affiliate. [El Paso Times/Cindy Ramirez]
  • Reno’s City Council approved a restructuring of the financing for their AAA stadium. The new deal will use a combination of a general fund payment and revenues generated from the stadium. [Reno Gazette Journal/Brian Duggan]
  • San Diego elected a new mayor, Democrat Bob Filner. Filner has promised to be a tough negotiator with the Chargers in the latter’s pursuit of a new stadium. Already, some within the region are painting this as bad for the future of the team in San Diego. [NBC Sports/Mike Florio]
  • Bakersfield’s Cal League team, the Blaze, announced last week that they will build a replacement for antiquated Sam Lynn Ballpark in the south part of town on undeveloped land. The 3,500-seat stadium will have ancillary retail development on a total of 340 acres. Thankfully the ballpark will be oriented northeast, which will keep the sun out of batters’ eyes. When the new park opens, the oldest stadium in the Cal League will be San Jose Municipal Stadium. [Bakersfield Now/Staff]
  • Negotiations on TV rights for the college football playoff have begun, with ESPN initially offering nearly $500 million per year. [CBS Sports/Dennis Dodd]

More as it comes.

10.16.12
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SF shows Oakland how to get things done

The Warriors and the City of San Francisco are in the early stages in what will be a long, frequently uncertain struggle to get an arena built at Piers 30/32, and yet they’re already well ahead of Oakland in a few key ways. In the Chronicle article jointly written by John Coté and John King, the City/Port has already identified a financing mechanism for refurbishing the piers to the point that they could be used for the Warriors’ arena.

The team in return would build and pay for the arena and other buildings as well as the open spaces. It would be the team’s responsibility to strengthen the dilapidated piers, an endeavor that city officials say would cost an estimated $120 million.

The proposed deal calls for the city to reimburse the team up to that amount for infrastructure upgrades.

The city’s financial liability would be capped there even if the rehabilitation costs exceed that, said Jennifer Matz, the point person for Lee’s administration on the project.

All told, the arena and adjacent development are projected to cost $1 billion, city officials said.

The deal is essentially a reimbursement of the pier rehab costs (free land), while the Warriors sign a lease for up to 66 years. It’s the same kind of deal struck with the Giants. The Giants got development rights to the parking lots across Mission Creek from the ballpark. The Warriors would get dev rights to Seawall Lot 330, the parking lot across the street from the piers. The lot could hold a hotel or high-rise condos. Either way it’s easy to see the return. What’s impressive is that this was put together in less than six months. There’s much left to do: EIR, detailed costs sheet, W’s coming up with the money, state approval, etc. – but this is a significant step forward. It makes the deal easy to communicate and pitch to the public.

As for Oakland? Well, @EastshoreEmpire got to ask Mayor Jean Quan about Howard Terminal and Coliseum City over the weekend, and was nice enough to check with me to supply some Q’s. I said to ask about the two stadium projects, and here is the response:

Okay, then. The Port of Oakland will to handle it, from soup to nuts. Makes sense, since they’re a fairly autonomous governmental body. The Port also has some bonding capacity for a Howard Terminal infrastructure project and good bond ratings. How would that infrastructure be paid for? Would it be tacked onto the cost of the ballpark? Is there another development deal whose proceeds could pay it back, such as Seawall Lot 330 in SF? It doesn’t appear that there is.

Well, at least a Coliseum City EIR should be here before the end of the year.

10.14.12
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Boxer advocates for A’s to stay in Oakland, for W’s to leave for SF

Earlier this week, Let’s Go Oakland’s Doug Boxer led the charge to collect 10,000+ names on a petition asking the A’s to take down the tarps at the Coliseum for the playoffs. The move worked insofar as the team announced the takedown for potential ALCS and World Series games. Sadly, we know now that those games won’t be played. Despite that, the petition drive succeeded in getting attention for the tarps and the fanbase, although Boxer’s phrasing the petition as “giving paying fans access to playoff games” was a bit of a stretch.

It’s unlikely that Boxer will be leading any petition drives to keep the Warriors in town, since the San Francisco Business Times and the San Jose Mercury News both report that Boxer, in addition to his LGO duties, is a paid consultant to the Warriors for their waterfront arena project. Boxer is a former Oakland Planning Commissioner and is well connected, making his counsel pretty valuable for getting a complex project like an arena at Pier 30/32 off the ground.

Since the Warriors unveiled their plans in May, we’ve gotten a bunch of questions here asking why keeping the A’s in Oakland is such a passionate movement while the Warriors have gotten a collective shrug, relatively speaking. The A’s have only been in Oakland three years longer than the W’s. The W’s have had much more consistent attendance and TV ratings than the A’s. The answer comes in part from Boxer’s response to the SFBJ when they asked him about his seeming inconsistency in supporting the W’s move while fighting to keep the A’s from leaving.

“The entire Bay Area shares one NBA team, its fans are all over the region, and the best place for it to be situated is right in the middle of the whole region, at a spectacular waterfront location, at Piers 30-32, equally accessible from every city, north, south, east and west,”

It’s a very diplomatic non-answer, but it sheds light on a couple of possible explanations. We already know that the team’s identity is the bland “Golden State Warriors”, a name that has only succeeded in getting fans from other cities to ask where “Golden State” is located. The Warriors have generally refused to take on the Oakland moniker, though I’d heard that when the arena was renovated for the 1997 season, then-owner Chris Cohan was willing to consider the name change in exchange for significant lease breaks. Prior to Cohan, neither Franklin Mieuli nor the Dan Finnane/Jim Fitzgerald group wanted a name change. So while the W’s are literally the only NBA game in town, the fanbase is linked mostly to the W’s regional legacy and proximity rather than a city identity. When the team started marketing alternate jerseys featuring the old “The City” logo nearly a decade ago, the jerseys proved extremely popular.

Jason Richardson and Baron Davis before the “We Believe” season started.

In response to “The City”, “The Town” design clothing started showing up around Oakland. That right there is a microcosm of the issue we’re seeing. With the A’s, there’s a rivalry across the bay, a distinct identity, winning tradition, all things to rally around. The Warriors don’t have any of that. Even the one championship the Warriors got in 1975, the Coliseum Arena was booked for the NBA Finals, forcing home games to be played at the Cow Palace. There’s precious little to get riled up about. It shows in the lack of grassroots or other political movements to retain the Warriors like Let’s Go Oakland. The City of Oakland’s “Oakland Loves Its Sports Teams” recent week of events barely mentioned the W’s at all. There are no websites or Facebook pages devoted to such a cause, no outlets to foment this kind of anger against ownership. Sites like Warriorsworld and Golden State of Mind aren’t terribly concerned with the issue right now. Plus there is a decent-sized contingent of fans who would love to see the W’s in San Francisco to bring SF’s prestige to the team.

Back to the subject of Doug Boxer. How can his inconsistency be explained? He can use the whole “centrally located” line with the A’s just as he does for the W’s. The problem with that is that having two “centrally located” baseball teams in the Bay Area has caused them to repeatedly steal each others customers, as the A’s did in the late 60’s-early 70’s and the Giants did when AT&T Park was built. The Bay Area has grown to the north, south, and east with no proper adjustment by the teams to reflect that change, making it possible that this cycle will continue. Thing is, that’s not LGO’s argument. To Boxer and LGO, the A’s are first and foremost and Oakland/East Bay team. And that’s fine, though Boxer’s stance short circuits at least one of the arguments being espoused by those wanting to keep the A’s in town, including Oakland resident Katherine Brown in the Tribune:

I cannot bear the thought of the hundreds of jobs that people from Oakland could lose if the A’s ventured to another city. I cringe at the idea of a stadium remaining dormant for 9 months out of the year- filled not with thousands of cheering, Bernie-leaning fans, but only with the memories of what was.

Perhaps Boxer should discuss what will happen to the jobs that normally service 44 Warriors games at Oracle Arena, or the memories of the “We Believe” season or Run TMC. I’ve personally asked Boxer on several occasions to write a post here, on this blog. I promised that it would be unedited and that it could run without comments if he requested it. He came close to doing it once, but so far has chosen not to write a post. That’s fine, but I think he owes an explanation to a lot of people about this inconsistency – and it doesn’t have to be here. Doug Boxer is a genial guy. Jeffrey and I had lunch with him a while back and it was nothing but pleasant. Other than that experience, there’s a specific observation I can make about Boxer. About a year ago at what was probably the unveiling of the Coliseum City plan I talked to him at City Hall after the press conference. He told me that there are no innocents in this franchise politics business, and I agreed with him. I just didn’t realize back then that he was Exhibit A in showing how conflicted this whole mess is.

10.08.12
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Tarps will come off for LCS, not LDS (Update: Maybe not)

Update 5:20 PM: Tweets from the Chronicle’s Susan Slusser indicate that the team is still only considering removing the tarps and has not made a decision yet.

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Original post:

Official word came from the A’s today (via BANG) that the much-reviled upper deck tarps will stay put for the rest of the Division Series against the Tigers, due to the time required to remove them. If the A’s are able to mount a difficult yet not impossible three-game home sweep to advance to League Championship Series, the tarps will be removed.

Today at 2 PM, representatives of Let’s Go Oakland/RemoveTheTarps.com went to the A’s business offices and presented a petition containing reportedly several thousand names. The article linked above noted that seats for Tuesday had sold out and a handful remained for Wednesday, even though online lookups last week made it appear as though both games were unavailable. Tickets for a Game 5 in Oakland are still available.

Initially I had asserted that the A’s had kept the tarps on due to a MLB rule about static capacity until the World Series. I couldn’t be more glad to be wrong, and hopefully there’s some reconsideration about the tarps for next year.

Quick scheduling note: the Raiders had a bye over the weekend, and their next game is a road date at undefeated Atlanta. Their next home game isn’t until the following Sunday, October 21, which could create a conflict with a potential ALCS Game 7 against Baltimore. We can only hope that such a conflict becomes a reality. There has been no clarification as to whether all of the tarps would be removed as opposed to just the tarps for the original upper deck, but I figure that as long as that next Raiders home game is in play, might as well take care of all of the tarps instead of having to split the effort.