Category Archives: Coliseum

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.

05.14.12
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SF officially pursuing Warriors + LA Live observations

According to Matier & Ross, the City of San Francisco has sent a letter to the Warriors urging the team to work with the city on a new arena deal in SF. A month ago it was revealed that W’s ownership was looking at Piers 30 & 32, which were removed from the America’s Cup waterfront development plan due to cost. Nothing has changed to indicate the site isn’t the frontrunner, though the team could still work out a deal with the Giants in the China Basin/Mission Rock area as a backup plan.

There are height restrictions that will come into play, just as they did with AT&T Park. Given the City’s political will that pushed through the America’s Cup EIR, I have to think the stars would similarly align for the Warriors’ arena efforts.

It’ll be interesting to see if this motivates Oakland to ramp up its Coliseum City efforts. Given the number of events the arena holds annually (150-200), I suspect that keeping the Warriors is practically the linchpin in making Coliseum City work. With AEG in the picture, it’s possible that they may have a business plan to make the arena work without a team, probably by retooling the arena as the Bay Area’s premier large concert venue, like Sprint Center in Kansas City. Of course, making it “work without a team” is a subjective matter, as KC is paying through the nose in debt service while AEG is the one making money in the partnership.

LA Live was built out over several years, with Staples Center and the convention center as anchors

Between the Stadia EXPO and lunch at Philippe’s, I walked around downtown. I’ve never done that in LA, since for me the only reason to be there is an event at Staples Center. Oakland is trying to pattern Coliseum City as something similar to LA Live. That’s a tough one to duplicate, as I explained a few weeks ago. LA Live is a complex of numerous live venues, a multiplex, two luxury hotels, restaurants, all of it adjacent to Staples Center and the Los Angeles Convention Center. There’s always a lot of activity, even when it isn’t apparent.

Setting up for the "Battleship" red carpet premiere

As I was walking through the area, a crew was getting the rigging set up for the LA premiere of the action blockbuster “Battleship” (yes, inspired by the board game). It was 2:30 PM and people were already camping out, getting prime spots to view Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker as they walked the red carpet. Oakland got its brush with Hollywood fame when the Moneyball premiere was held at the Paramount last fall. It shouldn’t expect much more than that. Later this week Staples will hold six playoff games in five four days, including a doubleheader on Saturday. That’s not realistic for any arena in the Bay Area.

So what is realistic? If there are three major arenas in the Bay Area thanks to the Warriors crossing the bridge, the Oakland/Oracle Arena will suffer. There simply isn’t enough demand to fill all three venues regularly, and one will eventually turn into the “budget” arena to remain competitive. The best thing Oakland can do is everything possible to keep the Warriors in the Coliseum complex. I’m not sure what that will take, and I’m not certain that will be enough to overcome the cachet of San Francisco. For Oakland’s sake, I hope they put their best foot forward.

Update 6:43 PM – Oakland has responded with a statement reiterating their commitment to the Warriors. Curiously, it’s the first real indicator that Oakland is pushing for a new arena to replace Oracle Arena, something that has not shown up in public documents to date. Oakland’s advantage versus SF is that they shouldn’t require a brand new arena. What incentive is there for the W’s to build in Oakland if they have to pay for it?

05.04.12
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The Knauss Plan, for now

Clorox CEO Don Knauss has been making the rounds, first on KQED yesterday, then on KNBR this morning, and finally on The Game during the lunch hour. All three are worth consuming, so if you haven’t done that yet, get through all three links, then come back and read the rest of this post. Cool?

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Okay. Knauss was very consistent with his messaging, which should be no big deal for a CEO of a high profile public company. The bullet points from his pitch were these:

  • Knauss and other East Bay business interests would like to meet with Lew Wolff and perhaps MLB to discuss options in Oakland.
  • If current ownership (Wolff/Fisher) continues to believe that there is no shot in Oakland, Knauss has put together a potential ownership group with members in the East Bay and others in SoCal that could buy the team, keep it in Oakland, and build a ballpark.
  • The group has identified three sites in Oakland. The preferred sites are the two on the waterfront: Howard Terminal and Victory Court. The Coliseum complex is the third site, though it is not “preferred”.
  • Financing for the stadium would be patterned after the model the Giants used to build AT&T Park. This includes the selling of seat licenses.

During The Wheelhouse, Mychael Urban pressed Knauss for answers about plan specifics and why the group has never directly contacted Wolff. Knauss replied that in the first case, he wanted to at least until after the May owners meetings (though he didn’t say anything would be released at that point), and in the second case, he “wanted to respect the process” MLB has put forth with the commissioner’s panel and so forth.

Well then, how does one go about making it work as the Giants did in China Basin? Thankfully, some very smart economists – John M. Quigley, Eugene Smolensky, and Stephen J. Agostini – have gone to the trouble of diagramming the process.  The flowchart below comes from a paper titled Stickball in San Francisco. It’s better known as the San Francisco Giants’ case study in the book Sports, Jobs, and Taxes by noted sports economists Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist. Ready? Here’s the secret recipe:

stickball

Step-by-step instructions on how to follow the Giants’ plan.

 

See? Easy peasy, no sweat right? Sure, there are a few things that are different, such as the need for a ballot measure. Oakland has long claimed that it doesn’t need one. That claim originated from two theories: that either Oakland could leverage redevelopment money or the powers within the Coliseum Authority (JPA). The latter still stands technically. The former? As long as Oakland’s pledge to take care of costs to put the site together stands, and those site costs keep rising (Victory Court was at last count $250 million), the Mayor and City Council are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing the voters that they shouldn’t vote on it. Even in the Coliseum’s case, going without a vote is inherently very risky because many of the people on the JPA board are standing office holders, such as Ignacio De La Fuente and Scott Haggerty. The stench of the Mt. Davis deal still hangs thick and heavy over the Coliseum, and the Authority is having trouble refinancing existing debt at the complex. Does anyone honestly think a $2+ billion megaproject like Coliseum City won’t go to a vote? The project is calling for its own streetcar! Maybe Knauss will don a Harold Hill costume the next time he does a press conference.

Then again, Knauss expressed a preference for one of the waterfront sites. We know that Victory Court is incredibly expensive and that some current landowners aren’t exactly going to roll over for a ballpark, even though they are great Oakland supporters. Maybe it’s time to revisit Howard Terminal one more time. It’s difficult to see how the Howard Terminal site would work. Matson, one of the key corporate supporters at yesterday’s press conference, consolidated operations at HT several years ago. There’s no readily available place to relocate Matson should they give up HT. I suppose it’s possible they could give up a portion, say 15 of 50 acres, in exchange for some kind of break from the Port. Then it just be a matter of dealing with the nearby power plant and prepping the site, which would require completely new pilings/foundation work (just like AT&T Park). Judging from the price tag for SF’s Piers 30 & 32, the cost would be around $80 million to start plus whatever the price is to compensate Matson. Whatever that total is, it’s probably cheaper than Victory Court. (Personally I’d pick HT just because of its proximity to Beer Revolution, but that’s just me.)

Finally, there’s the matter of seat licenses. Knauss and his partners think there’s a market there. Lew Wolff has said there isn’t a market from the beginning. Who’s right? I’ll defer to Wolff, who has access to the season and advance ticket sales rolls and has a pretty good idea of what people are willing to pay for tickets and premium offerings. The Giants’ $255 million financing package included $75 million from 15,000 charter seat licenses. That’s a $5,000 average upfront payment (available in installments, of course). Is the market really there as Knauss claims? Consider for a moment that the 49ers are selling seat licenses right now. The Raiders, if they get a new stadium built at the Coliseum, will require their own seat licenses. They may also be in the mix for whatever venue the Warriors cook up. The A’s would be entering the fray with, if using the formula the Giants used, 20% of the ballpark cost, or $100 million of seat licenses. The A’s don’t have the Giants’ 25,000-strong season ticket roll, or the reputation of having a large number of premium ticket buyers (Green Collar Baseball, anyone?). So you’d have three, possibly four teams selling seat licenses along with more expensive tickets. That’s a good way to oversaturate the East Bay, a market which has historically shown trouble maintaining solid fanbases unless the teams are ultra-successful. These financing terms don’t work unless great support can be maintained through thick and thin, or at least if some of the load can be sloughed off to corporate interests. Otherwise someone has to make up the shortfall, and as we saw from the OFMA debacle, the results can be disastrous. MLB and Selig know this, and they won’t be impressed just because someone says “we can work it out”. Selig will want to see pledges, upfront payments, real tangible proof that seat licenses can be supported and that there won’t be a shortfall that drags down the franchise. The CBA has a provision that the A’s have to come off revenue sharing by 2016, unless they’re still at the Coliseum. MLB is not going to approve a plan that creates huge risk for the team and causes them to stay on revenue sharing even with a new ballpark.

Perhaps the best predictor of how portable the Giants’ financing model is comes from a 2002 AP article which quotes former owner Peter Magowan and  Rob Tilliss, the JP Morgan consultant who put the deal together. Magowan:

“You cannot expect a private ballpark to be built in Cincinnati or Milwaukee, there’s not the economic base there. It’s not the Silicon Valley,” he says. “And we couldn’t do it today. We were very lucky in our timing we had low interest rates and a very good economy.”

Tilliss:

“It definitely is not a one-size-fits-all kind of model.”

Knauss’s argument is that economically, Oakland is closer to San Francisco or Silicon Valley than it is to Cincinnati or Milwaukee. I find that hard to believe.

05.03.12
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Part Deux

Shortly after Commissioner Bud Selig convened his three-man panel to figure out what to do with the A’s, all sorts of political machinations started happening. That included then-Oakland City Attorney John Russo (now City Manager of Alameda) penning a lawsuit threat against the A’s. I wrote back then:

What recourse do the Giants have, then? They can try to go to bat for Oakland, even though they have no history of doing that previously. Even though, in moving to China Basin, they’ve actively siphoned East Bay fans away from the A’s. Even though they’ve held a regional hegemony for decades. It wouldn’t be hard to posture themselves as saviors of baseball in Oakland – no matter how strange that sounds – as it wouldn’t require much effort and could be done in a sort of stealth mode. It wouldn’t be difficult to get a few letters from prominent pols in order, so no problem there either. The best part is for the Giants is that it works. It paints Wolff as a villain and Oakland as a victim, despite the backstory’s greater complexity.

Eerie, no?

Now we have word from the Trib that Jean Quan has met with Giants ownership. That wouldn’t be the first time. Perhaps it’s completely altruistic, in that they’re instructing her on how to put together an AT&T Park-style stadium deal, the kind that Clorox CEO Don Knauss is pursuing. (Knauss also had a lengthy interview with KQED.) Then again, this is the same Giants ownership group that may have pulled a power play to kill the Piccinini-Dolich group’s chances to buy the A’s, because the Giants didn’t want an Oakland-based group owning the A’s:

More likely, Piccinini suspects the San Francisco Giants ownership had a hand in convincing Selig to make sure the deal never materialized, especially since Selig has called the A’s move from Kansas City to Oakland “a terrible mistake.”

“I can tell you there’s an executive with the Giants, who shall go unnamed,” Piccinini said. “I ran into him at a Warriors game. He said, ‘I hear you’re getting involved with the Padres. We want you in San Diego; we just didn’t want you here.’ “

Speaking of Piccinini, he’ll be available soon if he wants to deal with the struggle to be an owner again. Piccinini is part of the Moorad group who were teased the Padres, only to have the rug pulled out from under them. Moorad won’t be able go after another team, knowing that there are permanent veto votes against him within the Lodge. Much of the rest of the Central Valley base of the ownership group should be available, and they could pull in another frontman – Andy Dolich, perhaps?

If Piccinini’s right, the Giants don’t care for the A’s in Oakland or anywhere else in the Bay Area. That makes it frustrating to see Quan consult with the Giants. The Giants aren’t doing the City of Oakland any favors. Just because they may have a somewhat allied interest (keeping the A’s out of San Jose) doesn’t mean they are allied.

If Quan’s smart, she’ll ask for some of the SF sponsors that Oakland will need because as much as the East Bay wants to puff its chest out , the pickings are slim. The Chron 200 is an annual list of the Bay Area’s largest independent, publicly-traded companies by revenue. Generally these are companies with revenues over $100 million annually. Some private companies, like Bechtel, or subsidiaries, like Matson (Alexander & Baldwin), and nonprofits (Kaiser Permanente) are excluded. Distributed by region, San Francisco has 19 of 200, with 5 in Marin County and 26 in San Mateo County. Santa Clara County has 102, or 51% of the list. Oakland has 3 companies on the list, the East Bay in total has 38.

Chron 200 list by city/county-region

If you combine SF, San Mateo, and Marin Counties, you get 50 companies. That’s not significantly greater than the East Bay’s 38 – or 40 if we include Kaiser and Matson. Straight up it would appear that there’s enough corporate strength in the East Bay to make a privately financed, $500 million ballpark happen. But the Giants’ argument for years has been that they needed the South Bay to finance AT&T Park. If that’s true then there’s a logical incongruence at work. Either the South Bay was required and there’s no other way but to include them, or the South Bay wasn’t required and the strength of the West Bay is enough. So which is it?

Also, check out the imbalance of companies in the Giants’ designated territory and the A’s. The Giants have over 75% of the Chron 200. The A’s have less than 20%.

The secrecy of the mystery ownership bidder is also a bit baffling. Lew Wolff has said that no interested party has asked him directly about selling the team. Instead, whoever’s interested has chosen to use back channels to engage Wolff – once. What is the point of that? If the East Bay coalition’s goal is to first work with the current ownership group to develop a plan to keep the A’s in Oakland, why have they never directly called Wolff once? They’ve gone semi-public twice in the last several months to indicate there’s an ownership group in waiting. Seems to me it’s a lot harder to put together a press conference than to call Wolff or arrange a meeting. For whatever reason, they haven’t done the latter. In the last comments thread, a question was posed, “Why doesn’t Lew listen to what these guys have to say?” I think the answer is that they have to present something to the man first. They’ve presented a plan to MLB three years ago that went unanswered. If they want to work with Wolff, they might want to first try to, you know, work with Wolff instead of posturing. It’s somewhat embarrassing that Mayor Quan has probably spent more time talking the Giants brass than the A’s. If A’s ownership is the enemy, don’t pussyfoot around it or hedge. Declare it and get to work. Otherwise it’s just another exercise in scoring PR or political points. And the only real winner in the end is the Giants.

04.25.12
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A’s not on May owners meeting agenda

Small item in John Shea’s report today:

Managing general partner Lew Wolff, who attended Tuesday’s game, conceded that the A’s stadium issue won’t be on the agenda at the May 16-17 owners’ meetings, and he wouldn’t guess whether it’ll be included at the next owners’ meetings in August.

As long as Bud Selig keeps leaving the A’s and Wolff twisting in the wind like this, he’s the one who’s going to have to fix it. The A’s lease runs out after 2013. Selig should have to be the one who negotiates any short or long-term Coliseum extension, not Wolff. The Coliseum Authority and Wolff aren’t exactly buddies these days. Then again, Wolff and Selig supposedly are. With friends like these…

04.24.12
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AEG looks to add NorCal to its empire

A very clever strategy is emanating from facility operator Anschutz Entertainment Group. It’s a two-pronged affair based in Sacramento and Oakland. The movement draws upon what can be considered serious deficiencies in both markets in their inability to attract certain types of events and visitors. Most importantly, it offers hope to both cities, which are both in danger of losing their respective pro sports franchises.

For San Jose Earthquakes fans, AEG may as well be a four-letter word. The company owned the Quakes franchise as part of its initial MLS holdings. When AEG was unable to forge a new stadium deal in San Jose, the team was abruptly moved to Houston in 2006, making the parent company persona non grata in the South Bay. AEG came back in 2008 with a small move, taking over for Live Nation as the operator of The Warfield in SF.

In Sacramento, AEG is seen as the facilitator for the Railyards Entertainment and Sports Complex. The backing out by the Maloof family has for now killed the plan, though it’s possible that AEG could resurface as a key driver with or without the basketball Kings. Should Sacramento lose the Kings, they’d have the option of building an on-spec arena, similar to former Kings home Kansas City when it built the Sprint Center. That’s a far different scope from Oakland, which is looking to keep three franchises at home via at least two new venues plus a convention center and hotel. Oakland’s model is the AEG-run LA Live complex and LA Convention Center.

AEG is the premier arena operator in the country, with Staples Center as its crown jewel. It has the experience to make cities listen when they come calling, and the weight to make cities cower when threatening to attract a team, as evidenced by AEG’s NFL pursuits. While dangling its own success in front of potential suitors, it forges ahead with its plans to expand its SoCal empire by working on a football stadium-cum-convention hall. While not a short-term likelihood, the threat and possibility remains into the future, and would hugely benefit AEG in two key ways: it would make LACC more competitive with San Diego and Las Vegas for conventions, and it would create the ultimate flexibility for all of its LA venues, which happen to be within blocks of each other.

AEG's Downtown LA operations provide great flexibility and huge traffic

To understand what make LA Live unique, it’s important to look beyond Staples Center. LA Live has two venues of its own: the 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre and 2,500-person Club Nokia, both of which are essentially auditoriums. They slot in below Staples Center for booking concerts, which is necessary because Staples is home to three pro teams and at least 126 home dates per year. In most other cities an arena operator would use a curtain system to reduce capacity at a large arena. AEG doesn’t need to do this sort of “half house” setup with Staples much, instead it can push a show to the Nokia Theatre. Staples famously hosts the Grammys every year, while Nokia hosts the Primtetime Emmys, MTV VMAs, and the finale of American Idol. Club Nokia mostly serves as a venue for up-and-coming and smaller acts. The Convention Center churns plenty of day business and drives demand to local hotels. Both convention and entertainment visitors benefit local restaurants and bars, some of which are in LA Live. It boils down to the equivalent of the population of the Bay Area visiting downtown LA every year, spread out among 2.5 events per day.

Oakland wants this kind of traffic, so they’re looking to drop SMG like a bad habit then partner up with AEG now and into the future. It’s going to be difficult to pull off. A third of AEG’s visitors come from the convention center. To build a competitive center in Oakland, the facility would have to surpass Moscone, San Jose, and Santa Clara in terms of space. It would require at least one, probably two anchor hotels attached to the convention center. A thriving commercial and retail district wouldn’t hurt attracting people and conventions. Oracle Arena is a good, modern arena thanks to the 1996 renovation, and AEG is promising to maximize utilization of the arena to its full potential and provide consulting for the Coliseum City concept.

The inherent risks are timing and cost. AEG built Staples Center prior to the 1999-2000 NBA and NHL seasons. The Nokia Theatre didn’t open until 2007, after Staples as AEG responded to market conditions. Club Nokia opened the following year. For AEG to be that involved and willing to invest in Oakland, it would have to recognize similar market potential and a chance to dominate the market the same way it does in LA. The arena part will be difficult to pull off as Sharks Entertainment will always be competitive with HP Pavilion. The Warriors could build an arena in SF, relegating Oracle Arena in the process. Another Planet Entertainment controls several smaller theaters throughout SF and the East Bay, providing natural competition in the process. There is no proper 7,000-seat auditorium in the Bay Area, pushing shows of that size to the arenas unless AEG sees fit to build one (the Bill Graham Civic, as historic as it is, is really a gym). Plus there is no shortage of 2,500-seat venues in the Bay Area: Fox Oakland, Paramount, Warfield, SF Masonic Auditorium, and the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. AEG isn’t going to bring a fully-formed Coliseum City on Day 1. It would have to be phased in over many years, with no guarantee that much of what’s being promised will be built.

For AEG, the best part is that in making these deals, it’s getting exclusivity for usually a year or more for a very small price while making a little money to boot. AEG has been willing to invest in venues to some degree as it did with Sprint Center. However, Phil Anschutz is not about giving away the farm, as witnessed by his hardball dealings with the NFL and the contribution cap AEG paid for Sprint Center. Maybe something will happen, maybe not. Either way AEG is the first one in and keeps competition out, while getting a better understanding of how to exploit a particular market. As great as LA Live is, it shouldn’t be considered easily repeatable. Sprint Center is a more realistic and perhaps cautionary example. The arena is the second busiest in America according to Pollstar and is highly profitable by AEG’s standards, though it’s a $13 million annual drain on the city’s coffers. Sprint Center is well integrated with KC’s $850 million Power and Light District development. There remains no major pro team. AEG appears to be happy with whatever business model works best for it whether it’s three teams or none, civic pride not being a great priority.

One other curiosity about AEG: as interested it is in the NFL and as extensive as its holdings are in hockey (LA Kings), basketball (Anchutz’s minority share of the Lakers), and soccer (LA Galaxy, Houston Dynamo), there’s one glaring omission on its resume: baseball. Does AEG care about baseball at all? It doesn’t operate any ballparks, nor does it own a minor league team. It doesn’t seem to have any relevant experience with baseball. Its new AEG Sports division has no baseball interests at all. Judging from AEG’s track record, I have to think its priority list would look like this:

  • Concerts
  • Soccer
  • Conventions
  • Hockey
  • Football
  • Basketball
  • Baseball?

Judging from that, maybe AEG would be more interested in bringing a MLS team to Oakland than in keeping the A’s there. In regards to the A’s, AEG’s presence is similar to Larry Ellison in that certain factions would love for either of them to be interested in the A’s, but neither has shown any sign of interest to date. A clause in the Coliseum management contract dictates that AEG can’t talk to teams about moving, which I suppose might have teeth if a team were bound to a long-term lease (only the Warriors are). It gives a new twist on the Coliseum City exercise being a feasibility study.

04.19.12
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A Streetcar Named Aspire

Today the commissioner said that the A’s need a new stadium… and that’s about it.

In Billy Beane’s weekly slot on The Drive, he mentioned that the team/ownership is at “the end of the process” and that regarding the recent news “there seems to be a lot of smoke, and where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Not exactly revealing, but at least it lines up with Selig trying to broker a deal between the A’s and Giants.

Added 8:50 PM – Joe Stiglich has more on the negotiations that may or may not be happening that no one officially wants to talk about. 

I did find out something revealing about the Coliseum City project. Turns out that as part of the planning for the project, the City is looking at putting in a streetcar or trolley. The streetcar is not part of the Oakland Airport Connector, which is currently under construction. It wouldn’t go downtown or to Jack London Square. Instead it would be a very short trolley, running around one mile in length between the Coliseum BART station and the Edgewater area on the other side of the Nimitz. I’ve racked my brain and haven’t heard of a streetcar or trolley built for what is primarily a sports complex.

I can only assume that the project’s principals and supporters want this streetcar to improve the project’s attractiveness as a potential corporate and commercial hub, since it would provide a direct link to BART and the other parts of the Coliseum City. What’s not clear is why they’d choose a streetcar. A people mover like the Airport Connector would make more sense. An extension to the Airport Connector from the BART terminus through the complex (creating a “U”) would make the most sense, except that station’s design (see pic below) prevents that kind of alignment.

The Airport Connector's alignment runs perpendicular to San Leandro Street and the BART alignment, making it difficult to extend and turn the system.

The crazy thing about this streetcar idea is that it creates a third, disjointed transit option in this relatively small area. Meanwhile, there are far better places to use resources on a streetcar project, such as Broadway (which is getting yet another separate study). Clearly, if the streetcar option gains traction it’ll add a quarter-billion to the project’s $2 billion price tag. Yet it might be considered a necessity if the City wants to lure a big corporate fish.

As Marin County rejected George Lucas’s long-gestating studio expansion project and then ran back to Lucas in desperation only to be rejected by the filmmaker, Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan wrote an open letter to Lucas encouraging him to take a tour of the city. Coliseum City has to be at or near the top of places the City would offer to Lucas. Now, it’s hard to envision any locale in Oakland comparing to the pristine Skywalker Ranch or the wonderfully preserved and adapted Letterman Center at the Presidio. And Oakland’s already tried to push Coliseum City in its bid for the Lawrence Berkeley Lab expansion and lost. But if you’re gonna dream big, you might as well go fully preposterous. I know of at least one reader, native Oaklander, and Lucasfilm employee who would weep tears of joy if Oakland got Lucas’s blessing to build the new studio in Oakland.

I couldn't resist.

04.15.12
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Dedication of a NRAF

Today we have a guest post from Stomper00, who invited me to last Monday’s game. He told me of his upbringing as a NRAF (non-resident Athletics fan), and I found it so compelling that I asked to him to write something about it that I could put in a guest post. I think you’ll find it interesting too.

– Ed./ML

2012 is my 25th year as an Oakland A’s fan and the start of my first year as a resident of the Bay Area. I was born and raised in the LA area and for the last five years I lived in Orange County. I knew that I loved baseball once I started playing in little leagues but I never grew up as a fan of the Dodgers or Angels because they never really appealed to me for some reason. In 1985, shortly after I started playing baseball, I started to collect baseball cards like most kids. It was a cool way to learn the sport, and where the other teams were located. Plus it was a sneaky way to score a stick of gum. During the 1987 season, I accumulated quite a few cards so I started to organize them by team. There was pretty much an equal distribution of cards for each team except for one, the Oakland A’s. For whatever reason, I had a significantly greater amount of A’s cards than any other team.  At the same time, I also noticed that their team colors were not like everyone else, with their standard green and gold colors. So I decided that I was going to be an Oakland A’s fan because they were different. The timing was perfect too; the A’s started to dominate MLB shortly thereafter.

In 1988 I was kind of excited to see the Dodgers in the World Series against the Athletics. Game one was a game that I would never forget. We had a family gathering at my parent’s house and I was playing hide-and-seek outside with my cousins while my uncles were watching the game. I really wasn’t paying too much attention to the game but I would check in every so often to find out the score or to watch the Dodgers come up to bat. I came in just in time to see Kirk Gibson hit that infamous home run and I was jumping up and down in excitement because I was rooting for the home team. That’s when one of my uncles said “Hey, I thought you were and Athletics fan.” I replied “No, I’m an A’s fan.” He started laughing and said, “They are the same team!”…I went from pure joy to confusion, shock, anger, and sadness in a matter of minutes. I never realized that the A’s and Athletics were one and the same. All the baseball cards I collected at the time said “A’s” on the cards. I had a few “Athletics” cards but I just filed them away with the rest of my other non-A’s cards. At the time, there was no Internet or MLB packages on TV to watch out of market games, so my only exposure to A’s info was the league standings in the LA Times or whenever they came to town to play the Angels. Even today whenever I see that Gibson home run I can still feel that emotional rollercoaster inside me.

I’ve seen the A’s countless times in Anaheim since 1989, but I never got a chance to see a game at the Coliseum before Mount Davis was built, it’s something that I’ll always regret. I told myself that once I was old enough I would drive up to Oakland to watch a game to cheer for my team. My first A’s game in Oakland was Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS where Derek Jeter made that crazy play. It was a really cool experience; I woke up around 4:30am for no reason on game day thinking that I should be at the game so I got ready and drove up to Oakland with nothing planned out. Once I arrived, I got a hotel room near by and scalped a ticket to get in. I was in awe because I was finally in a place where there’s so many A’s fans and I could feel comfortable cheering for my team, to be in a place where so much history took place, and finally a place where I could stock up on A’s gear. Being from SoCal, it’s pretty hard to find anything A’s related.  It would have been a perfect day if only Jeremy tried to slide home. Since 2001 I’ve been to 45 home games, sometimes with friends but mostly solo. I’ve even drove up a few times for afternoon games and drove back home to SoCal immediately after the game was over and would listen to Chris Townsend at the start of my long drive home until I lost the signal. Unfortunately the signal usually lasted about 15-20 minutes for me. Now that I actually live here, I’ll be at the majority of the games during the season.

Most of the games I’ve been to were generally sell-outs because it was either a playoff game or there was some special event or giveaway at the game. I know that I’m an exception to the rule, but I never really understood why attendance was/is low at the Coliseum. You can say its ownership (Maybe, but I disagree for the most part), the Coliseum (One day we will all miss her), the team on the field (We’ve had some great ones) or anything really but does it really matter? This is our team and it’s our responsibility to support them through think and thin! When I hear that some people don’t want to drive 40 miles to see a game I roll my eyes…try 830 miles round trip! I hate seeing a division within the A’s fan base because of the stadium situation. Personally, I would love nothing more for the A’s to stay in Oakland but given the possible scenario of the team moving to San Jose or moving out of state, which would you rather have? It took me 22 years to find my way up here and the last thing I want is for my team to move out of the Bay Area! They say you never know what you have until you lose it, I know what I have now that live here and will cherish every moment until the stadium decision is made. I only wish that everyone else could see it like me.

Go A’s, Go Athletics!!!

Stomper00

04.14.12
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Changes at the Coliseum

Throughout the first homestand, I walked around the Coliseum to take stock of any changes in the stadium. After Wednesday’s game, I fired off an email to A’s VP of Stadium Operations David Rinetti to see if I missed anything. Here’s what I saw:

  • New ticket kiosks on BART Plaza and outside Gates C & D
  • Speakers above plaza level seats
  • New signage (navigation, ads)
  • Paint along concourses, especially the bleacher concourse
  • New food items such as the pork nachos

Rinetti added that in the future the West Side Club will feature a game-used merchandise booth, which sounds cool. As to the scoreboards that were potentially going to be replaced? “Not on the schedule,” according to Rinetti.

04.11.12
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Last night’s crowd

When the weather turns bad, it makes hard core night (Mondays) seem like a piece of cake.

From Chris Townsend's (@townsendradio) Twitter feed last night

The announced paid attendance was 10,670. Obviously the number of people that actually showed up was only a small fraction of that. Blame it on a number of things: rain, ownership, team, stadium, whatever. The real implications of something like this happening are that teams lose money and fanbases look bad. 8,000 no-shows equates to $100,000 in lost concessions revenue. The walk-ups that didn’t occur and the parking passes that weren’t sold also add up. And it makes us look like we’re a bunch of fair weather fans, literally. Are we? I’ll be there today.

One other thing – Tuesday’s are pretty much out for me, so yes, I was secretly rooting for a rainout so that I could see a double-dip today.