The Merc’s Denis C. Theriault has an article today on where San Jose stands with respect to site and process. As has happened on this blog, there’s a debate as to how aggressive San Jose should be in pursuing the A’s while the team is still focused on Fremont. Downtown area councilman Sam Liccardo appears poised to pounce on the chance, saying, “If we have an opportunity for a stadium in San Jose,” Liccardo said, “I will clear my desk.” We’ll see if that’s the quote of a champion for the cause, or Larry Reid.

As noted previously, San Jose has most (but not all) of the likely targeted Diridon South site acquired. An environmental impact report has already been certified. MLB’s territorial rights to Santa Clara County, which are owned by the Giants, would have to be acquired by hook or crook. Theriault also brings up the possibility of a referendum, to which as we all know by now Lew Wolff is allergic.

So then, leaving aside the T-rights for a moment (no one on the outside knows if/how it can be resolved, including me), how could the A’s and San Jose ensure that a vote would not be required? I’ll go back to the handy snippet of the city’s municipal code that addresses stadium construction:

4.95.010 Prohibition of the use of tax dollars to build a sports facility
The city of San José may participate in the building of a sports facility using tax dollars only after obtaining a majority vote of the voters of the city of San José approving such expenditure.

A “sports facility” for the purpose of this chapter is to be any structure designed to seat more than five thousand people at any one time for the purpose of viewing a sporting or recreational event.

“Tax dollars” for the purposes of this chapter include, without limitation, any commitment to fund wholly or in part said facility with general fund monies, redevelopment fund monies, bonds, loans, special assessments or any other indebtedness guaranteed by city property, taxing authority or revenues.

Nothing herein shall be construed to limit the city from allowing the construction of a sports facility funded by private investment.

If any provision of this chapter or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, then the remainder of this chapter and application to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

To add to that, City Attorney John Doyle put out a legal opinion about how the City should proceed with its land acquisitions and other ballpark-related work. This has to do with the code above, as the words “participate in the building of a sports facility” could mean many different things depending on interpretation. He laid out three rules:

• The City can pay for enviromental impact reports without needing a referendum.
• The City can acquire land from willing sellers without needing a referendum, as long it could be used for purposes other than a ballpark.
• Any eminent domain actions would require a referendum.

The second rule goes out the window when it comes time for the City to deal with the A’s in business terms. The City won’t be able to give the land away to the team, and it can’t give them a $1/year lease or something similarly sweetheart. The term “fair market value” gets tossed around and while real estate values may have dropped by as much as 20% from the initial acquisition, any larger discounts could also be considered a giveaway, triggering a referendum. Effectively, the A’s should count out any help other than the process-related work that has already been completed.

Theriault also mentions the height of the stadium. The SJ ballpark EIR was for a 45,000-seat ballpark with three decks and tall light standards. Cisco Field is only two decks and 32-35,000 seats. It can be 150 feet tall with light standards, or significantly less if the lights are incorporated into a roof structure.

Tonight another outreach meeting will be held at Weibel Warm Springs Elementary School in Fremont (thanks for the correction, Calvin). It is not known if representatives of the A’s will be present. The protesters will be out in force again.

Tomorrow is the SJ/SV Chamber’s breakfast (7:30 AM) event with Lew Wolff. The event will be held at the Adobe HQ’s Park Conference Room. Registration is closed. I’ll have a wrap-up after the proceedings.

On February 24, the City of Fremont is expected to have a session in which the ballpark project will be on the agenda. The A’s might file another application reflecting a shift in focus from Pacific Commons to Warm Springs.

Good news for A’s fans in Sactown. Talk station KTKZ will carry 127 games this season (no it’s not 162 but it’s an improvement nonetheless). KTKZ is a 5,000-watt, Class B station, so its reach is not that of a blowtorch. Still, it should cover the Sacramento market reasonably well at the very least (day/night coverage maps). I’ll throw this out to Sac readers: Can you get KTKZ, and how well does it come in?

Earlier this afternoon I was interviewed by Sarah Varney of KQED-FM’s The California Report. The interview was nearly 20 minutes long and ran the gamut of ballpark, site, and economic topics. I’m not certain if any of it will be used. Regardless, a podcast/stream link will be up for the story once I get it.

The Argus’ Matthew Artz has the details and the pictures of the 500-strong meeting and protest at Weibel Elementary in Fremont tonight. What was originally intended to be a small meeting of only 25 residents ended up becoming a big Q&A in the school’s cafeteria. If you attended, please post your takes of the session.

In an opposing view on the Argus op-ed page, former candidate for Fremont city council Vinnie Bacon takes on Dominic Dutra’s piece last week and raises questions about the proposal in the process.

Meanwhile, Bizjournals has word of the A’s making Warm Springs their main focus (the decoupled option). I may not have been clear about this before, so I’ll say it now: I don’t like the Warm Springs concept. Compared to the Pacific Commons plan, it’s rushed and poorly conceived. The fact that a specific parcel hasn’t been identified and a project level site plan isn’t available only feeds into area residents’ fears. If, as Lew Wolff says, the A’s are trying to earn the residents’ support, the effort so far is an epic fail.

This Thursday, the A’s are scheduled to have a meeting with 25 members of the Warm Springs community at Weibel Elementary, a school only 1/2 mile from the oft-speculated ballpark site. The fledgling Fremont Citizens Network plans to protest outside the meeting. Could get interesting.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of heading out to spring training in Arizona, you’ve probably come away from it feeling it was a great fan experience. Compared to the regular season, the Cactus League is more relaxed and the players more accessible. Unlike Florida’s Grapefruit League, most of the teams in the Cactus League are based in towns in and around the Phoenix area, making it easy to catch multiple games in a short timeframe (including doubleheaders). You might even be able to get a round of golf (or at least 9 holes) in before the customary noon tilt.

The ballparks may be the best part of spring training. They have around 10,000 seats, roughly the size of a AA or AAA park. Often, there is a small amount of chairback seating, most of the rest bleachers. A grassy berm frequently surrounds the outfield. There are no club seats and fans are encouraged to roam all over the grounds.

That isn’t to say there aren’t creature comforts. The newest ballparks have a full deck of luxury suites. Most ballparks also have expansive team practice facilities right next door. This season finally brings the Dodgers to the desert, after spending nearly 60 years at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, FL.

Given the state of affairs at the Oakland Coliseum, it may seem congruous for the A’s to have spent their last 30 springs at simple, ordinary Phoenix Municipal Stadium. Muni has been around since 1964, which makes it older than the Coli. Muni does not have a grassy berm. The last time I went in 2003, it didn’t even have an enclosed press box. In fact, it was the only Cactus League ballpark that had an open air press box, which sounds great except on those exceedingly warm days, when it had all the ambience of an average bus shelter.

So it’s not overly surprising that Lew Wolff’s looking for upgrades to the old girl. The strange part comes from the financing of renovations. Wolff knows that the City of Phoenix is strapped for cash much like any municipality in the nation. Instead of the normal “ask city for money, city raises bonds” deal typical of all spring training ballpark deals, he’s offering to pay for renovations upfront, and when the city gets back on its feet well enough to pay it back, it can do so. The A’s are locked in until 2014, so there’s no threat of them leaving immediately. Besides, where would they go? Tucson?

Wolff’s already done this “paying for renovations” type of thing only two years ago, when the Quakes paid for a bunch of improvements to SCU’s Buck Shaw Stadium in exchange for an interim lease while they figured out how/when to build their permanent stadium. So far, so good for all concerned.

While the A’s and Quakes are working on two different facilities with completely different sizes, layouts, and site plans, I’m starting to think that Wolff is trying to time the future construction of both venues in a manner that is more efficient in terms of labor. For instance, if Devcon is bidding on both facilities, with the plan to work on the Quakes stadium first (because it’ll take less time to build) and the A’s ballpark immediately thereafter, many of the specific phases of construction work can be packaged together. Wolff has been talking with local labor unions from nearly the beginning. Packaging the work is a great potential buy-in point for them (interesting note on union financing from Jay Hipps’ article).

Today’s Argus has an opinion piece by former Fremont councilman Dominic Dutra. In it he argues that a win-win solution is still possible. The crux of his argument:

The city should strive to honestly and forthrightly address these impacts while also citing the potential for growth in office, commercial, residential and other development.

While impacts are certain to exist, the A’s appear to be making significant and good faith efforts to address these concerns in order to mitigate them to an extent acceptable to most reasonable people.

Of equal importance, if traditional economic development patterns hold true, this planning effort should result in ample evidence that a stadium located adjacent to vacant land, major freeways and transportation hubs (such as the proposed BART station) would lead to significant economic growth for years to come.

Parallel with this planning effort, the city should perform a financial analysis to determine what the long-term financial benefits to the city would be in terms of additional property tax, sales tax, business tax, redevelopment tax increment, etc.

These future revenue enhancements then could be weighed against the cost of increased service demands.

Whether or not either of the alternatives is certified, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to revisit the economic impact report released 20 months ago. The economy has changed drastically downward in the last 6 months, and it would behoove all to see how projections may have changed in that timeframe. It would be helpful for baseball village supporters or those who may want to put a similar concept in place in the “downtown” Fremont area.

Over the weekend I got an interesting message from someone who worked for the City of Fremont. Apparently, there was a small push to get the city and the A’s to consider a Fremont ballpark site other than Pacific Commons and Warm Springs. The source even got a mock-up aerial photo showing where the ballpark would be placed:

For those who are not familiar with Fremont, the site is Central Park. The ballpark would be placed next to police headquarters, a short distance from the park’s Lake Elizabeth. It would displace a cluster of softball fields, which could conceivably be relocated. Central Park is located at the corner of Paseo Padre Parkway and Stevenson Boulevard, and is at the outer edge of what could be considered Fremont’s “downtown” area.

The major advantage to this site is its proximity to BART, 1/2-mile away. Since it’s on parkland, it also wouldn’t require private land acquisition. According to the source, there is plenty of potential for parking in the commercial area to the west. The site is actually along the path planned for the Warm Springs Extension. BART would tunnel under the park, including the lake.

Two issues immediately pop up regarding the site. It’s about 3 miles from either 880 or 680, and the drive is on what are currently congested, major arterial streets (Stevenson and Mission Blvd.). If you look closely at the broader view below, you’ll also see that anyone driving will be going through a whole mess of residential area, much of it single-family residences in the Irvington and Mission San Jose neighborhoods.

In the past on this blog, someone has brought up a similar concept. I had always considered it difficult because of the distance from the freeways. This concept died in City Hall despite some persistence. No explanation was given as to why.

What do you think of this concept? Does it solve the problems presented by the Pacific Commons and Warm Springs alternatives, or does it introduce more problems than it solves?

Picture your regular poker night. For me, the routine usually includes the consumption of craft brews and single malt scotch, followed by the near immediate loss of money. It’s a familiar scene, practiced nightly in homes all over the country.

Now imagine that scene with a bunch of multi-millionaires and billionaires sitting around the table. For some, their chips are the controlling shares of their respective teams. Another player has a stadium site and resources as his buy-in. They’re all playing a single hand. Some will fold early. Others will stay in a little longer. Someone will win, but he won’t win everything, just as the big winner in poker night doesn’t win all of the money. Someone else will do pretty well in the second spot, and someone will go home unsatisfied.

This analogy works best when considered in this context: No one has started playing yet and no one’s desperate. It’s important to remember this when trying to analyze the situation and then predict how it’s going to play out. For now, owners say the right things about staying in their current cities. The guy dangling a carrot in LA wants to deal with teams on his terms, instead of making the first deal that becomes available. Once you take this into account, and then factor in all of the different players and their unique situations, it becomes clear that the only prediction to make at this time is that we will probably be wrong.

Let’s look at the players to try to get an understanding about how they’ll do things. First, the team owners. I mentioned previously that these teams are not desperate. When a team is guaranteed $107 million in TV money every year, it’s clear that it can financially tread water until the next CBA at the very least. The NFL has even girded its loins by creating its own rainy day fund in case of a labor stoppage. The only instance in which an owner would get to that point of desperation would be that he was either so debt-ridden or lost so much money in the last year that it made “liquidating” the team a necessity. No current owner fits that description.

• Al Davis (potentially Mark Davis), Raiders. The team has been sniffing around the East Bay for a possible site, first by properly working with the Coliseum Authority, then by hiking out to Dublin to see if they were interested (they weren’t). Crossbay rivals have shown interest in a shared facility, but so far the Raiders clearly haven’t. That leads some to deduce that LA is the next logical step, except that logic does not necessarily apply in the franchise’s movement history – why should it now? Al spent over three decades wresting control of the franchise from others. It’s very difficult to see him allowing his family to piss away controlling interest in the team in one stroke. The team clearly has the advantage of an existing fanbase in SoCal. That may actually work against them in a sense, as LA investors may be more interested in bringing in a less difficult brand to town. For the time being, Al and Co. have done the best job of keeping their cards close to the vest.
• John & Jed York, 49ers. One of the problems that doesn’t get mentioned much is that the Yorks are from Youngstown, OH, which from a cultural bonding standpoint is as far away from the Bay Area you can get without having a drawl (John actually has one). Jed’s young urbanite image makes him more approachable than his dad, though there remain questions about whether or not the prince can handle the job. When compared to Ray Ratto’s musings about Mark Davis, there’s no doubt that Jed wants the throne. Like the Raiders, the Niners have been sniffing around SF and Santa Clara, with the potential for options elsewhere in the Peninsula (Brisbane). Unlike the Raiders, the Niners have publicly shown interest in staying indefinitely through either an extension at the ‘Stick or one of the new stadium options.
• Ralph Wilson, Bills. The 90 year old has scared fans in western New York by scheduling the occasional game in Toronto. Rogers Centre is too small to be a permanent NFL facility, and the Bills sell Ralph Wilson Stadium out consistently despite its small market status and inconsistent on-field performances. They’re getting over $7 million in annual subsidies from Erie County. They still get over 70,000 for each home game. A move would send thousands upon thousands of Bills fans to Niagara Falls in order to plummet to their demise. Now, it is true that if a team could be snatched from Baltimore or Cleveland, it could also happen to Buffalo. No argument there. It’s just that no one’s really getting hurt by the team remaining in Buffalo as it rides out the recession, so it makes more sense to stay away from the possible PR nightmare that would be associated with a Bills move.
• Zygi Wilf, Vikings. Like the previouslly mentioned owners, Wilf’s not a local. He’s from New Jersey. All of his attempts to get a stadium deal done so far have fallen miserably short, as the Vikes missed the cut to get financing along with the Twins and UofM football program. Comments likening the Vikes’ stadium project to federal stimulus were inappropriate. Options are simply running out. That could put him on the fast track to LA or to sell to someone else who could move the team to LA. Of the teams with uncertain stadium futures, Wilf is the least tenured. He has the least pull in his home market. Who knows if threats to “throw in the towel” are real or not, by verbalizing such sentiments the Vikes are going to this part of the playbook before anyone else.
• Wayne Weaver, Jaguars. Occasionally when we talk football on the blog, someone brings up the prospect of having a team play in the Central Valley, either Sacramento or Fresno. The idea is that the large Central Valley population should be sufficent enough to support a NFL franchise. The short schedule would seem to support this since there’s less individual financial outlay compared to baseball. Jacksonville, however, is a prime argument against the idea. Its metro is 1.4 million, though it is a high-growth market. Weaver isn’t entirely a local boy, but he moved the Jacksonville shortly after he was awarded the Jags. Recently, Weaver dismissed any LA talk, though the door may be open now that an option has materialized.
• Alex & Dean Spanos, Chargers. Again, here’s a case of a team being passed to an heir. Dean Spanos is supposedly buddies with LA’s Ed Roski, but the Spanos family doesn’t want to sell controlling interest. Meanwhile, the Bolts’ efforts to get something going in Chula Vista have stalled. LA would appear to be a very convenient move for them. After all, the team was originally the Los Angeles Chargers. The family has more firmly planted roots in Stockton, not San Diego. Slam dunk, right? Well, the numbers show that the Bolts don’t have to commit to anything right away. Of course, they’d want to make a move before another team does. Perhaps the process will give the Chargers first dibs. Then again, Al Davis may have something to say about that. Update: Looks like the Bolts just made the first move by hiring LA marketing firm Wasserman Media Group to expand the team’s reach into LA and Orange County.

That leaves the last guy at the table, the “outsider,” Ed Roski. Roski’s no stranger to sports, LA real estate, or politics. He has a small city with an approved EIR as his pocket aces. He can wait everyone else out if he wants. He can send out signals that end up playing interested teams against each other – not the NFL’s preferred modus operandi, but still possible. It would look like a reversal of the Montreal Expos’ move to DC, in which several candidate cities whined and dined MLB prior to the league showing the whole process to be a farce.

One thing that could dramatically alter the game would be the imposition of a deadline, especially in LA. I don’t expect this to happen as I’m certain the NFL and Roski have an unspoken understanding about how this should proceed. If one or more city-team relationships deteriorate, there could be some nudging towards desperation, though it wouldn’t be an overriding factor. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. In the end, there will be a clear loser in the city whose team leaves. The clear winner? The NFL, even if a team never moves to LA.

Note: I’m leaving out some additional teams who have made noises, such as the Saints and Rams. They would need to show renewed, consistent efforts (and failure) towards securing a new stadium deal to enter discussion.