We’ve heard this one before. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale was on The Chris Townsend Show with guest host Brodie Brazil on Monday night. He indicated that something will happen in August, when the next owner’s meetings are slated to be held in Denver. Nightengale claims that if a vote isn’t held (Wolff has asked for one as a procedural matter), Bud Selig will rule on the matter. Nightengale noted that he has been wrong about this before (as have I), and at this point – 40 months into the debate – there’s little evidence to indicate that this will be resolved in short order.
The big admission of this apparent deadlock is that when asked about the situation during a press conference prior to the All Star Game, Selig replied that both teams still have numerous questions to answer. Seriously? At 40 months? Surely, the commissioner and his exploratory committee have had ample time to look at every option, look under every rock, comb every bit of the Bay Area landscape. Admittedly, there are plenty of questions for the contingent cities as to how they’ll complete the deals that will be necessary to host a new ballpark. Those issues aren’t under the Giants’ and A’s control, and they can’t see proper resolution until a decision on how to progress is made. Whichever way it goes, one team (and some city) is going to be upset. The longer this gets delayed, the more expensive the eventual solution becomes – whether it’s in Oakland, San Jose, or elsewhere.
Then again, why bother? It’s not as if the A’s matter to baseball. Inertia, thy name is Selig.
Category Archives: Oakland
The A’s showed up. How about you?
Here the green-and-gold heroes sit, winners of 9 of the last 10, only 1/2 game from the last playoff spot in the American League. It’s all very impressive for any number of reasons: young pitching, young sluggers becoming professional hitters, nearly every move made by the A’s front office paying off so far. Despite this, there’s a little hesitance going into this week’s six-game homestand, with two games against the West-leading Rangers and four against the East-frontrunning Yankees.
The Yankees series is always good for near-sellouts every game, and the Rangers bandwagon has been filling the Coliseum pretty well lately. But who cares about the other team’s fans? We should be filling up the stadium. Tuesday night’s game is, as usual, a free parking night. The A’s deserve a heroes’ welcome. The pitching is excellent even with Brandon McCarthy out. Numerous guys are hitting homers like it’s batting practice. The team has budding stars who are all young and under control, and the team is flat out fun to watch with no big money egos to ruin a fan’s enjoyment. We should have 20,000 fans showing up on Tuesday. I fear we won’t come close.
There will be people who cite their dislike of Lew Wolff, John Fisher, Billy Beane, or whatever’s convenient to not go. They’ll claim they were the biggest A’s fans during the Moneyball years, the Haas era, during BillyBall, or all the way back to Charlie Finley. Stop with the excuses, put your differences with ownership aside, and go to the games. The tickets are inexpensive. There’s no better weather to watch baseball than at the Coliseum in July/August. The team is pretty damned entertaining. Most importantly, this scrappy group of A’s consistently of mostly young guys and a mix of veterans notices when we show up. En masse. They don’t play in a vacuum, and as much as they appreciate the small-but-loyal crowd that shows up currently, they appreciate it even more when the place is packed. With A’s fans. All of the experts and columnists had this team buried in March. Personally, my expectations were low. This team deserves for us to buy tickets, supporting them, cheering them on with full voices, all of our energy, every breath. Whether the A’s are buyers or sellers or both doesn’t matter. We have a core to build on for years, and they’re not going anywhere for a while. That’s what matters. So enjoy it.
The A’s showed up this year. How about you?
…
Off the soapbox. The maximum possible attendance for this week is a little over 210,000. It would be unrealistic to predict that they’ll hit that target. But they could pull healthy crowds for the entire week. If the A’s average 22,000 for Texas and 32,000 for the Yankees, the total attendance for the homestand will be 172,000. Should they hit that mark, the team’s attendance in Oakland (not counting the Japan games) will surpass 1 million fans in 48 home dates. That’s five games ahead of last year’s pace and seven better than 2010. Can we hit that figure? I think we can. I’ll be there for the first three games of the homestand, before going on a weekend camping trip. Let’s do this.
News for 7/4/12
Stuff to read while you’re getting the BBQ going.
- Late Tuesday, the 49ers successfully fought to keep $30 million in redevelopment funds out of the County’s hands until at least July 27, when another hearing will be held to determine the fate of the money. While the team was lawyered up, the County’s oversight board had no legal representation for the hearing in Sacramento. The issue is whether or not the $30 million (originally $42 million) at stake is considered an “enforceable obligation” between the 49ers and the City of Santa Clara. If it is ruled an enforceable obligation, the money should be safe to use for the stadium. [San Jose Mercury News/Mike Rosenberg & Steve Harmon]
- AEG pulled out of a plan to help build and run a new Sacramento arena without the Kings as a tenant, effectively killing the plan outright. The next move is the Maloofs’, as they could apply to move from Sacramento before the end of the 2012-13 season (which is entirely expected). Will Mayor Kevin Johnson concede defeat and push for a different initiative, such as a stadium? Perhaps, but the teams that KJ would be interested in (A’s, Raiders) would have to show their own interest. So far they haven’t. [Sacramento Bee/Ryan Lillis]
- Oakland’s Uptown was profiled in an All Things Considered segment as a positive example of how redevelopment can revitalize a neighborhood, while the death of redevelopment could halt further progress. [NPR/Richard Gonzales]
- Another article from the Chronicle takes a stab at figuring out what will happen to Oakland’s three pro sports franchises. As usual, Mayor Jean Quan lacks specifics, instead using grandiose phrases such as “Staples on Steroids” to describe the Coliseum City project. She also seems to be gravitating further towards a retractable dome concept-cum-convention center, which new partner AEG would certainly champion. Careful hitching your horses to the AEG wagon, Madam Mayor. As we saw in Sacramento, AEG will ditch a city posthaste if they see no future there. Plus, all of the secrecy behind Quan’s supposed “secret committee” working on Coliseum City doesn’t help when it comes to taking her seriously, as she recently took a huge hit to her credibility with new data released about her “100 blocks” policing plan. [SFGate/Vittorio Tafur, Matthai Kuruvila]
- Cities are looking for ways to resurrect redevelopment, and one popular one emerging is the establishment of revitalization zones via state legislation. The zones would have similar tax increment and bonding powers as redevelopment agencies did, plus they would be enshrined by state law. SF Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is pushing for the creation of an infrastructure financing district to serve the America’s Cup development along the waterfront. The problem with this method is that eventually any law passed by the Legislature still has to go to Governor Jerry Brown for approval. Brown has been steadfast in opposing any kind of old-school-style redevelopment for the past year, making it hard to see him signing any legislation that could undermine his redevelopment clawback efforts. [Sacramento Bee/Dan Walters]
- Added 4:30 PM – Today’s the halfway point of the home schedule. Because the first two home games were played in Japan, the Attendance Watch box on the right has shown multiple representations of attendance, one with the Japan games included and one without. Projected over the rest of the season, the total 81-game attendance (with Japan) would be 1,733,521. The total 79-game attendance (without Japan) would be 1,599,938. ESPN and other statistics aggregators usually include the Japan games in their attendance tables. Based on games sold, the A’s consider today’s game #39. Attendance tends to pick up throughout July and into August, just before the school year begins, then drops off, the variance depending largely on the team’s record. At this juncture, three teams already have surpassed the A’s projected season attendance (both figures): Philadelphia, Texas, and the NY Yankees.
More as it comes.
Missed opportunities
Many, many years ago, just a few months after I launched this blog, I pitched this idea:
View south towards Lake Merritt from the intersection of 27th and Broadway
I wrote to then-and-still-current Oakland Councilmember Nancy Nadel (District 3) about the potential of this site. After a bit of nagging on my part, I was told that other development was “in the pipeline”. Disappointed, I looked elsewhere.
The ballpark site was considered the southern end of Broadway Auto Row. In 2005, the City of Oakland was pushing to move several car dealerships out of the district, gambling on the idea that the area could become the city’s long lost retail mecca. The dealerships were meant to move to the Coliseum area (some did) or the Army Base (they didn’t). Now Broadway Auto Row sits either empty or with car dealerships still there, a fair albeit underwhelming use of land in the city’s urban core. It’s an area begging for redevelopment, but as a result of scuttling of the institution, it lacks the funding needed to make the sea change happen. A feature in the SF Public Press by Alexis Fitts chronicles much of the failed planning and good intentions.
There were dreams to build a retail district to rival Union Square, even as Emeryville ate Oakland’s lunch. Grandiose plans for a over 1 million square feet of retail with Nordstrom and Macy’s as anchors never materialized. It occurred to me that these massive scale plans from several years ago had much of the same lofty language being used now for Coliseum City. Oakland’s used JRDV as a master plan consultant back then, and they’re using the same firm for Coliseum City now. Sub in the Raiders, A’s, and Warriors for Nordstrom, Macy’s, and Target, and it’s very similar: big dreams, little realism.
Sights have shifted to include more housing in the plan, which is fine in that it’s in keeping with the region’s growth. The retail strategy could shift to a focus on hipsters with stores like American Apparel (the only A.A. in the East Bay is in Berkeley). Without public incentives to lure retailers in it’s a very tough sell.
It’s a similar tough sell for the pro sports franchises. During the S.O.S. meeting on Monday, I brought up the potential of infrastructure finance districts. They’re redevelopment in the new era, with less money to throw around and lower expectations in keeping with less money. I reported last week that the City of San Jose approved an extension of the Downtown Property and Business Improvement District. The PBID pays for Groundwerx, a downtown beautification program that cleans up litter and sidewalks, removes graffiti, covers utility boxes in vinyl wraps, and provides a welcome/concierge element to downtown with the crew of Segway-riding, neon-clad employees. Groundwerx will cost $2.2 million for 2013 and is worth the cost, as evidenced by the 91% approval among downtown landowners.
Before Oakland reaches for the stars again and starts dreaming about being San Francisco, it might want to see what’s feasible within city limits. If it wants to make Oakland more attractive to businesses and consumers, it should make downtown/uptown actually visually attractive to those contingents. This weekend, there are little gymnasts and their parents walking around downtown SJ, and the place looks clean, welcoming, and hospitable. Even with that image boost, there’s little hope for great retail there. Valley Fair and Santana Row have ruined downtown SJ for retail for next several decades at the very least, thanks to their free parking and safe, sealed environments. Whether Oakland goes mainstream or hipster or both, it’s going to take a long time to develop any significant retail in downtown or the Coliseum area. New measures are the new skin-in-the-game.
As for Broadway Auto Row, it’s too bad no one ran with the ballpark idea. There weren’t too many landowners. All it needed was a champion within City Hall.
Save Oakland Sports meeting 6/25/12
I headed up the Nimitz to attend the biweekly Save Oakland Sports meeting at the Red Lion Hotel on Hegenberger. The meeting ran two hours and was, despite the organization’s rather young state, quite well run. S.O.S. is really just getting started with its various activities, so I’m going to refrain from appraising their efforts. I can tell you that it looks like an eager, resourceful group and broad coalition, though they’re aware that Oakland and the greater East Bay are under pressure to deliver for the three teams without much time to do so.
If you want to know more about what S.O.S. is doing, I suggest you attend one of the meetings. Again, they’re held at the Red Lion Hotel in Oakland near the airport, though the venue could change from time to time. If you’re pro-Oakland, I urge you to attend. The group needs people as a show of strength, and they’re soliciting creative ideas to help bolster support for the teams and new venues. I’ll even go so far as to say that if you are pro-Oakland and you’re not attending, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
At the previous meeting, Mayor Jean Quan gave her thoughts on the Coliseum City plan. One notable thing I picked up was that she said that the Pier 30/32 rebuild would cost $400 million, not the roughly $100 million many had estimated previously. I don’t know where that figure comes from, but it seems inordinately high. We’re talking about removing old piles from the bay, driving new ones, and building a 13-acre concrete deck on top of it. It doesn’t matter that much if you’re building on the water or on mud next to the water because around here that mud is a huge liquefaction risk (ironically, partly due to pile driving). I’ll try to verify this in the coming days.
Now, if you’re wondering how I was treated, I’ll put it this way: When I introduced myself, I got a good amount of applause. One of the members expressed reservations about having me there because he considered me a pro-San Jose guy. Given the chance to clarify my stance, I said, “No offense to Oakland, I’m just a get-it-done-quickly guy. I’m not particular about cities.” Everyone I met was friendly and respectful, even if we had disagreements about actions and motivations. Folks, we can have a clear, reasonable dialogue on these issues without resorting to name calling, accusations, and recriminations. I don’t know how S.O.S. is going to do in the future, but I have the utmost respect for what they’re doing and how they’re going about it. Good luck, Save Oakland Sports.
Padres to sell for $600 million
Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal got the tip last night that the San Diego Padres are about to be sold. Three bidding groups have been pared down to two: the O’Malley family led by Peter Seidler, and Gary Jabara, with the O’Malley family reportedly in the lead.
The total price of the sale is expected to be $800 million, with $600 million for the team itself and $200 million for the Padres’ equity share of the recently launched Fox Sports Net San Diego regional sports network.
Jeff Moorad was supposed to be the owner, having negotiated a $530 million price a few years ago with a five-year phase-in of the acquisition. During the last offseason, it became clear that forces within MLB (the “Lodge”) were not going to approve the sale, so when combined with John Moores’ realization that he could get more thanks to the new TV deal, the Padres were pulled out from under Moorad (and minority partners such as Bob Piccinini).
Compared to this year’s Forbes valuation of $458 million, the combined $800 million sale price represents a 75% premium over the appraised value. Even when the TV component is separated out, the premium is 31%. In the wake of the Dodgers’ record-shattering $2.1 billion sale price, some sort of premium was to be expected, and I wrote then that $600 million for the Padres was a good starting point. The Padres serve as a good benchmark for any potential sale of the A’s, because the teams’ market dynamics are similar. San Diego represents the A’s if the A’s got a new ballpark and TV deal, thus the higher valuation ($458 million vs. $321 million).
All of this makes it fairly easy to project what the A’s would be worth on the open market. Lew Wolff has said unequivocally that the team is not for sale, but it’s still a worthwhile exercise – at least on the blog. If I apply the 31% premium to the A’s now, the new asking price is at least $420 million. That’s not going to be enough for Bud Selig, as one of his main responsibilities over the last decade has been to raise franchise sale prices on behalf of outgoing owners as much as possible. If he wasn’t able to lobby to get San Jose for frat buddy Lew Wolff, he’d at least give Wolff and John Fisher a massive golden parachute. It would be practically inconceivable to have any starting price be any less than $500 million. Add at least $500 million in private funding for a new ballpark (more depending on the site), and the cost to keep the A’s in Oakland becomes a cool $1 billion. That’s why I thought it curious when the fan letter to Fisher from the spring circulated, imploring the majority owner to either work to stay in Oakland or sell the team.
$500 million for the team, $500 million for the stadium. Those two parts are attached at the hip, because Selig wouldn’t approve any sale without a bulletproof (and underway) ballpark development plan. The problem with such a plan is that any future franchise sale price would be less than the combined $1 billion, because of the nature of the stadium financing. Building a new ballpark is like buying a new car and driving it off the lot – depreciation immediately kicks in. Since much of the ballpark revenue would be directed toward paying debt, it would reduce the attractiveness and market value of the franchise. Anyone who bought the franchise would be burdened by that debt until it was cleared 30, 40 years later – and that doesn’t even take into account debt incurred to buy the team. The same revenue/valuation drag goes for San Jose, except that at least Wolff/Fisher bought the team in 2005 for the relatively low price of $180 million, and they would presumably be able to service the debt better thanks to Silicon Valley’s economic strength.
So there you have it. $1 billion to keep the team in Oakland. Good luck with that, Don Knauss and company.
News for 6/21/12
Good stuff in this edition.
- Save Oakland Sports is having one of its regular meetings next Monday, June 25 @ 6 PM, at the Red Lion Hotel, 150 Hegenberger, Oakland.
- CBS Radio and Cumulus (parent of KNBR) announced a new sports radio network that will launch in January. The network is expected to feature talent currently on CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. A key talent on the latter is Jim Rome, whose daily TV show launched in April. Rome’s radio show is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks (a News Corp. subsidiary), so there’s some natural friction there. I have to think that Rome came to CBS-SN with the idea that he might jump to this new radio network too at some point, though at some $30 million per year, his radio persona doesn’t come cheap. Both of the KNBR stations were identified as future network affiliates for the CBS Sports Radio, which creates a bit of a juggling situation for Cumulus. Will Cumulus continue to pay decent money to be an ESPN Radio affiliate and carry some Fox Sports Radio programming on the side? If not, does that free up ESPN Radio to move to The Game? And how does an ESPN Radio relationship conform with The Game’s cozy relationship with Comcast Sportsnet? Fantasy radio operators, start your typewriters.
- Oakland’s City Council approved a $1 billion plan to finally remake the Oakland Army Base. Unlike some of the more glamorous or controversial plans that have been proposed (movie studio, casino, big box retail, auto row), this one will stay true to the base’s largest neighbor: the Port of Oakland. The plan will include new infrastructure, warehousing by ProLogis, and a logistics center. Every so often the base has come up in discussion here as a potential stadium site, but it’s an idea that’s never had legs within City Hall.
- Greg Jamison’s quest to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes has hit a big roadblock in the form of a lawsuit by the Goldwater Institute. Now there are questions as to whether Jamison, who is not a billionaire, can pull off the acquisition without the sweetheart deal approved by the City of Glendale that would subsidize the team’s continued operation at Jobing.com Arena. The franchise, which is owned by the NHL at the moment, is being forced to lawyer up to complete the sale. If that can’t happen…
- The City of Seattle and Chris Hansen are getting ready to finalize their new SoDo arena plan. Hansen would pay around 60%, with the remaining 40% coming from public sources. The political minefield is being negotiated right now, as the City Council doesn’t want the plan to come to a public vote, and the Port of Seattle is objecting because it fears that the arena will adversely impact port operations. Any team (NHL, NBA) that relocates to Seattle would play temporarily at Key Arena while the new arena is being built.
- This week’s cautionary tale about public stadium financing comes from Chester, PA, where not only has a MLS stadium not been a development catalyst, the stadium tenant Philadelphia Union missed a $500k PILOT payment in 2010.
- The BCS will have a four-team playoff starting in 2014. Semifinal games would rotate among the four current BCS sites, with the championship game going to the highest bidder among them.
- Jim Caple has another one of his ballpark column series, this time an elimination tournament of all 30 MLB parks. In the tournament, fans can vote online for their favorite ballpark in each matchup. We’re at the semifinal stage, with Fenway Park (seeded #2) facing off against AT&T Park (#3) and Camden Yards (#4) vs. tourney Cinderella Miller Park (#24). The Coliseum was seeded #28 and lost in the first round to Target Field (#5) by a whopping 91% to 9% with over 60,000 votes, which is about right. Don’t feel bad though. New Yankee Stadium also lost in a landslide. The Coli’s Mt. Davis was also awarded Worst View. Finally, Caple gets a shoutout to Shibe Park, which ended up #8 in his list of places he wishes were still around.
Happy reading.
It takes more than a village to raise a village (update: AEG approved)
Update 8:18 PM – The Coliseum Authority board approved AEG 7-1, the only vote against coming from Ignacio De La Fuente.
Oh to be on the Coliseum Authority board these days. The board has two weeks to decide on a firm to manage the Coliseum complex, and the firm they’re grooming to take over, AEG, is getting a lot of unexpected scrutiny over their ability to take the Raiders away even as they manage the stadium for the next several years. The Trib’s Angela Woodall reports that AEG’s status as a potential “poacher” is hanging up approval of the facilites management contract.
The JPA/Authority has sought assurances that AEG would not try to lure any of the current tenant teams away, which is fine and dandy, except that the JPA’s counsel has said that such a stipulation has little teeth. The only thing the JPA could do is terminate the contract, which would entitle them to keep $4.5 million in money promised by AEG to manage the complex.
$4.5 million is a pittance for AEG, considering their claim that they’ve spent $27 million on studies and preparation for the Farmers Field project. They’ve promised to spend $10 million on badly needed improvements to a Metro Rail station near the LACC/Staples/Live!/Farmers complex. The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex may be a nice item to put in their portfolio, but Farmers Field is AEG’s big bet. It’s a beautiful situation for AEG because they can play both cities against each other – they’re practically doing it now! They’ll be in bed with the JPA as Oakland pushes Coliseum City while getting cozy with the Raiders, who are considering LA to some extent, in the process.
The whole scenario puts the Authority in a bind. They need AEG to do consulting on Coliseum City (as farfetched as it is), yet they can’t have AEG poaching the Raiders. There’s no other competitor that has anywhere near the kind of real world experience handling single-site, multiple venue development as AEG. Chris Dobbins of Save Oakland Sports and Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley were both in lockstep about their concerns.
And let’s get real about this, the only team AEG has any interest in is the Raiders. AEG is booked solid at Staples with its three teams and the company hasn’t expressed much interest in baseball. While Oakland has expressed interest in retaining the Warriors and Athletics, they’ve taken the most steps to keep the Raiders. AEG has Oakland by the short hairs, thanks to Mayor Jean Quan putting Oakland’s chips behind Coliseum City. Even when there is a big player involved, the City part of Coliseum City can be extraordinarily difficult to get off the ground, as the St. Louis Cardinals and developer Cordish can attest. Comparisons to Mission Bay/South Beach in SF are meaningless because that area and East Oakland are on different planets economically.
Alternately, the JPA could choose incumbent SMG, with whom they’ve had an up-and-down relationship, or Comcast’s Global Spectrum, which comes closest to AEG in that they operate the Wells Fargo Center and the newly opened Xfinity Live! in Philadelphia. The latter finally came to fruition several years after the two stadia and the WFC had opened, and after the old Spectrum was demolished to make way for Xfinity Live!.
If the Raiders went to LA, that creates a situation in which the Coliseum could be available for a new A’s stadium, which is probably the only solution at the complex that MLB would sign off on (assuming the ancillary development came in). The problem with that solution is that there would still be $100 million in Mt. Davis debt to deal with and either a demolished or decaying facility, and the A’s and MLB would want nothing to do with that. That brings us back to the question, What’s in it for the A’s?
It’s a tough situation to be in. Mayor Quan believes that Coliseum City is the best hope for retaining the teams and revitalizing East Oakland, yet it can be argued that bringing in AEG is akin to letting a fox in a henhouse, which could kill the vision of Coliseum City before it even gets started. I’d like to think that the City will make a prudent decision here, but by paving the way for AEG before the decision is made they’re almost locked into a specific path. It may well be a path to ruin.
News for 6/10/12
We’re overdue for one of these.
- Matier and Ross reported on the contents of the Wolff-Knauss summit two weeks ago. Wolff laid out his 1 hour, 45 minutes case, Knauss and other East Bay execs made their case to work in Oakland – or sell the team. When the latter came up, things apparently got a little testy.
The only flare-up came when Knauss suggested that the business execs had deep-pocketed investors who would buy the A’s if Wolff and his ever-silent co-owner, John Fisher, weren’t interested in keeping them in Oakland.
“You can’t buy what’s not for sale,” Wolff told the group, according to Knauss. “I’m surprised you brought that up.”
- In the same article, contractors at the Cal Memorial Stadium retrofit indicated that the project may not be ready in time for this fall’s football opener. Not that big a deal, same thing happened at Stanford.
- Prices for the non-premium seats at the 49ers stadium have been revealed. The per-ticket prices aren’t bad, but some fans may bristle at the required seat license fee (which can be financed). The pricing structure looks very similar to that employed at Cowboys Stadium, which makes sense considering that the firm marketing the seats is partly owned by the Cowboys.
- If Farmers Field begins construction next year, it’s likely that the E3 convention, held last week, would have to be moved out of the LA Convention Center. San Diego, anyone?
- Chelsea F.C., which has seemingly won everything this season in the Premier League other than the outright league championship, lost out to other developers in its bid to redevelop the hulking Battersea Power Station into a new, 60,000-seat stadium.
- KNBR’s Damon Bruce tweeted on Friday that the Warriors’ Piers 30-32 deal was dead. So far the story hasn’t been corroborated, and other sources indicate it’s incorrect. Seems odd to say something’s dead when it the process hasn’t yet started.
- The Arena Football League suffered its first ever forfeited game when players on the Cleveland Gladiators went on strike before the scheduled Friday game against the Pittsburgh Power. The strike is part of an ongoing CBA negotiations.
- Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen joked that he’d contribute “a couple million” towards a new Tampa Bay Rays ballpark.
- Keeping the Astrodome running and up-to-date could cost $270 million or more, even though the dome wouldn’t have a tenant team.
- The Glendale, Arizona City Council approved a deal that would bail out incoming Phoenix Coyotes owner (and former Sharks exec) Greg Jamison to the tune of $325 million over 20 years to stay in the desert suburb. Jamison has not yet been fully approved to take over the Coyotes by the NHL’s Board of Governors, pending a review of the Jamison group’s finances. The conservative Goldwater Institute wants a temporary restraining order to see if the deal violates the state Constitution.
- In another cautionary tale about public dollars being spent for sports facilities, the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview is in debt up to $250 million for its MLS stadium. What’s paying for the shortfall? Property taxes.
- Update 6/11 12:19 PM – Numerous sources are reporting that (near) billionaire and Ubiquiti Networks founder/CEO Robert Pera is buying the Memphis Grizzlies. The sale price has not been disclosed. Pera is only 34 years old and is partly based out of San Jose. Update 4:00 PM – The price is in the $350-375 million range. The buyout for the FedEx Forum lease is $105 million as of next year.
Happy reading.
Chukchansi Park and its environs
One of the entrances to Chukchansi Park is right off the Fulton Mall, a 60’s relic of urban planning deserted by one major business after another over several decades. Designed by the inventor of the shopping mall, Victor Gruen, Fulton Mall was to be the first part of a huge, outdoor, pedestrian-friendly superblock development. Even though Fulton Mall opened to wide acclaim and great amounts of traffic, all it took was the departure of one anchor tenant – Montgomery Ward’s in 1970 to a new suburban mall – to set off the eventual, gradual decay of the concept. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s, numerous ideas were pitched to help revitalize downtown, none coming to fruition.
Downtown Fresno in better times.
So it’s easy to see how many civic and business leaders felt that Chukchansi Park (opened in 2002) would become a key catalyst in the redevelopment of Downtown Fresno. Sadly, Fulton Mall is as rundown and empty as ever, the only tenants being thrift stores and other retailers catering to the Latino community. It’s an all-too-familiar example of how ballparks don’t bring urban renewal. Peeking into restaurants and storefronts before the game, it appeared that what few patrons were there were not also ballpark-bound. With a garage and a surface lot close by, there’s never a need to hang out in the dilapidated downtown.
The large buffer area between the stadium and the entry gates makes the stadium feel somewhat detached from the neighborhood.
That said, Chukchansi Park is still a decent AAA park, centrally located in the region, and easily accessible by public transit. If you’re a baseball junkie and have time for a day trip, Fresno’s reachable in four hours or less from most of the state. The single concourse at Chukchansi is vast at 50 feet wide. There are mist nozzles at the edge of the overhang that are deployed when it gets too hot. A beer garden is in the left field corner, though it mainly serves Tecate (a key sponsor) and Bud Light.
Spacious concourse provides much-needed relief from scorching summer days.
Speaking of overhangs, Chukchansi Park is one of two in the Pacific Coast League’s Pacific Conference that has two seating levels (the other is Spring Mobile Ballpark in Salt Lake City). Most PCL parks have the press/suite level above or attached to a single seating level. When building to 10,000 seats, going with one or two decks shouldn’t affect sightlines to any significant degree. Two decks puts the suites higher than you might expect at other minor league parks, though that is also not typically a deciding factor for those interested in suites.
Seating deck layout at Chukchansi Park
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Chukchansi Park is its inclusion of several amusement park attractions within the grounds. Behind the plate is a carousel. In remote right field are a ferris wheel and funhouse. The attractions were added for this season and could stay or go in the future depending on their popularity. Considering that there’s little to see in the outfield other than some cars and the portable stage that gets used occasionally, the ferris wheel is a welcome sight.
Ferris wheel provided by Hanford's Wold Amusements
After the game ended at around 5 p.m., I walked through the Fulton Mall towards the train station about 15 minutes away. My walking route took me through the office/commercial area defined by the convention center, Selland Arena, and the William Saroyan Theatre. All three were completed by 1966, around the same time as the Fulton Mall. Though these venues are a bit old and not as compelling as newer facilities (Save Mart Center has more-or-less replaced Selland Arena), the buildings themselves are in much better shape than Fulton Mall. Moreover, as I walked through the area I noticed something eerily unusual: not a living soul anywhere. Only three blocks away from a ballpark and two from the heart of downtown, absolutely nothing was happening. It was a Sunday so I suppose that was to be somewhat expected. Still, it left an impression.
The 60’s were a time of great nervous social experimentation. The 1968 film embedded near the top was put together by Victor Gruen Associates as a crowning achievement to be shown in the White House. While Gruen was known most for pioneering the indoor shopping mall, he also had bold ideas of how to transform rundown urban areas to make them more inviting. Much of his work in this vein was centered around banishing the car, which the film’s narrator cites as largely responsible for the ills of urban living. In a 2004 feature for The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell pointed out the irony in Gruen trying to recreate Vienna’s Ringstrasse in America, only to have it perverted by cars and developers and popularized to the point that Old World city Vienna has some America-style commercial development. It’s an important lesson to keep in mind for the next generation of urban planners. Fresno’s rebuilt downtown was done in the mid 60’s, at the same time as the Oakland-Alameda County Complex. The Coliseum was done without an ancillary commercial component, which in hindsight didn’t help Downtown Oakland as much as it could have. If Coliseum City were to come to fruition, effectively creating a second downtown, it’ll be interesting so how much it adversely affects the current downtown. As we’ve seen in Fresno and San Jose, legacy downtowns don’t suffer competition well.
newballpark.org 