Category Archives: Oakland

10.16.11
by

Shea asks if the A’s could stay at the Coliseum if the Raiders leave

Sometimes I wonder if, given the lack of juicy topics, some of the local media default to writing about the A’s stadium situation. It’s not sexy, and it’s easy to write about without getting into any real depth. That’s exactly what Chronicle baseball writer John Shea did when opining about a new Coliseum ballpark.

Shea thinks that the possibility of a joint 49ers-Raiders stadium in Santa Clara should provide an opening for the A’s to stay there. The land is already there and paid for, as is BART and a ton of parking. Sounds simple enough, right?

Should the Raiders decide that they want to stay in Santa Clara long term, then yes, this could work out just fine and dandy. Except for a few minor details. Allow me to enumerate.

  1. The Raiders may only view Santa Clara as a temporary thing (10 years), with an eye towards building somewhere else in the future. The prime location would be the Coliseum, which as reported previously, has plans on the drawing board for a new football stadium and land purchased to support it.
  2. MLB wants this thing wrapped up by 2015. They’ve said so to both Oakland and San Jose officials. By waiting out the Raiders’ decision making process, they’re guaranteeing that a new ballpark for the A’s couldn’t open until 2017 or 2018 at the earliest.
  3. Why should MLB be subordinate to what the NFL is doing? The A’s have already suffered from that exact problem for the last 16 years.
  4. Who’s paying for the remaining debt at the Coliseum now? Certainly not MLB or the A’s.
  5. What happened to Victory Court? That’s the Oakland site that was chosen by both the City and MLB to move forward because of its location downtown. MLB has already dismissed the Coliseum and Oakland has gone along with it. Nothing has fundamentally changed to make the site more attractive. By going back and forth on sites like this, those involved look as if they’re not making a concerted effort. Instead, it looks like they’re grasping at straws.
  6. Wolff responds in the article to Shea’s idea by saying that he couldn’t privately finance it at the Coliseum site. And he’s right. A “rebuilt” Coliseum is out of the question since MLB would never go for it. And investing $450 million at the Coliseum is impossible for some time to come, given the state of stadium lending and the fact that it’s a “depressed area“.

The only thing that could drive this is if MLB outright rejected the A’s efforts to gain territorial rights in Santa Clara County. Even then, it really comes down to simple sentiment: Al Davis said before his passing that there could be a future for the Raiders at the Coliseum, whereas Lew Wolff doesn’t believe in such a future for the A’s. They’ve both spent a lot of time on this. After all this time, are they both wrong? Or is a quaint notion thrown out there on a whim more realistic? Somehow I find that hard to believe. Facts are inconvenient, I know.

10.13.11
by

18 hurt in accident at JLS Amtrak Station

KTVU is reporting tonight about a train accident at the Jack London Square Amtrak Station. That makes sense since KTVU is literally down the street. The accident occurred before 10 PM between a train stopped at the station and another that was slowly entering. I’m confused as to why this occurred since there are three platforms and two tracks for Amtrak at the JLS station; nevertheless, it happened. Yes, Virginia, train safety is nothing to prematurely dismiss. The video below was taken a few years ago. Understand what we’re dealing with here:

From what I can piece together in the timetables, the two trains that collided were the northbound San Joaquin #717 coming from Bakersfield (9:55 arrival) and the northbound Coast Starlight #14 (PDF, 9:42 departure) coming from LA. The fact that they’re both listed as northbound is misleading since the San Joaquin actually loops around western Contra Costa County before stopping at Emeryville and terminating in Oakland. That would explain why the two engines hit each other. Fortunately, the 18 reported injuries were all minor in nature.

Can you imagine the scene if tonight’s accident occurred outside an A’s game at Victory Court right after the final out? This is why real infrastructure changes are needed at Victory Court to accommodate 30,000 coming 82 times a year. Fans are worth the cost.

10.12.11
by

Madlibs Oakland style

In the new season of the FX show Sons of Anarchy, the police department of the fictional town of Charming, California (somewhere in the Central Valley) has been disbanded and replaced by San Joaquin County Sheriffs. We may be about to see something similar soon, only in a much larger place that is all too real: Oakland. The first shoe to drop was the resignation retirement of popular-albeit-embattled Oakland police chief Anthony Batts. Batts has encountered friction since Jean Quan became mayor, and there was a sense that he would be gone at some point, either by taking another Chief’s job (San Jose interviewed him) or something else – in this case, academia (Harvard).

Zennie Abraham (hold on, give it a minute) put up a blog post with his opinion on the subject, and like many, he feels the whole thing is a mess. It wasn’t his words that caught my attention, it was the quotes and musings from others close to the situation. From City Councilperson Jane Brunner:

“…in my opinion, he needs to want to be here. And if there are things that are preventing him from wanting to stay, he needs to be in the room to have that discussion…If he’s going to stay, he needs to work with us as a team.”

Does that kind of rhetoric sound familiar? It should:

“We all got this feeling, everybody who met with him, we all walked away thinking he was just not interested,” said Councilmember Jane Brunner. “When you negotiate with someone, you need a nibble. … There was just no nibble.”

That was Brunner’s comment about Lew Wolff five years ago. The difference between Batts and Wolff? Batts has more control over his future. Next in Zennie’s post is a quote by recently elected city councilperson Libby Schaaf:

I’m extremely disheartened by Chief Batts’ resignation. I can’t blame him for feeling frustrated by this City’s inability to unite around a shared vision and commitment to public safety for Oakland. I hope this experience inspires us all to work harder at finding consensus and providing support to our next Chief. Oakland’s future depends on it.

Now if I change this a little to this (changes italicized):

I’m extremely disheartened by Commissioner Selig’s decision. I can’t blame him for feeling frustrated by this City’s inability to unite around a shared vision and commitment to a ballpark for Oakland. I hope this experience inspires us all to work harder at finding consensus and providing support to our next team. Oakland’s future depends on it.

I say, that looks quite apropos right about now, given the lack of consensus over a site and the complete unknown that is the EIR. That’s not a direct quote from anyone above, but it is a reminder of what rhetoric looks like, even if it comes from a well-intentioned place.

According to Matier and Ross, a federal judge is threatening to put OPD into receivership, which could by default make Oakland the jurisdiction of the Alameda County Sheriff. I hope, for the sake of Oakland citizens, that City Hall can provide the leadership necessary to get OPD through this. In the past I’ve stayed away from the “Oakland has bigger priorities than the A’s” stance, but after seeing all of this develop, frankly, Oakland has bigger priorities than the A’s.

09.30.11
by

What We Know About Oakland…

Ken Korach is awesome. He is professional. He is erudite. He is classy. As my Quasiuncle Lester always says, “Ken Korach just sounds like summer.” It was nice to start the off season with some good news for us A’s fans, Ken Korach is staying put. It was good news because the move brought some semblance of continuity to a fan ecosphere that has become increasingly chaotic and unstable. It was also good news because Ken Korach is among the best in the business. One of my favorite aspects of the Ken Korach broadcast, just behind “The lights are on but not yet taking effect,” is when, at a critical juncture, he brings total clarity by “resetting” the game. He explains the situation, gives the count, and explains how the game got to whatever critical juncture it had arrived at.

With all the speculation in the media lately, it seems it is time to reset the stadium game a bit. No?

What do we know? I was reading through the comments in a recent thread (one that had devolved into another San Jose v. Oakland steel cage scaffold match) and this question came to me. In particular, “What do we know about Oakland, still the A’s home city of record, and it’s efforts to keep the team?” So, what has Oakland done? The answer is, more than San Jose boosters will admit and less than Oakland boosters believe. There is nuance here.

Let’s start with the stuff we know for certain:

Nine months ago the Oakland City Council authorized up to $750k for an EIR to support the potential development of a MLB stadium just south of Jack London Square (depicted below and outlined in green and red):
Photobucket

Prior to the authorization of the EIR, Oakland met with Bud Selig’s committee and the City was asked to provide potential ballpark sites. They listed four potential sites for the committee. The Coliseum, Howard Terminal and JLS West as well as the Victory Court site depicted above.

Additionally, the City was asked to provide a plan for acquiring the site, relocating businesses and making necessary upgrades to the surrounding infrastructure. Oakland’s plan was to tap RDA funds to carry out this task.

Let’s Go Oakland, without prompting from MLB’s committee, collected $500k from around 30 potential suite owners.

Publicly, that is all we know. MLB asked for some specific things, Oakland delivered (at least a concept in the case of financing site acquisition while RDA works its way through the legal system). Oakland boosters also took an extra step to show there is a premium ticket market in Oakland and the East Bay. These things above have been confirmed by Doug Boxer, co-chair of Let’s Go Oakland.

What else have we heard? Well, we heard Bryan Grunwald’s 980 Ballpark concept had been tabbed as an alternative to be studied in the EIR. We have heard that maybe MLB had floated a potential loan of $150M for a ballpark in Oakland. We heard that Clorox might be interested in naming rights. We know that Jean Quan and Lew Wolff met recently and we heard they talked about the Coliseum and Victory Court.

None of these things are verifiable. Therefore, we don’t know these things.

This leaves us waiting for one thing: the completion of the aforementioned EIR. What’s troubling about this is that when the EIR process was being discussed, it was mentioned by Oakland Boosters that the whole process could be done within a year. As ML outlined at the time, it could have been done in a year, provided the Draft EIR was completed within 3, or so, months. This week we heard rumblings that the EIR hasn’t even begun because of ongoing negotiations between the City and the firm doing the work.

To be clear, we don’t know anything about the EIR at this point. We don’t know when it will be delivered. We don’t know that it has started. The Draft EIR could almost be done.

Just like we don’t know anything about stadium construction financing in Oakland. There could be a neatly sewn up package of naming rights, sponsorship deals, a loan and charter seat sales just waiting for Larry Ellison, of Mark Cuban, to pry the team from Lew Wolff. There could be back room discussions with the local State legislators to work out bonds backed by the income taxes of the Athletics players to help finance construction, as was pitched in Portland when they were trying to get the Expos to come to town.

And this is the challenge with Oakland’s strategy of saying nothing and waiting out Lew Wolff’s time as an owner… It leaves all kinds of room for wild speculation and wrong assumptions. The question for me, which admittedly leads to more speculation, is “Why isn’t Oakland sharing the path they see to a new stadium being built in their fine City?”

I have heard and read many different versions of why they aren’t being open. They don’t want Wolff to know the plan so that he can’t poke holes in it. They are working around Wolff with MLB and MLB wants them to be quiet. The sponsors they have lined up don’t want Wolff to know they support an Oakland plan because they want to have sponsorship opportunities in San Jose should that be the eventual choice.

Here’s another potential reason for the strategy: they are hiding the fact that there are no answers to the tough questions everyone wants to hear answers to.

There could be any number of reasons for the tight lipped approach. Until someone speaks up, we will all be left guessing.

09.29.11
by

Who’s staying where?

If you tend to read things too quickly, especially headlines, you could be forgiven for misinterpreting one or more of the following headlines I gathered for the Google:

See, I read the headline from the Stiglich “…Beane says he expects team to remain in Oakland”. Everything we’re hearing is still so fuzzy and noisy, perhaps all headlines require a double take.

Again, there isn’t any legitimately new news, only a shift in tone that we’re detecting. In Slusser’s piece, Beane walks back the moving talk slightly:

“Over the course of the 2 1/2 years we’ve been told it,” Beane said. “So this time, I’m going to believe it.”

The difference between now and the previous 2 1/2 years is that Beane hasn’t spoken out about the decision much, only to say that the A’s need a new ballpark.

Lest you think the organization only hires company men, there is this quote from Bob Melvin (via the AP piece):

“Lew won’t want to hear this, I kind of like the place,” Melvin said. “I grew up here, I went to concerts, it’s well-documented. I know that it’s outdated and we need a new place.”

Then again, if Melvin is still A’s manager come 2015 in a San Jose ballpark, you can expect him to praise the new venue profusely (without dumping on the Coli too much).

09.21.11
by

Billy says…

Billy Beane was on The Rise Guys show this morning and said this:

It’s well documented that we’re in a state of flux as it relates to: Are we staying in Oakland? Are we moving this team at some point down the line? That is going to go into our short and long-term planning, and we do expect to have some clarity about this situation very soon. That will have an impact on which way we go.

At the end of the interview Mark Kreidler asked for more clarification on what Beane said about the stadium situation. Beane’s response:

It probably sounds like Groundhog Day and I don’t want to be Pollyannish, but I think we’ve gotten to a point now where all the information is in, we’re at a critical point, and I don’t necessarily have any information. I just think we’re gonna get it very soon and it’ll be great for us. Once again, a decision’s most important because whether we stay in Oakland or go somewhere else, it’ll be important for the planning of this franchise and right now that hasn’t been the case the last couple of years.

Sounds like progress, and that he’s not exactly hearing bad things. He didn’t directly address talk of him possibly moving to the Cubs’ front office other than to say, “Man, you guys read too many papers.”

Link to the audio is up.

08.23.11
by

BANG goes BOOM!

As part of ongoing consolidation efforts, the disparate East Bay operation of San Jose-based Bay Area News Group (BANG) is effectively concentrating itself into two regional publications effective November 1:

  • The Contra Costa Times will take over all of the 680 corridor papers.
  • The rebranded East Bay Tribune will take the place of the Oakland Tribune, Alameda Times-Star, Argus, and others along the 880 corridor.

120 production and editorial jobs will be cut as part of the consolidation. In addition, the San Mateo County Times will now run under the Mercury News masthead. Separate local news sections will be inserted into “city editions” of each paper.

Of course, the big upshot is that Oakland will be one of the largest cities in the country without its own paper, which is tremendously sad. (The only other cities in the Top 50 with no city newspaper are Mesa, AZ and Arlington, TX.) There has already been criticism that with the previous consolidation push, whatever unique identity the Trib had was ebbing away. I wonder if Dave Newhouse will write about that?

A month ago, East Bay Citizen joked on Twitter that local newspapers may all meet their demise before the A’s ballpark issue is settled. He may be onto something.

Note: On Twitter there’s barely a peep about this. Maybe that says more about the change than anything else. RIP Oakland Tribune. You had a good 120 years.

08.22.11
by

America’s Cup Draft EIR available

.

This view where Harrison Street ends at The Embarcadero could be blocked by huge yachts or a marina if the project is developed as planned.

In fact, not only is the America’s Cup environmental impact report out, the initial 45-day comment period is almost over (last day for comments: Thursday). Somehow I missed this among all of the other stuff going on. Thanks to Chronicle architecture writer John King’s article in protest of some of the waterfront changes, I finally got a look at it. I’ll have more to write about it later.

The EIR was made available on July 11, only 7 months after the deal was made between the America’s Cup and the City of San Francisco. It goes to show what can happen when there’s a real deadline and a real partnership in place. Contrast that to what’s happening with the Victory Court EIR, which is at least for now, nothing publicly. The America’s Cup project is leaps and bounds more expansive and impactful than Victory Court, covering huge swaths of SF waterfront with the potential to significantly reshape the area much the same way post-Loma Prieta planning did 20+ years ago.

So why isn’t there anything yet about Victory Court? Maybe Oakland no longer feels it’s in a rush. Maybe Oakland isn’t prioritizing the project at the moment. Maybe Oakland doesn’t want to have that big discussion with its citizens just yet. No one can say that it’s a matter of due diligence, since the scope of the America’s Cup project is so much more vast. Victory Court has impacts beyond the 12-block project area, but everyone knew that going in. All I can give to the VC project right now is a big shrug.

08.20.11
by

News for 8/20/11

Though this August may be unseasonably cool, there’s no doubt that it’s the dog days – for a team mired in third place and those of us looking for ballpark news. Nevertheless, there is plenty to discuss that happened this week.

First up is a very good assessment of where various football stadium efforts stand, courtesy of the Merc and Trib (BANG). Naturally, Santa Clara has emerged in the race due to its diligence in getting a deal done, despite the highly questionable finances of the plan. Oakland lags well behind, and potential funding sources has been identified in the process: $105 million in county transit funding, a Chinese investment group. Transit funding for the Raiders? Yikes.

You may have noticed some upheaval around Hegenberger Road this week when going to/from an A’s game. That’s because the infamous Oakland Airport Connector project started construction this week! The $484 million people mover will shuttle riders between the Coliseum/Airport BART station and Oakland International Airport, all for a more-than-reasonable $6 each way. That’s more expensive than it costs to ride from Coliseum/Airport to Millbrae. (To be fair, the enormous cost of the SFO BART extension has caused Millbrae-to-SFO to cost $4 each way thanks to a surcharge.) And it appears that the only reasons the project kept going all this time are that $95 million has already been spent and up to $250 million has already been committed, making it nearly as much of a boondoggle even if it were cancelled. Initially, the only two stations on the OAC will be the terminals at the airport and BART station. A third station could be built at Doolittle and Hegenberger if the funding surfaces. Double yikes.

Former Rangers owner Tom Hicks is being sued over allegations that he took tens of millions from the team to acquire parking lots around Rangers Ballpark. The lawsuit foreshadows future legal wrangling between MLB and Frank McCourt, who reorganized the Dodgers into so many holding companies and dummy corporations that it’s impossible to say how Dodger Stadium and its land could be extricated from McCourt at this point.

A preliminary report on Kings arena funding indicates that much of the burden will be addressed by user fees on everything from tickets to hot dogs. These fees could generate anywhere from $5 million to $20 million per year. While not fan-friendly, it is more general taxpayer-friendly than sales or parcel taxes. A more fleshed out proposal is due September 8.

Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of the Sharks, announced 19 layoffs from the business side of the company. Included in the layoffs was longtime director of communications Ken Arnold. Executive VP of business ops Malcolm Bordelon characterized this as “pruning for future growth”. He can’t just be talking about the parking garage the team will construct north of the arena as growth. There’s something else to this. That something may be related to former CEO Greg Jamison, who left a year ago and was never formally replaced, perhaps going after the Phoenix Coyotes as early as next week. Should Jamison pursue the Coyotes, he will have to sell his share of the Sharks. It’s not difficult to see Jamison bringing with him trusted lieutenants such as Arnold and sales/marketing head Kent Russell. It would also provide an opening for the A’s, if they were to be extended the opportunity. Lew Wolff (or a surrogate) could potentially get a stake in SVSE and reciprocate by providing a stake in the A’s/Quakes, making the two ownership groups virtually joined at the hip – and more importantly, fully aligned. That would be important in planning for the next 20-30 years around Diridon, as the two parties would be expected to have a major influence on how the area is planned and developed even if those plans are well down the road.

In tangentially related news, HP announced on Thursday that it will cease development of webOS devices such as the recently launched TouchPad tablet line and Pre smartphones. It may also spin off its Personal Systems Group, which includes webOS (Palm) and its industry market share leading computers operation. Should HP spin off PSG or divest it, there would be an interesting sports-related ripple effect down the line: what would happen to HP Pavilion at San Jose? The naming rights deal at the former San Jose Arena expires in 2016, and not coincidentally, the name reflects a line of personal computers HP makes. In between those two names, the name for a year or so was Compaq Center at San Jose. That deal was done by the final Compaq CEO, Michael Capellas, prior to the HP-Compaq merger (done by Carly Fiorina). It’s possible that HP will keep the name, given that enterprise competitor Oracle has the name on Oakland Arena. Then again, Oracle has a similar choice to make that same year because its naming rights deal ran only a decade. Chances are that both companies will drop the naming rights deals for different reasons: HP because it will no longer have the consumer focus to justify the deal, and Oracle because Larry Ellison lost out on owning the Warriors. Often naming rights deals are reflections of companies’ CEOs, and this is no different.

Capping off corporate talk is billionaire Carl Icahn threatening to perform a coup at Clorox (again). Icahn, who is worth $12.5 billion and has his tentacles seemingly everywhere, is the largest shareholder of CLX stock with a 9.4% stake in the company. Earlier in the summer, Icahn attempted a $10.2 billion buyout of Clorox, all in the name of achieving greater shareholder value (his M.O. for everything). Rebuffed in that attempt, Icahn is now trying to replace the company’s entire board of directors with himself and 11 of his own hand-picked people. Something on this front may happen in November, when the annual shareholders meeting will be held. Icahn doesn’t always win, but it is thought in some corners that his power influenced the sale of Motorola to Google for $12.5 billion (coincidence), which was reported on Monday. Why is this important? If Icahn gets his way, it’s likely that Clorox will eventually be sold to the highest bidder, perhaps one of its competitors such as Proctor and Gamble. P&G would be interesting in that they were forced to divest Clorox due to antitrust concerns around the time the A’s moved to Oakland. And if Clorox is bought and/or sold, CEO Donald Knauss, the former Coca-Cola exec who has shown interest in East Bay/Oakland sports to the extent that there are rumors of a possible naming rights deal, is also not long for Clorox either. If Knauss goes, so does that deal. Naming rights deals often reflect companies’ CEOs, remember?

08.11.11
by

Redevelopment agencies granted stay until January

CORRECTION: Apparently I misinterpreted the news wrong. From the LA Times:

The court issued an order delaying enforcement of most provisions of the new law until a ruling on the merits of the case, but said redevelopment agencies could not incur new debt, transfer assets, buy property or enter into new contracts in the meantime.

So that means that neither SJRA or ORA could make the land purchases. Ah, but San Jose created a new joint powers authority, SJDDA. Sounds like a truck-sized loophole.

It looks like the gambit being played by RDA lobbyists, San Jose and Union City has paid off, at least for a few months. The California Supreme Court ruled today that redevelopment agencies have been granted a stay, delaying their dismantling until as late as January 15, 2012, when the court is expected to make a final ruling on the constitutionality of Governor Brown’s plan (Chron/Merc).

That doesn’t mean that RDAs are dancing in the streets. Yesterday, Los Angeles committed to a $97 million payment to the state so that the agency could stay operational. In doing so, that means the top two RDAs (LA, San Diego) have chosen to pony up. That leaves Oakland, which hasn’t said much about its plans, and San Jose, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, looking to either continue activities as planned or negotiate a different payment schedule.

For San Jose, this probably means they can move forward with the final land acquisitions at Diridon, which were supposed to be wrapped up by the end of June. In Oakland, this probably means they can go ahead with the Coliseum/Raiders redevelopment plan, and if other expenditures were required for Victory Court (such as extra EIR work), those could get the green light too.

All right, cities. You’ve got up to five months to crank out some results. Get to it!

OT – On A’s Talk, Chris Townsend may have revealed that the Sharks may not be on The Game this upcoming season.

One more thing – Cisco rose 16% today on a better-than-expected earnings report.