11.16.10
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Not so breaking news

The EIR Notice of Preparation is here. Guidelines for the CEQA (EIR) process can be found here.

The informal selection of Victory Court as the preferred ballpark site has been the worst kept secret in Oakland for several weeks now, and we’ve known about the Planning Commission meeting since last week. So why are the regular media choosing to cover it now (EBX/Trib)? Must be a slow news day.

Still, there are a few takeaways, and credit goes to Robert Gammon in that regard. Mostly, they have to do with Mayor-elect Jean Quan’s view of the project, which is more meaningful than anything any other Oaklander, elected or not, has to say on it.

  • MLB’s commission wants a ballpark done for Oakland in time for Opening Day 2015. This is reasonable considering the normal 18-24 month EIR lead time, which could actually go longer because of Oakland’s recent history with large project EIR’s. Given Lew Wolff’s admission that he has been denied further extensions to the Coliseum lease, it leads to wondering about how a gap between the end of the 2013 season and the start of the 2015 season would play out. Is Oakland holding that extra year as leverage with the idea of pushing MLB in its direction? Is MLB entertaining Oakland’s bid in order to secure that extra year or perhaps more if necessary? Beyond those two parties, there are even more interesting questions. If the Raiders secure their own Coliseum stadium deal, won’t that impact an A’s 2014 year in the Coliseum, and vice-versa?
  • Quan said she also believes a new ballpark at Victory Court will help businesses in closeby Chinatown and could provide the impetus for a new hotel/convention center. It’s strange that the big unifying development strategy for all of downtown Oakland is a ballpark. It makes sense for a ballpark to be a major attraction, but the linchpin? That doesn’t make sense. However, that’s the direction that Oakland is moving towards with this hole-in-the-donut strategy. What if the ballpark doesn’t pan out? That doesn’t mean that Oakland will be ready to go with Plan B, whatever that is. It’s one thing for corporate interests to help pay for a ballpark. That’s not going to happen with a convention center complex. Those projects are usually 100% public/redevelopment funded. From a purely numbers/potential standpoint, a ballpark makes sense because it’s essentially “free” money and buzz, especially if the financing part can be worked out. Something else in the ballpark’s place could take many more years to get going.
  • Quan believes that the only way Major League Baseball would turn down Wolff and Fisher’s request to move the team to San Jose is if the City of Oakland shows that it has a viable plan for a new A’s ballpark and that city leadership is committed to making it happen. If true, this spawns a number of new questions about MLB’s timeframe. Will they set a hard date to complete the EIR and land acquisitions? Will MLB set targets or milestones for the project? What if Oakland doesn’t meet those milestones, or new challenges or opposition shows up? Could MLB create for itself an easy out if things aren’t going well? What constitutes fair or unfair is almost entirely subjective.
  • In another Gammon article about Quan, it was noted that as part of Quan’s “Not Don” campaign, a mailer “repeatedly pounded Perata for the Oakland Raiders deal, a financial debacle that will end up costing East Bay taxpayers more than $600 million. At least two mailers, showed a mostly empty Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, with the message: ‘Thanks, Don.’ ”  The challenge for Quan is to show that she can more competently get a stadium deal done than Perata. The key to this is transparency at every stage of the process. Since the original four sites in May were whittled to one with no public vetting and at least a few commenters will chime in on 12/1 with their own recommendations, it’ll be fascinating to see how the preferred site and alternatives are handled. Will all buildable sites have to be included in the EIR? What if the EIR actually recommends a different alternative to Victory Court (unlikely but still)? The dagger in the Fremont plan was the abrupt change from Pacific Commons to Warm Springs, with no public input beforehand. In San Jose, the Diridon site was not the frontrunner at the outset and only became the preferred site over time. From a selling the public standpoint, how warm are the citizens of Oakland to any stadium deal, even one that has the team picking up the entire construction tab? We’ve seen a Facebook group, we have yet to see a single poll on the subject.

While we’re waiting for the process to kick off, I’ve found a couple of nuggets that might be helpful. First up, a cursory look at the California EPA’s Cortese list shows that none of the parcels at Victory Court fall under brownfield or contaminated status.

victory-ct-project-area

Source: Project EIR Notice of Preparation

One of the more curious aspects of the project is the land grouping, including the Laney College parking lot. While it makes sense for the ballpark to use the Laney lot as part of its parking infrastructure, it’s also quite possible that like the Diridon plan, there could be no parking at the ballpark at all. If there’s no parking at the ballpark, there’s also less environmental impact from the ballpark. That doesn’t mean that the 880 on/off-ramps won’t need improvements, but it could mean that the cost for those improvements won’t be as severe as they could be. Instead, fans would be encouraged to park at Laney (expanded or not), downtown, or at JLS. It’s only one of many details that will have to be addressed as part of the process.

11.15.10
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Five degrees of separation

Here at the ballpark blog, we’ve been very upfront about one particular issue when it comes to Cisco Field: We don’t like bandboxes. From the initial look, that’s exactly what it appears to be. We were even concerned enough to consult a noted expert about the ramifications of implementing the ballpark using the speculated dimensions, and the results only made us more fearful. We’ve been conditioned, as good A’s (and baseball) fans, to love the occasional 1-0 shutout that runs only 2:15. While the Diridon site creates limitations as to the layout, there’s still plenty of room to put in a neutral field.

To refresh your memory, here’s what the existing plan looks like.

In hopes of effecting some kind of change, I took the projected layout and revised it slightly. The changes are as follows:

  • Field orientation is rotated 5 degrees north (counterclockwise).
  • Home plate is moved roughly 10 feet east.  This may seem strange considering the space constraints on the east side of the lot, it’ll make sense later.
  • The seating bowl, which is at a 75 degree angle, is made more acute to end up at 65 degrees.
  • The outfield wall is redrawn to keep the the left field grandstands parallel to streets and existing lot lines.

Now here’s what the revised layout looks like.

The outfield dimensions are now 328-375-402-376-314.

A lot better, no?

Rotating the field makes an incredible difference, even a 5 degree change. It opens up the outfield a ton and makes for a much deeper transition from the right field corner to the power alley. Now that extra set of seats/bleachers in right field isn’t so bad, as the 36-foot high wall goes from 314′ to 370′ and then drops to a 12′ high wall at 356′. Left field is a pretty standard set of dimensions, with the quirk being a pitcher-friendly jump from 328′ to 370′. Center field’s 402′ is pretty blah.

There are some compromises and penalties that come with rotating the field. The LF line cuts into the grandstand more, so much that I was forced to move home plate 10 feet east to compensate. By doing this, the LF corner can be fairly standard and not many seats are lost. To keep the simple contour of the seating bowl, the angle of the bowl had to be brought in 10 degrees. If that hadn’t been done, a kink or bend along the first base line would’ve been required. The resulting angle is 65 degrees, which should create for better sight lines than the original concept (75 degrees).

As with the original analysis, I’ve projected two capacities, one in which there are a minimal number of rows and another where there are four additional rows for both the lower and upper decks. All else stays the same. One change is the inclusion of a service tunnel near the LF corner. An outline of seating sections is shown where the affected seats would be taken out.

Additional notes:

  • ADA locations refers to wheelchair locations and companion chairs. It is assumed that some accessible seats within the seating bowl will have flip-up armrests.
  • Temporary seating refers to rows of seats at the back of available sections. It’s a simple way to add seats for a nominal cost, and can be easily adjusted on an as needed basis. Unused ADA rows can be replaced by rows of temporary seats if space is available. The Giants have employed this method of adding seats extensively.
  • The third deck (club) has been omitted to reduce clutter. The suite level (tucked underneath the upper deck) is obscured.
  • After some discussion, I’m going with 36-foot high wall in right, which is closer to what Jeffrey and gojohn10 have suggested. (The Green Monster is 37′ 3″ high)
  • Bullpens are still in center.

Questions? Fire away.

11.12.10
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Wolff/AN Interview Observations

There’s no need to rehash all three parts of Blez’s fantastic Lew Wolff interview (Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3). Doing so would repeat a lot of material that we’ve already written about, so I won’t do that. I also won’t get into a gotcha-fest as some other blogs have, and I won’t dig into Lew’s usual smattering of interview flubs. I’ve gotten used to it by now.

The lie

Instead, I’ll focus on some of the new information we’ve gotten from the series, and read between the lines on it. First, I’ll frame the discussion with one declarative statement:

I know specifically that Lew has lied about one thing in public all these years.

The lie? When Fremont started to go south, Lew said that was he didn’t know what he was going to do, that there was no Plan B. San Jose was always Plan B, or C if you choose to make it part of the longer history. That’s not to say that he hasn’t lied about other things, far from it. It’s just that what some people consider lies or damned lies others think are realities borne of statistics.

Back to the lie. San Jose was continuing to perform its due diligence and that, frankly, Wolff would’ve been a fool to not explore it – at least to the constraints placed upon him. Of course, this was pretty obvious to anyone watching this for any serious length of time. Yet from that lie, I’ve picked up a behavioral pattern that shows how this whole process is moving, at least from the owner’s perspective.

Simply put, Lew tends to only use certain terms and couches his language until he feels he has the leeway and confidence to move forward. While the Coliseum North project was in play, he never mentioned Fremont by name, even though he met with Cisco a few months after the Oakland unveiling. While Fremont was in play and even after it unofficially died, he never talked about either San Jose or Oakland. When the San Jose EIR was certified, he started talking about San Jose in real terms and advocated for it. He started sending players and Stomper to South Bay events. And now he feels confident enough to proclaim that there’s

“…absolutely no reason any of us can come up with that either the Giants or the baseball Commissioner should not approve us to move 50/60 miles away to San Jose so A’s can get a new ballpark.”

He’s couched this newfound confidence by saying he doesn’t know when the decision will be made, but we all know what the timetable is. At this point, over 5 years into Wolff’s tenure as managing partner and 7 into his search for a new home for the A’s, both the A’s and Raiders are running into a hard limit. That limit is the end of both teams’ leases in 2013. A fairly significant revelation from the interview is that he has asked the Coliseum Authority for lease extensions and the requests weren’t granted. Part of this is perhaps due to the Authority feeling duped the last time the team got its extension from 2010 to 2013. Now it’s a matter of the Authority choosing to deal with the Raiders on a new football stadium which would replace the Coliseum. There isn’t room to work on two new venues simultaneously at the Coliseum. By buying the Home Base lot on Hegenberger and incorporating that into the study area, the City made its choice – at least for the Coliseum grounds. Frankly, that’s the right choice. A football stadium makes much more sense in a location with an ocean of parking, not a locale that would be mutually beneficial for a ballpark and downtown.

Wolff’s language has even gotten to the point where we’re not really talking about T-rights compensation. We don’t have a baseline from MLB, a demand from the Giants, or an offer from the A’s. In fact, the only people that are actually talking about it are the media and blogs. Ever wonder why that is? I’m starting to think that T-rights are like Fight Club or a internal political third rail within the lodge. T-rights have much more power if they aren’t enumerated. Once you name a cash price, T-rights start on the slippery slope towards being commoditized. The last thing the lodge wants is actual free market principles working within their antitrust-protected economic structure. They don’t even want the public to know what their finances are other than an annual December press release exhorting record league-wide revenues. (They don’t believe in full revenue sharing either, but that’s another story.)

Bird in hand

In Part 3, Wolff sneaks in a little comment about Oakland’s and San Jose’s relative populations. He starts off talking about the history of Bay Area T-rights and then dives into the population discussion:

LW: OK, I don’t want to bore you with it.  In Oakland, from the 70’s to 2007, the demographics from Oakland have changed, through no one’s fault – it just changed, and that’s a big problem.  For example, they grew from 362,000 to 372,000 or something like that, a very low compounded rate.  San Jose went to a million people in the same period.  We’re not suggesting that’s the reason to go there but that’s the reason we’re not doing well here.

TB: There are more fans to draw from.

LW: Right.  San Jose hit a million a couple of years ago and that is just within the city limits.

In March I wrote about population density and the myth of Oakland being more truly urban than San Jose. My conclusion was that there was only one truly urban center here, SF, and the others are just pretenders. I did a variation of the standard population survey, based on the home ZIP codes of ballpark sites. While the Diridon, Victory Court, and Coliseum sites were fairly close if the circle were drawn only 3 miles from the ZIP, distinctions are made once you go farther out.

Population/Business counts per ZIP code radius. Source: 2000 Census

The numbers are now 10 years old and aren’t reflective of housing booms in both Downtown San Jose and Oakland in the early part of the decade. I doubt that either city’s downtown received more than 10,000 new residents each due to this rise in the housing stock, but it’s possible. Either way, it doesn’t change the 5-mile number more than 3-5%. I’m looking forward to the 2010 numbers coming out in the near future.

I buttressed the argument in March with the notion that at its size, San Jose is capable of doing large projects alone, without county or state help. SJ is actually rather adversarial with Santa Clara County, and tends to throw its weight around frequently and in a rather crude manner. That’s not really the case with Oakland and Alameda County, where partnerships are more necessary. With the Coliseum Authority tied up with the Raiders project, Oakland will be doing the ballpark project solo. And that, given Oakland’s recent political history, has to give MLB’s commission and Bud Selig pause.

I am a ballpark. Hear me roar!

For a stadium geek like me, the most intriguing news was the admission that there would be no stadium club (Part 3). gojohn10 and I expounded upon that in the comments thread, and I’m glad to say that the speculation was – based on what we know so far – correct. The club seats are in the small third deck, with no indoor concourse behind them.

One of my favorite things about the Coliseum pre-Mt. Davis was the openness of the Plaza concourse. There were no concrete walls in back of the seats, and you could see the setting sun between the decks, through the portals, as if the Sun itself had its own knothole to watch the game before it had to go to bed. You know where else you see this? Fenway. Wrigley. At Fenway, you can stand at the back of the lower deck along the first base line and all that’s there is a chain-link fence. The air circulates better, the place feels less claustrophobic, it just feels more like baseball. As the new ballparks stuffed more, well, stuff into their bodies (suite levels, club concourses), from within the ballparks started to look more monolithic. In the last 5-7 years designers have tried to break things up by breaking up the seating decks, which is simply not the same thing as what I described earlier. There’s still a mall on the concourse. Nowadays, all you’ll see behind the plate are seats, then windows, then more windows, then maybe some seats way up top. It looks more like a high-rise office building than a ballpark. Exterior façades have brick or stone glued to concrete, highly reflective glass curtainwall, and in very few cases a look inside the ballpark for passersby.

The new Cisco Field design may be the most “retro” ballpark design of all because it looks to eschew all of these new conventions. Do we really need three club levels, each more exclusive than the last? I don’t think so. How about a massive wall of suites? Don’t need that either. What about just making the sight lines the best, the closest? That sounds good. As I write this I’m shaking my head because I’m wondering how future revenues will be affected. The baseball fan in me completely buys into it, while the number cruncher doesn’t.

What about integrating the ballpark into the neighborhood as just another piece, instead of making it a centerpiece? Neither Wrigley nor Fenway make much of an attempt to scream, “I AM A STADIUM AND YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO ME.” The Green Monster, so imposing inside Fenway, doesn’t look like much from the outside. Wrigley is clad with simple fences and is colored light gray, with accents in the form of neon and signs.

When revealed, Cisco Field’s colonnade was met with a great deal of unease. Readers here didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t look substantial enough. It didn’t look complete. And maybe that’s the point. At the best, most classic ballparks, there are few barriers for the sounds and smells to leave, enticing more people to come in. It’s supposed to be transparent. It’s supposed to allow people to feel that there are no barriers between them and the team they love.

What will Wolff do to make up for the lack of indoors at the ballpark? Service. People who have club seats and suites will get the best service (yes, that sucks given the state of service at the Coliseum). And some heaters overhead to keep the April nights a little warmer. Me? It looks like I might not get the restaurant/bar in the RF wall that I’ve wanted all of my adult life. But if I can walk the dog by there every day and see it from multiple angles, different perspectives – I’ll be fulfilled beyond earthly belief. Because when it’s 5 PM in December and the sun is setting through the decks in left field, I’ll walk by and remember how good it was when I was nine. How good it can be when it’s done right.

Quick note: The Quakes have a date for their stadium! 2012, no later than 2013, according to Wolff (thanks, Elliott Almond). That would seem to tie in with the idea that both A’s and Quakes venues are to be built in sequence, if not concurrently, to take advantage of package deal lower costs for materials and labor. Congrats Quakes fans. Few can relate to the hell you’ve been through, and you deserve your new Epicenter.

Also: Justin Morneau wants the fences at Target Field pulled in.

11.11.10
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Oakland Planning Commission Meeting 12/1

As FSU pointed out at AN, there is a Planning Commission Meeting on December 1st to take initial comments about a ballpark project at Victory Court. The mandatory Notice of Preparation was filed yesterday. Here are the details:

5. Location: Multiple parcels located east of Oak Street to the Lake Merritt channel between I-880 and Embarcadero. Including the Laney College parking lot north of I-880 and a city owned parcel south of Embarcadero.

Assessor Parcel Numbers: 000O-0455-004-04; -009-03; -004-02; -15-02; 000O-0440-004-03; -003-01; -002-00; -001-00; -007-00; -009-03; -012-00; -005-00; -006-00; 000O-0435-001-00; -003-00; -005-01; -002-01; -010-06; -007-03; -010-04; 000O-0430-001-04; 000O-0445-012-02

Proposal: The Project consists of a new ballpark of up to 39,000 seats, located east of Fallon Street, and adjacent development in the project area including up to 180,000 square feet of retail, up to 540,000 square feet of office, up to 700 residential units and approximately 2,500 off-street parking spaces. The proposal may include the potential for land acquisition and include the extension of 4th, 3rd, and 2nd Streets to Fallon Street and the development of new open space adjacent to the Lake Merritt Channel.

Applicant: City of Oakland/ Oakland Redevelopment Agency

Contact Person/Phone Number: Gregory Hunter / (510)238-2992

Owner: Multiple Private and Public owners

Case File Number: ER10-0002

General Plan: Estuary Plan Area – Mixed Use; Central Business District; Estuary Plan Area – Parks

Zoning: M-20, Light Manufacturing Zone CBD-X, Central Business District Mixed Commercial Zone S-2, Civic Center Zone S-4, Design Review Combining Zone OS (RSP), Open Space Zone – Regional Open Space

Environmental Determination: Staff has determined that an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) willbe prepared for this project. A Notice of Preparation (NOP) toprepare the EIR was published on November 10, 2010. The comment period for the NOP ends on December 9, 2010.

Historic Status: The project site does not contain any historic properties

Service Delivery District: Metro

City Council District: 3

Action to be Taken: Receive public and Commission comments about what information and analysis should be included in the EIR. No decisions on the project will be made at this hearing.

For Further Information: Contact case planner Peterson Z. Vollmann at (510) 238-6167 or by email: pvollman@oaklandnet.com.

Note that in addition to the 39,000-seat ballpark, a large amount of ancillary development is scoped out including 180,000 square feet of retail and 540,000 square feet of office space. I have not yet found the NOP on the City’s website, I’ll post it as soon as I get it. Not to be forgotten, Let’s Go Oakland head Doug Boxer is the Chair of the Planning Commission.

I’ll be in the house. December 1st, 6 PM @ Oakland City Hall Hearing Room 1.

11.11.10
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QUAN!!!!!!

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I wanted to Photoshop in Don Perata's face in but couldn't find a suitable image.

Congratulations to Jean Quan, Mayor-elect of the City of Oakland. She’s the first Asian American female mayor among the Bay Area’s big cities, which is a huge achievement in and of itself. Now comes the hard part. Update 11/11 12:00 PM: Don Perata has chosen not to contest the election results.

Aside from budgetary concerns including a coming showdown with the police union, Quan’s biggest initial task will be to hire a competent, forward-thinking City Administrator to replace Dan Lindheim, the former CEDA head who has promised to stay on until a replacement if found and has essentially been a two-year acting administrator. As I understand it, Lindheim and other Oakland officials have done the necessary legwork to get information prepared for MLB’s panel. It’s difficult to assess City beyond that since there hasn’t been an official ballpark effort yet. Should that occur, it’ll be up to Lindheim’s replacement and CEDA’s Walter Cohen (or whomever replaces him) to push the process. After all, guys as gung-ho as Robert Bobb don’t grow on trees.

I discussed this further at AN yesterday:

1. One of the things that doesn’t get talked about is that there has been a severe brain drain in Oakland gov’t in recent years. Whether some of these people deserved to be employed is for another discussion, but from a practical standpoint, someone tenured and respected that isn’t an elected official will have to carry the water for a ballpark project. I have no idea who that person is.

If a ballpark process is to move forward (and with some alacrity), the ballpark champion will have to be found right quick. It’s possible that one of the reasons a plan hasn’t been cemented is the lack of a champion. The right person may be Planning guru Eric Angstadt, who deftly handled questions at the May 1st Community Meeting. Of course, if MLB makes a move towards San Jose in December it’s likely that a ballpark champion/new administrator will not have been hired yet. Regardless, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone willing to push for the A’s – as long as it doesn’t hurt day-to-day responsibilities – in place just in case San Jose falls through.

11.10.10
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New Wolff Interview on AN

If you haven’t seen it already, go to Athletics Nation (Happy 7th Birthday) and read Blez’s interview with Lew Wolff, Part 1. It brings us up-to-date on where we stand and may answer a few – but obviously not all – questions you may have about the process. I prefer to leave the discussion there as it’s already quitely lively, but if you have any questions that I may be able to provide some clarification, shoot here and I’ll give it a shot. Jeffrey’s been in the comments thread there, so have at it.

Speaking of Jeffrey, he recorded a take on the Giants’ WS win for KQED Perspectives. I can safely say that we’re in the same boat, even the Giants fan Uncle Larry part.

Part 2 of the AN-Wolff Interview is up. In it, Wolff addresses whether or not Fremont was merely a ruse, his own performance as owner, and several other topics. Part 3 is tomorrow.

I’m planning on writing a response post tomorrow after Part 3.

11.08.10
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Larry Ellison vs. SF Giants

As Gavin Newsom begins his switch from a real job to a ceremonial one, he has a few matters left to which he has to attend. A key development issue, according to Matier and Ross, is San Francisco’s America’s Cup bid. As the winner of the last Cup, Larry Ellison gets to decide where the next one is held, and the only US bid comes from SF. A couple different proposals have come in, both of which would exchange the development rights for select piers for the cost to rebuild them, a cost that the City can’t take on at the moment. A similar kind of development project is already underway in the relocation of the Exploratorium, which will move east from the Palace of Fine Arts to Piers 15 and 17.

Initially, the project’s location was going to be Piers 48 and 50, which are adjacent to AT&T Park’s main parking lots. This shifted to Piers 30 and 32, just south of the Bay Bridge, where Red’s Java House is located. Ellison has nixed the 30-32 idea, perhaps because he doesn’t want to work right next to/underneath a bridge.

The Giants are objecting to 48-50 because construction work there could be disruptive to the Giants’ plans for those parking lots, to which they have development rights. It’s highly likely that some of that land may have to be used as a staging area for construction equipment and the like.

It gets more interesting when you consider that Oracle has been a charter sponsor of the Giants, with its name on the ballpark’s suite level since the beginning.

So who’s going to win out? Surely the Giants can delay their plans for a couple of years while the waterfront beautification project happens. After all, the two key uses that the Giants have identified, a 5,000-seat concert hall or a NBA arena, aren’t exactly going to materialize for quite some time. The region isn’t begging for a 5,000-seat venue. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (7,000) is old but serviceable, the Warfield and the Fillmore cover sub-3,000 crowds quite nicely. On the other side of the bay Another Planet has cornered the market on mid-sized venues, as it has the Greek Theatre in Berkeley (5-8,000) and Oakland’s Fox Theatre (2,800). In the South Bay, San Jose State’s Event Center holds exactly 5,000. As for an arena, well, that would be easier to deal with if Larry Ellison owned the Warriors, you think? Even then, the W’s lease runs at least through 2017, with the team owners being liable for the remaining debt service if they don’t sign extensions that would keep the team until 2027. If the Giants decide on a concert hall, their dreams of a SF arena will vanish. If they decide to wait for an NBA team, they’ll be waiting quite a long time.

This round should go to Larry Ellison. A project like this comes around very rarely. If the Cup is staged locally, Ellison will be a very busy guy, probably too busy to entertain Oakland partisans’ dreams for him to wrest the A’s from Wolff/Fisher and build a ballpark in Oakland. Seriously, can anyone out there point to a single quote that can back up Ellison’s interest in the A’s?

11.07.10
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It’s like clockwork

It’s been about 3 months since the last time Dave Newhouse ripped Lew Wolff, so you had to figure it was time for Newhouse to drop another diatribe. It starts out by calling Wolff a liar, then the usual bid for canonization of Wally Haas, then a carpetbagger tag for good measure.

That union led to something beautiful — three straight World Series, 2.9 million attendees one season and a community bonding second to none in baseball.

Yes, the same community bonding that made attendance in the strike-shortened 1994 season (the last of the Haas era) 13th out of the 14 AL teams.

The tendency towards repetition is the major reason why I don’t feel the need to quote or respond to his rantings. This time, however, I figure it’s important to point out a few things.

But, MLB, remember this: Wolff’s initial lie was that the A’s must be near BART and the freeway whenever a new ballpark is built. Fremont fulfilled one-half of that requirement — BART was 2 miles away — and San Jose also fulfills one-half, but it doesn’t have BART.

Does Newhouse not understand that demographics and requirements change depending on the site? Of course BART is required in a place BART was previously used. If you spin out a radius of 20 miles from anywhere in Oakland, BART should be readily available. That can’t happen in San Jose, at least for several years. But in San Jose, people are used to getting to and from places without BART. Will East Bay fans find a San Jose ballpark less accessible? Of course they will. Will they be replaced by South Bay fans? Yes, they will. Why? Because it’s Major League Baseball at a fancy new ballpark near them. Some of them will be A’s fans. Others will be casual, hopefully some of them can be converted.

Later on, Newhouse espouses the virtues of the Coliseum’s location and plugs other sites.

And that isn’t the only available ballpark space in Oakland. There are two spots in Jack London Square, though it would take two businesses, Peerless Coffee and East Bay Restaurant Supply, to shift a bit to make it happen.

This may be doable for one business, not both. But Oakland City Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente assured me that the most aesthetically pleasing spot — the Oak to 9th Project by the Estuary — remains available. It’s closer to the freeway than BART, but that site is every bit as attractive as the AT&T Park locale.

I find it interesting that Newhouse suggests that getting both Peerless and EBRS to relocate isn’t feasible. So does that mean that Victory Court is by extension infeasible? First I’ve heard of that. Beyond that, once again he’s being fed the same old nonsense by IDLF and Signature about O29 being doable – even though O29 has not been in the discussion for nearly a decade. Only Newhouse ever brings up O29, despite the lack of infrastructure and other challenges that would make it much more difficult to accomplish than Victory Court, 980, or even the Coliseum. Doesn’t it seem strange that while various real estate developers push for Victory Court to boost their own peripheral developments, one of those major developments could easily be cast aside for a ballpark? I’ll tell you why: those development projects aren’t as good as advertised. It’s not their fault that they were hung out to dry after the real estate collapse. Plenty of very rich developers have been left in similar circumstances.

My gut feeling is that Wolff has no place to go but Oakland. The world champion San Francisco Giants have strengthened their South Bay “territorial rights” by investing more heavily in their San Jose minor league team and by planning to renovate its home field, Municipal Stadium.

Thing is, it takes a lot more than a gut feeling to get a ballpark built. Throughout all of Newhouse’s vitriolic columns, he has never discussed how an Oakland ballpark will get done. Never mentions that it’ll cost $460 million in construction cost alone. Doesn’t have an answer for dozens of corporate interests that will be needed to get it financed. Let’s not forget that the Giants caught hell for financing $170 million, and that was after naming rights and charter seat licenses cut the original cost roughly in half. How can it get done in Oakland, a place that has relatively few major corporations? A place where PSL’s are impossible to sell? A place where building at the Coliseum (and perhaps anywhere in Oakland) may require shouldering the remaining debt on Mount Davis? A place where the government wants to keep the Raiders and simply may not have the resources to keep both the Raiders and A’s in town?

Frankly, Dave, you’re doing Trib readers a major disservice by not being honest about these challenges. Hope and emotion don’t make a strategy or a business plan. There are hard numbers and realities to address. When you feel like having an adult conversation with your readers about keeping the A’s in Oakland, you’ll be helping a lot more than you’re doing now. Until then, you’re just filling column inches, throwing some red meat at people who want it, and wasting everyone else’s time.

11.05.10
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Quan takes lead over Perata

While election analysts (and yours truly) didn’t give Jean Quan much of a shot against Don Perata when Perata emerged with a 11 point lead, the Ranked Choice Voting system may end up working in Quan’s favor when all is said and done.

Source: Alameda County Registrar

The whole count looks rather uneventful until you get to Rounds 9 and 10. In Round 9, Rebecca Kaplan is eliminated and her second place votes are transferred. Apparently Quan received three times as many higher-placed votes as Perata, which led to that same proportion of votes going straight to Quan. The last tabulation has Perata at 48.91% and Quan at 51.09%.

While RCV helps in terms of reining in election costs, it’s not a perfect system. There’s no weighting assigned to first, second, third and so on, making it possible for a candidate coming in a consistent second on most if not all ballots to win outright. That seems strange. Of course, if they were to weight votes they’d be getting into a terrible BCS-type controversy, and no one wants that for an election.

If this holds true, it’ll be a big boost for the Victory Court crowd. Then again, there’s action and then there’s just talk. Whatever the case, there should and will be a few laughs at Lew Wolff and John Fisher’s expense.

11.05.10
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High Speed Rail Town Hall

(Watch about halfway through for a treat.)

I’ve commented in the past on the tenor of the San Jose Good Neighbor sessions. When talking about the ballpark, opposition was present albeit mild. When it comes to the high speed rail project, well, it’s practically Katy bar the door. The largely critical attendees at tonight’s session had plenty of questions about the project’s impact on adjacent residential neighborhoods, including Cahill Park, St. Leo’s, and Gardner. The story, at least when it comes to HSR, is a sadly familiar tale. To conserve costs and get the project built as quickly as possible, the High Speed Rail Authority wants to build several stretches of aerial or elevated tracks down the Peninsula down to and through San Jose. The new Diridon station platform, which would be only a few hundred feet from Cisco Field, would be 60 feet above the ground, with a roof perhaps 30 feet or more above that. Last week, Palo Alto chose to get out of consideration for its own HSR station, leaving Redwood City and Mountain View as possible locations.

Possible tunnel alignments for high speed rail at Diridon Station

In San Jose, residents fought the rubber-stamping of an aerial alignment, which led the Authority to consider several underground options. All have pros and cons, and all are more expensive than an aerial.

  • Light blue: Deep Tunnel option. Tracks would be bored or “mined” 140 feet underground. Existing light rail and future BART would run between the tunnel and the surface. Cost: $3 billion. Option was dismissed because it was considered impractical (though not infeasible).
  • Purple: Shallow Tunnel. A massive cut-and-cover operation would occur between The Alameda and Park Avenue, disrupting the area’s light rail line and the ballpark because the alignment cuts right through the northeast block of the ballpark site. BART tunnel would also have to run deeper than originally planned. Construction time would be 5-7 years, which means that the affected area couldn’t be developed until perhaps 2020 or thereabouts. Option was considered too disruptive, City won’t go for it.
  • Yellow (5100′) and White (Thread the Needle). Both of these options were floated by a residents’ group interested in locating the new HSR platforms underneath the existing Diridon station and platforms. Both would run underneath the southwestern corner of the ballpark site. These were dismissed because they were considered dangerous for existing rail services (Caltrain, ACE, Amtrak, UPRR Freight, VTA Light Rail), particularly the danger of collapse.

To the attendees’ collective chagrin, the Authority’s project principals told the crowd that the best option moving forward would be the aerial alternative. Look at the risk assessment table below and you’ll see why.

The subject of compensation for lost property values came up, and the discussion wasn’t pretty. I doubt that the Authority is budgeting for a massive amount of cash payouts to homeowners in every affected city statewide, as the combined value of the settlements would absolutely kill the already astronomical budget while providing no actual value for the project. HSR has a difficult battle on its hands, given that several Peninsula cities have banded together in the same cause. The funny thing is that there’s an argument along the Peninsula that HSR would be best if it terminated somewhere in San Jose instead San Francisco, and I heard at least one argument tonight that HSR should terminate in some undeveloped land in South San Jose or even Gilroy. Either sounds great, as long as you don’t want people actually riding the thing.

Speaking of people not riding, the Authority chose Feds mandated that the Authority take the first $4.3 billion in federal and state funds and build the initial segment in the Central Valley, between Merced and Bakersfield via Fresno. That section will be the cheapest to build in the entire system and have the highest attainable speeds. In addition, maintenance and testing facilities are expected to be built in the area. Beyond those funds, additional money will have to come from the 112th Congress, whose House of Representatives will have a Republican majority that is normally transportation funding averse.

If they ever get these alignment questions and NIMBY issues settled, there’s a chance that the train could look like that animation at the top. Kind of strange, though, that San Jose would get a distinctive, skyline-worthy bridge within city limits; a bridge that could only be used by trains.

Some other notes:

  • The animation is the first I’ve seen that shows both the Plant 51 and Cahill Park developments as they are. Previous images and videos showed generic buildings.
  • The ballpark shown is also generic, as it doesn’t appear to have the same seating bowl shape as new Cisco Field renderings.
  • Again, I don’t know what the buildings are between HP Pavilion and Cisco Field. For all we know, it’s a blank slate.
  • San Jose Economic Development head Paul Krutko, a noted power-behind-the-throne for the ballpark project among others, abruptly resigned earlier today. I’m not an insider, so I have no idea what happened. What I do know about Krutko is that he wasn’t always the easiest guy to work with. The article hints at different kinds of scandal that could be catching up with him. Whatever the case, his services in terms of keeping the ballpark project alive and on the radar haven’t been needed in at least a year.
  • After a lackluster home playoff game versus the New York Red Bulls, the Earthquakes staged a furious rally and beat the NY 3-1, including the series clincher – a beautiful header by MLS leading scorer and Danville native Chris Wondolowski. That combined with the 1-0 loss over the weekend gives the Quakes an aggregate lead in goals scored, and thus a series victory (I can see eyes rolling as I write this). Next up: either Columbus or Colorado a week from now. Hey Lew – Build them the damned stadium already.