Apparently, the boosters who put together the site aerial images love PNC Park too, as its footprint has blessed all three images. I grabbed the PDF’s from the Facebook page and resized the images. First, let’s take care of the one that’s already been shot down, Howard Terminal. I think we’ve covered it enough.
Now on to the more realistic sites, starting with JLS North/West, then Victory Court.
There will be time for writeups tomorrow. You can find the large PDF’s here (50+ MB).
I’ve been asked to be an in-studio guest for the 9 o’clock hour of Forum with Michael Krasny (KQED 88.5 FM) tomorrow. We’ll be discussing A’s and 49ers, two teams whose current cities, future goals, and economic situations have more than a few similarities. Tune in to hear my nasal Asian self live!
I’m just catching up with the news from the press conference and subsequent news stories. Before I go into my analysis, here are the newest articles from the East Bay Express and SF Business Times. I haven’t seen pics or renderings that, so if anyone has the Powerpoint preso that was distributed, I’d welcome an e-mail containing it.
Prior to the press conference, Jeff asked me what I expected from the presser. Here’s what I said:
I expect some pretty pictures and an “offer of assistance” if the A’s are willing to play ball. I don’t expect them to delineate what that assistance is. There should be much talk of how good it could be for Oakland, maybe a token bit about the A’s. I expect Council to appear conciliatory as opposed to quotes from the last year.
Thankfully I was wrong on the assistance part. It looks like the City is willing to assemble the land necessary for the ballpark. The rest is exactly how I expected it to go. Many readers and commenters here criticize Oakland for not doing more to get a really “solid” bid in, but I’m going to differ with that. Negotiating with landowners and starting environmental impact reports is costly, time-consuming business, and I wouldn’t expect the City to commit to that unless they got some positive feedback from MLB and/or the A’s. As for how quickly or easily they could assemble the land at either Oak/3rd or JLS North (a.k.a. MLK/3rd), your guess is as good as mine.
Then again, this is why I don’t like this four/three/two site strategy. It makes it very convenient for Oakland not to commit to any additional effort. The stance can be, “See? Two viable sites that Wolff never investigated and they were right under his nose.” If you’re trying to score political points, then great, you’ve done it. Next? If you actually want to build something, you’d get much of this rigamarole out of the way and get down to business (as much as you could within the resource constraints you have). I can only assume that they’re waiting for the panel to render its final decision, after which they can move forward. Honestly, the path would be much clearer if a consensus formed around a single site, whose strengths and weaknesses couldn’t be conflated with another site – and most importantly, could be properly debated with San Jose’s Diridon site.
What I don’t get is why Oakland and San Francisco choose to make their announcements on the same day. Way to steal the spotlight from each other, folks.
I suppose I’ll be watching the news for reports from the press conference. Videos will be posted here as they come in.
Liveblog here.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit excited. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s Oakland press conference, in which the four ballpark site candidates will be announced. For me, it’s like an early Christmas present. Presents don’t usually translate into extra work. In this case I welcome it. Other than the locations, I don’t know what to expect. Surely there will be numerous people surrounding Mayor Dellums, providing a united front. I hope to see beautiful artistic renderings and site plans. I’m trying not to set my expectations too high.
For Oakland, the journey to get a new ballpark started some months ago, with a petition drive and Facebook group. I have criticized supporters at times for making too much of the petition drive, yet it’s important even though it’s mostly symbolic. The journey has only started. The remainder of the journey is alternately arduous and boring. It could seem like it’s going forever, it could end as abruptly as a lightning strike. Is Oakland up for it? We’re about to find out.
Update: A similar article describing the press conference is now up on the A’s website. Multiple articles describe the site as Jefferson and Embarcadero West, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Part of the power plant is on one side, with Cost Plus in the middle and the JLS garage on the other. Either the power plant block or the garage will have to go. I’ll stop now and wait for the press conference.
Also, on yesterday’s KNBR Morning Show Steve Kettmann was interviewed about his San Francisco Magazine piece. Kettman, who now lives the expat lifestyle in Berlin, adds some excellent context to his piece. Worth a listen.
Forgive me for having a Stephen Colbert moment. Robert Gammon cleared up much of the site confusion that started with last week’s Matier & Ross report. The sites, according to Gammon’s sources, are (drum roll please):
Why am I patting myself on the back? Well, I did write about a possible alternative just north of Howard Terminal three months ago (not in depth, but at least it wasn’t one of the “recycled” ideas often put forth). Gammon mentioned that the site currently contains the offices of the East Bay Express, which would have to be moved if the A’s moved in.
Since Wolff has already dismissed the Coliseum and Howard Terminal, the choices really boil down to OFDT (Oak/3rd) and MLK/3rd (for lack of a better term). For anyone that wants to keep the A’s in Oakland, this is a good thing. Why? Because it can allow the community to coalesce around one or at worst two sites, instead of debating three or four sites and creating factions. Really, what the City and boosters need to do at this point is to pick one and run with it. The future of the A’s in Oakland depends on this choice. Knowing this, there is an obvious, crystal clear choice based on some simple facts: MLK/3rd. I’ll explain after the chart.
Transit – BART is closer to Oak/3rd than MLK/3rd because of the proximity of the Lake Merritt station compared to the 12th Street station. Either site would require a transfer for some group of fans, though that isn’t any different than the current situation at the Coliseum. The ferry terminal, which admittedly would get far less use than BART, is only two short blocks from MLK/3rd. Proximity to Amtrak is roughly the same as with BART, except that the JLS station is on this side of 880/980. No one talks about buses, but they shouldn’t be ignored. MLK/3rd is almost adjacent to Broadway, which is the spine of Oakland’s AC Transit routes. Oak/3rd’s closest existing bus stop is at JLS Amtrak, making it a bit out-of-the-way.
Downtown access – MLK/3rd isn’t tucked into a corner, making it easy for fans to walk from Downtown and even Uptown to the site. Oak/3rd is tucked into a corner, sandwiched between 880 and the active UPRR line. There are far more restaurants and bars between the 12th Street station and MLK/3rd, creating a natural synergy.
Available parking – I put TBD here because there are several variables. It’s not known how many public and private spaces would be available for MLK/3rd, but the potential could be greater. At Oak/3rd, the wildcard is Laney College, which could make lots of parking available for weekend games but not necessarily for night games (due to night classes). Both sites would have access to parking located underneath the 880 viaduct.
Freeway access – On/off-ramp capacity limitations that affect the OFDT site also affect Oak/3rd. MLK/3rd’s more central location makes for a better distribution of traffic among current on/off-ramps. MLK/3rd is also closer to the 5th St exit from 880-South, which means less surface street driving for fans.
Integration with JLS – MLK/3rd is two blocks away. If one of the City’s concerns is properly filling the space between Downtown and JLS, a ballpark is a pretty good way to do it. Oak/3rd is, again, out of the way.
Aesthetics – Neither site is going to beat the old Coliseum’s view of the hills, especially with 880 in the foreground. At least MLK/3rd won’t have an unadorned overpass going over Lake Merritt Channel in the view. For those who might like it, there will probably be a way to design a MLK/3rd ballpark so that fans can see BART trains pass by as they enter/exit the subway portion.
Construction difficulty – Oak/3rd is just above the designated tide line, but much of it may also be landfill, just like China Basin. If so, needed foundation work could prove more expensive than at MLK/3rd.
Political/Legal difficulty – Oak/3rd has a complicated ownership situation, as Caltrans, Union Pacific, and the CPUC all have interests in the area which may not be easily negotiated. Both sites have some number of private owners, so they should be on equal footing in terms of acquisition costs.
I’d say it’s pretty clear which site makes the most sense, although I’m sure some of you will debate this. However, the key to getting anything like this done is political will. As the rest of Gammon’s column notes, Mayor Dellums has challenges he has to deal with before turning much attention to a ballpark. Unfortunately for Oakland, it’s a matter of timing. If Dellums decides not to run for re-election, his lame duck status will render him unable to see a big project like this through since it’ll take over a year to approve. If he does run and wins, he might spend too much time in the interim on other more pressing matters or his campaign to wage a development battle like this. If he runs and loses, his replacement (perhaps Don Perata) might choose to scrap existing plans and move forward with his own. The question is, will that be too late?
Note: While doing some quick research on Oakland recently, I noticed that on the relevant page on everybody’s most trustworthy information source, Wikipedia, someone posted that Oakland’s 2009 population is 645,345. I was absolutely perplexed by this. There are multiple “citations” for this figure, but none of them report that figure or anything remotely close. The census 2006-08 estimate is 362,342, a 9% drop in population from 2000. I don’t know who put that up there, but I’m hoping someone – a reader who edits Wikipedia articles – could look into that and correct it if necessary. There’s no need to fudge something like that. Oakland’s population is now listed as 404,155.
Citing “undue haste” on the City of Santa Clara’s part in its pursuit of the 49ers stadium deal, Great America park operator Cedar Fair filed suit today in an attempt to kill any deal between the team and the city. The Merc’s Howard Mintz has the scoop:
In a lawsuit filed late Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Cedar Fair Entertainment, Great America’s owners, argues that the May agreement between the city and 49ers should not have been consummated before the completion and approval of an environmental impact report. The city council is poised to vote tonight on the report, a thick document that outlines the potential impact of a 49ers stadium on area traffic, parking, noise, air quality and other factors.
The question is, “Why now?” Cedar Fair has had months to decide whether or not to sue, so filing this seemingly injunctive suit at the 11th hour is a bit late (my lack of legal expertise here is clearly on display). Unless a judge steps in and orders the City Council to delay the vote, the Council could simply move forward.
I wasn’t planning to check in on the council session, thinking that the EIR certification was a mere formality, but I think I’ll take a peek. It could get interesting. Santa Clara’s Council Chambers tends to get full quickly, so I think I’ll be taking the session in remotely.
Update 11:41 PM – Council has voted 5-2 to certify the EIR. Next up is the date for the vote (either April 13 or June 8), which they are discussing now.
Update 12:30 AM – Decision on the ballot measure pushed back to next Tuesday. Vote scheduled for June 8, the date of the 2010 primary.
Update 12:45 PM – I must’ve been away from the desk when 49ers veep Lisa Lang and former City Council member Pat Kolstad, representing lobbying group Santa Clarans for Economic Progress, spoke in favor of a separate, binding ballot measure that would do a legal endaround the CEQA process. Kolstad and two other previous Council members, Aldyth Parle and Don Callejon, promised to submit the new, 49ers-funded initiative today. This is bad mojo, folks. The last thing the City and voters need is dueling ballot measures, which will probably be confusingly written and difficult to distinguish from one another. I don’t envy Santa Clara residents at this point. Caveat emptor.
Arrived in time for a brief update to the EIR status. The document is meant to be released in January, with a Planning Commission hearing to follow on April.
The discussion topic for this session is High Speed Rail.
Alignment: Three-track, Direct/Downtown tunnel and aerial options have been withdrawn. That leaves the previously chosen alignment (parallel to UPRR) and 87/280 option to choose from.
According to one of the project leads, very few trains will be “whizzing by” Diridon station, perhaps one per hour and at 45 mph. All other trains will stop in SJ.
Residents are not happy that the tunnel option has been withdrawn. The cost wasn’t cited directly but when pressed, the estimate was $2 billion for a 3-mile tunnel with 1380-foot platform. Shades of the Peninsula…
Speaking of have-nots, the NFL has notified the players’ union that it is ending a $100 million supplementary revenue sharing pool, used to help the bottom line of low revenue teams. It’s one of many salvos being used to frame the inevitably contentious CBA discussions to come. The rationale reads like this:
A management source said when the owners chose for an early opt-out of the labor deal, triggering an uncapped year in 2010, it opened the door for the supplemental pool to be disbanded.
Lower-revenue clubs that have been subsidized under the supplemental plan will not be subject to the minimum spending rules that exist with the current salary-cap system.
UPenn law professor and NFL mediator Stephen Burbank believes that the league is bound by the CBA to keep the supplementary pool intact through the end of the CBA, which expires after the 2011 season. So as expected, the NFLPA is challenging the move. Really, however, this isn’t their battle. This is between the haves and the have-nots, of which all three California teams fall into the latter category thanks to old, antiquated stadiums. Forbes’ latest numbers have the bottom 10 franchises as follows (keep in mind that the estimated 2009 salary cap is $127 million):
Arizona, Cincinnati, and Detroit aren’t relocation candidates thanks to their new venues. The others are all fair game. You might be thinking, “How can a team pulling in $208 million cry poor when the salary cap is $80 million less?” Well, that’s not the point. The problem is that the Redskins pulled in $345 million, the Pats $302 million, and the Cowboys $280 million – and that’s before the Taj MaJerry opened. If anything, should this move be approved it should spur the have-nots even more on push for new stadiums. And since two of those bottom feeders are the Bay Area teams who will lose out on a combined $40 million over the next two years (and perhaps beyond), it might be just the thing to push them into a stadium-sharing situation.
Lew Wolff was interviewed by Greg Papa in a lengthy segment on Chronicle Live today, and for once just about everyone can find a little bit of hope in what he had to say. Wolff’s folksy demeanor shows up most when he sheepishly admits something, such as when he talked about his “silly tarping” idea (that won’t go over well) or when he didn’t realize that the A’s had the worst attendance in the league in 2009.
Papa did the right thing in progressing the questions from Oakland to San Jose. He asked why Oakland didn’t work and Wolff mentioned his notes, which would take an hour and 45 minutes to go over. I have gotten a look at these notes, and while there wasn’t time to go over everything, it was quite thorough and helps Wolff make his case rather clearly. That said, on two occasions Wolff mentioned that while he felt he was exhaustive in his search, the MLB panel could make another recommendation within Oakland or the East Bay. Whether or not the panel actually does that is another story. Still, it’s a glimmer of hope that the process will give Oakland another shot at getting everything together for a ballpark. (Cue the Oakland preso anytime now…)
When the subject switched to San Jose, Wolff played down San Jose in terms of economic virtues. Instead he framed his argument entirely within the confines of running the club: It’s the only place a ballpark can work now due to infrastructure there, and the concepts in Fremont and Oakland (Coliseum North) can’t work now because of the economy. Keep in mind that in the San Francisco Magazine article, Wolff said that he wasn’t pursuing additional land in the Diridon area, so building a mall or some other fancy development wouldn’t be in the cards.
On territorial rights, Wolff felt that the decision had to be made “in a measured manner,” with neither owner likely lobbying other owners on his behalf.
Among the other tasty tidbits from the interview
There’s another thing I’ve picked up from these public statements and others from other teams – there’s a palpable sense of kinship between the A’s, Raiders, and 49ers. The A’s, while they’ve criticized the Coliseum for not being baseball friendly, have not directly blamed the Raiders. They’ve said that a shared facility isn’t ideal long term and that’s that. It’s an important distinction, as all three teams know they’re in the same boat and it wouldn’t make sense to attack each other when it’s hard enough to get a deal done. Fans have the latitude to throw blame. Owners, not so much.
Want more? Watch the interview, which is almost 15 minutes long has been broken up into several segments on the CSNCA video section.
Matier & Ross have the results of two polls – one conducted by an independent Oregon pollster, another commissioned by the Giants – gauging San Jose and Santa Clara county resident interest in an A’s move south.
The poll of 400 Santa Clara County voters found that the half living in San Jose were split, 45 to 44 percent, on whether they approve of the A’s moving to town.
Countywide, support for the move was slightly better, 45 to 37 percent.
The survey was conducted Oct. 26 to 28 by Oregon pollster Rick Lindholm, who tells us he added the A’s question to a broad survey of Santa Clara County opinion “to get a benchmark of what was going on.”
The survey pretty much mirrors what the Giants, who are opposing the move, found in their polling – but sharply differs from what A’s boosters in Santa Clara found in their survey.
A Giants poll of 528 county voters, including 275 from San Jose, conducted from April 21 to 27 found respondents leaning 2 to 1 against the move if it meant spending public money, and rating a new ballpark as dead last among seven possible spending priorities in the county.
M&R also make mention of a poll conducted by SJ/SV boosters whose results haven’t yet been released. As I understand it, this particular poll is also a broad-based poll covering a number of issues. Results aren’t expected to be publicized until the full P.R. effort begins, whenever that is. The Giants poll is emblematic of the shadiness of polling, since the questions were designed to elicit certain responses. I don’t know what the questions were from the SJ/SV poll, but I suspect that the issue was worded differently in order to elicit the opposite response.
There’s a small amount of buzz surrounding Red Sox owner John Henry’s e-mail to the Boston Globe, published yesterday. In the letter, Henry takes certain unnamed small market teams to task for riding the revenue sharing gravy train.
“Change is needed and that is reflected by the fact that over a billion dollars have been paid to seven chronically uncompetitive teams, five of whom have had baseball’s highest operating profits,” Henry responded in an e-mail. “Who, except these teams, can think this is a good idea?”
The Chronicle’s John Shea thinks Henry’s referring to the A’s among those teams, which stands to reason since they received $32 million in revenue sharing and made $26 million in operating profit in 2008. Off the top of my head, the other gravy trainers are the Pirates, Nationals, Twins, Rays, Royals, and ironically, Henry’s former team, the Marlins. The A’s don’t fit into the “chronically uncompetitive” milieu, so perhaps the Orioles or Reds are being lumped in instead. I doubt that Henry reviewed a leaguewide ledger before making the comment, so it’s not worth picking it apart.
ESPN’s Rob Neyer chose not to take Henry at face value, pointing out a few factual inconsistencies. Among them are Henry’s assertions that Boston is merely the 16th biggest market and the MLB is itself a pure bastion of free market capitalism. However, Neyer was intrigued with Henry’s concept of abolishing revenue sharing and replacing with entirely with payroll taxes, distributed directly to low revenue teams. The purpose is to bring the have-nots up to a new salary floor. Of course, this isn’t exactly an altruistic move as it would allow the Red Sox and other have’s to retain even more of their local revenue.
“It’s a very simple approach in which payroll tax dollars replace revenue sharing dollars and go directly to the clubs that need revenues in order to meet minimum payrolls that should be imposed on each club receiving revenue. Further, players would have to be protected with a guaranteed minimum percentage of overall revenues. This would be a very simple and effective method in reducing top payrolls and increasing bottom payrolls with no tax on revenues,” Henry wrote.Henry added that “The World Series should be determined by fully competitive teams on the field – not by how much particular clubs can afford to spend. A better solution is to address competition directly so that clubs can generate revenue more equally as teams become competitive across baseball.”
I find the idea interesting too. According to Plunkett, MLB brought in $6.2 billion in revenue for the 2009 season. Henry doesn’t specify how much the “guaranteed minimum percentage of overall revenues” is, but it certainly won’t be 1/30th of the whole pie. My guess is that it’ll be around 1%, or $62 million per team. That’s slightly more than an even split of national revenue. Beyond that, teams would be left to their own devices, or rather their own local revenue. I haven’t had a chance to run the numbers, but it’s no stretch to think that the A’s would be worse off until they got into a new stadium (keep in mind that the current CBA runs through 2011). I’d venture a guess of $15-20 million less than what the A’s are currently getting with revenue sharing, though at least they’d get most of the money upfront instead of waiting until the end of the season for the revenue sharing receipt as they do now.
Whether or not Henry is speaking out of school, I have every reason to believe that revenue sharing will move more in his preferred direction, especially as the remaining teams without new stadia get their situations resolved. With Bud Selig reaffirming his intention to retire by 2012, it’s likely that the commish feels that things are lining up properly to cement his legacy and he feels that his work is just about done.
newballpark.org 