It’s bad form, but I’m going to start off with a few sidebar items because they’re rather interesting. Advance ticket sales account for 80% of all tickets sold. The remaining 20% is walkup sales. Here’s a geographical breakdown:

• Oakland accounts for 8.8% of advance ticket sales
• San Francisco accounts for 13% of advance ticket sales
• Fremont’s share is 2.3%, Santa Clara County is at 10.5%
• Alameda County in total buys 27.3% of advance tickets
• Contra Costa County buys 20.7%
• 10.4% comes from outside the nine-county Bay Area
• 8.2% comes from outside California

The San Francisco number has to take into account certain factors such as Giants fans’ impact on attendance during the 3-game set played at the Coliseum every year (rough estimate: 1.5-2% of ticket sales). One has to wonder what negative impact will come with the lack of BART access, especially for SF residents who have no other public transit alternative.

That said, there’s no better representation of how regional the team is than the table the above information comes from on page III-10.

Page III-6 has a graph showing historical attendance. Surprisingly, they use both paid attendance and turnstile attendance figures in the comparison. Since the start of the A’s run of success in 2000, actual (turnstile) attendance has run only 80% of paid attendance. Since sellouts are sellouts, that can only mean that those Monday/Tuesday night April series openers draw even worse than you’d think (or they’d announce). The upshot is that concessions sales are behind the curve.

Now onto housing. Start saving your pennies, prospective buyers. A townhouse will run on average $675,000 at the Ballpark Village. Some units will obviously be cheaper and others much more expensive, but they put the number out there. Construction on each new residential unit is estimated at $380,000. Other important figures:

• The 600 first units would be available in 2011, in line with the opening of the ballpark.
• 600 units would be sold each year through 2014; 500 would be sold in 2015 to finish the rollout
• The residential portion would bring in 8,787 new residents to Fremont

This is the point where the questions come up. The first is about tax increment financing. From Page VI-4:

The projections in Table VI-3 assume that the County and other affected agencies will agree to raise the cap for this project area. If the cap is not raised, less future money will flow into the Redevelopment Agency, and somewhat more will flow into the City’s General Fund…

The assumption here is that the Redevelopment Zone would remain for some time. I have to correct myself on this. In the past I noted that the zone’s existing debt would be retired in 2014. However, the zone itself would expire on November 22, 2023, long after the ballpark village has been built. The city’s redevelopment arm would accrue over $58 million in property tax increment just through 2016, possibly $150 million through the end of the zone’s life. What would happen to that money?

The area redevelopment plan shows a transit hub as a requirement. That’s pretty much a given with this project. How expansive would the transit hub be? It’s one thing to have a rail platform, some bus stalls and a parking lot. Would they also consider additional road or rail infrastructure?

Speaking of infrastructure, something needs to be done to make sure new kids in the area have access to schools. The report touts the infusion of $10 million into FUSD’s coffers. But it also says this:

New enrollment will be directed to existing school facilities as efficiently as possible to balance the student population with capacity.

The area is projected to have 684 new K-12 students. The statement above implies that all of these new students would have to be bussed or driven to existing schools on the other side of 880. Two schools in that area have around 500 students, so the impact could be enormous. We’re talking about adding a new neighborhood’s worth of students without a new school. That makes very little sense.

Schools are not cheap. Don Callejon School, which was built as part of the Rivermark development in Santa Clara, cost $26 million to construct. Even then, I don’t think price is so much the issue as available land is. If the ballpark village core takes up 25 acres and housing takes up 120, that leaves precious little land for parking, required park facilities, or a school. Will someone pony up for a school in the project area?

Next, do a search for the term “affordable housing” in the report and you’ll get no results. There’s no reference to Fremont’s requirement that all new residential construction have 15% of the project be available at affordable housing cost. There’s also no reference to various incentives that the city gives to developers to encourage them to build affordable housing.

This is the one issue I can see becoming a real sticking point. How would the A’s and their partner developers tackle this? It’s great that Fremont offers a density bonus, but the lack of information about how the requirement would be fulfilled is troubling. It’s something that frequently holds up other housing developments, since it affects developer profits.

In the tabulation of tax increment revenue, it is mentioned that there’s a mandatory set aside of around 20% of the revenue for low and moderate income housing. Is that money under consideration to fulfill the requirement? If so that’s quite an endaround.

The next post will cover direct and indirect economic impact.

The big takeaway from Wolff’s progress report tonight was that the Economic Impact Report for the project is now available. I’ve only barely scanned through it so far and here are some key points:

• Ballpark is still 30-34,000 seats, cost = $450 million
• The 2,900 housing units will be spread over 120 acres, for a density of 24 units per acre. There would be a mix of brownstone-type units and higher density development adjacent to the ballpark, cost = $1.1 billion
• 550,000 square feet of “high quality mixed-use/retail,” the majority of which would be in a “lifestyle center” (a.k.a. outdoor mall); the remainder would be “entertainment retail in a ‘Main Street’ environment activated by the residential neighborhood and the ballpark. Cost = $198 million
• High-end boutique hotel with only 100 rooms, cost = $30 million
• Total project cost would be $1.8 billion
• Total economic impact (using multipliers) would be $3.2 billion

Next I’ll quote verbatim from the report from its summary of economic impacts:

• The direct economic impact on Alameda County will be approximately $109 million per year from the operations of the Athletics franchise, the operations of concessions within the ballpark, the net new retail spending captured by the Baseball Village retail, and the net new spending captured in the county from the new households in the Ballpark Village.
• Including the indirect and induced “multiplier” effects, the Ballpark Village will generate over $191 million per year in total economic output for Alameda County, and create approximately $50 million each year in personal earnings, which in turn supports approximately 1,762 incremental jobs within Alameda County.
• The net present value over the next 30 years of the total expansion in economic output of Alameda County will be between $700 million and $2 billion, depending upon the discount rate used, as a result of implementing the Ballpark Village proposal.
• Construction of the Ballpark Village is estimated to cost approximately $1.8 billion in today’s dollars. Over the several years it will take to build and absorb the project, over 13,000 full-time equivalent annual jobs will be created, along with almost $600 million in earnings for those workers. Alameda County will experience a one-time economic expansion during the construction period of almost $3.2 billion.
• For the Fremont Unified School District, over $10 million in development fees will be collected from the project.
• For the City of Fremont, over $3.6 million per year will be generated after build out in General Fund revenues. While the costs of providing General Fund municipal services cannot be estimated until a formal development application is submitted, these General Fund revenues will be unrestricted in their use for offsetting costs. Additional revenues will be generated for the City in the form of fees and charges to offset non-general fund services provided, and by the Special Services tax levied within the Pacific Commons development area.
• The Fremont Redevelopment Agency, upon project build out, will be collecting over $15 million per year in today’s dollars in the form of property tax increments and set-aside funds for low- and moderate-income housing.

I need to read more before I post any significant analysis. A couple of notes however:

• Tax increment is mentioned, though not as a method to pay for the project; rather it’s used as positive economic impact for the city and county (the usual skepticism applies).
• Additional tax revenue sources are identified, though not the gross receipts tax I found earlier.

The report is 60 pages long and is chock full of tables. Enjoy.

Now for a few observations about the progress report:

• The $500K paid last month was reimbursement for process work
• The best method for owning the stadium has not yet been determined, whether public, private, or a mix
• Traffic and environmental impact reports are meant to show that the project would have the same or fewer impacts than the currently planned use (office park)
• Jane Gothrop was the last of two speakers and expressed her concern about environmental impacts, urging the council to make sure the project had a full, complete, transparent, open review. To that end, Mayor Wasserman replied that the project would indeed have such a review.
• Council were mostly positive, mostly champing at the bit – especially Anu Natarajan and Bill Harrison, who by trade is a CPA.

I’ve got some reading to do. BTW, Wolff reads this site. And the comments.

From the Fremont City Clerk’s office (I used bold for emphasis):

Subject: Ballpark Village Project Progress Report

TO: ALL INTERESTED PARTIES

FROM: CITY OF FREMONT

SUBJECT: BALLPARK VILLAGE PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT

This is to advise you that an agenda item has been scheduled for the regular City Council meeting of Tuesday, May 8, 2007, to hear a progress report from Oakland A’s owner Lew Wolff on the Ballpark Village Project. The City Council meeting begins at 7:00 p.m.

The meeting will be held in the City Council Chambers located at 3300 Capitol Avenue, Building A, Fremont, California.

If you have any questions regarding this agenda item, please contact Economic Development Director Daren Fields at (510) 284-4020 or at dfields@ci.fremont.ca.us.

Sincerely,

Dawn G. Abrahamson
City Clerk

Office of the City Clerk

See y’all there. For those of you who won’t be there, check out the webcast.

Ask and ye shall receive. Bleacher Dave suggested that I compare different ballpark village developments around the country. Luckily I waited until NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his aggressive development plan for the Willets Point neighborhood east of Shea Stadium/CitiField, adding one more point of reference in the process.

For this comparison, I’ve strictly observed developments around major league ballparks. While there are several examples of village-type projects near minor league facilities, they’re typically much smaller in scope and potential economic impact so for now, I’ve left those out. New Yankee Stadium is also not included because the ancillary development mostly consists of garages and parkland placed near or atop those garages.

The four markets being covered are:

• San Diego’s Ballpark District, at the edge of the trendy, gentrified Gaslamp Quarter
• St. Louis’s Ballpark Village, on the site of the previous incarnation of Busch Stadium
• Willets Point in Queens, home to mostly junkyards and auto repair shops that are visible from the Shea Stadium parking lot
• Fremont, the only undeveloped site of the four and the only one not in an urban environment

Not to be forgotten is that the first three projects have access to good public transit infrastructure. Fremont may have at best indirect access to BART or commuter trains.

San Diego’s Ballpark District actually covers some 26 blocks north and east of PETCO, but it has been scaled back significantly since its inception. $300 million in public financing for the ballpark was exchanged for a promise by Padres owner John Moores to develop much of the surrounding area. The delayed opening of the ballpark occurred before the start of the real estate downturn in the San Diego market. The area’s housing prices have flattened or dropped over the last year or so as new construction and conversions have come online, creating a glut of sorts. This phenomenon doesn’t affect the ballpark’s financing, but San Diego has had plenty of other fiscal problems, namely its debt load and accounting scandals. The city’s damaged credit rating (from its $1.4 billion pension crisis) held until March, when the ballpark bonds were refinanced to reflect an interest rate drop from 7.66% (!) to 5.23%.

The Ballpark Village next to new Busch Stadium may look large at $650 million, but it’s far smaller than the other projects. Development is being driven by the Cardinals and partner firm The Cordish Company, but last year Cordish requested a subsidy to keep the project moving forward. In February, the city approved a $115 million cash infusion into Ballpark Village. Cordish is a name to watch for as it specializes in large urban redevelopment efforts and pulls in major subsidies in the process. The original agreement between the development partners and the city called for the first block of development to open in 2007. That date has slipped to 2009. In the meantime, the price tag has grown from $300 million to $650 million.

The Willets Point (a.k.a. “Iron Triangle”) section of Queens is known for its run down auto shops and junkyards. Previous city leaders have targeted it for massive projects, most notably the 2012 Summer Olympics bid. After MSG/Cablevision effectively killed all hope for Jets/Olympic Stadium on Manhattan’s West Side, attention turned to Willets Point for a stadium and press center. The new site of CitiField is sandwiched between the existing Shea Stadium and the Iron Triangle, further propelling Bloomberg to redevelop the area. Existing business owners have pledged to fight eminent domain proceedings to the very end, but we know how that often turns out…

That leaves us with the Cisco Field project. Aesthetically and politically, it has little in common with the other three plans except for that it’s a ballpark with ancillary development. In adherence with the path of least resistance concept, it would appear that it has relatively few obstacles for its completion.

• No upfront public money (bonds) is being requested for either the ballpark or ancillary development (as far as we know).
• There are no eminent domain or other major land acquisition problems that could delay development (factoring in the Scott Gas situation).
• Repayment of any privately raised bonds is likely dependent on ancillary development beginning quickly, forcing the developer to mitigate or eliminate any delays associated with the project.

Knowing that these elements should help put the project on the relative fast track, one would hope that Wolff and his people would focus even more attention on transportation solutions, as that’s the obvious weak point in the proposal. Even then, there’s only so much that can be done.

Good session tonight. The 49ers seem to be improving on the PR front. Before I get into that, here’s what I got out of the council session.

Finances

• The current stadium estimate is $854 million, including $111 million in inflation costs associated with a 2010 construction start date.
• 81% of the project funding would come from the team, the NFL, and various advance stadium revenue sources (more on that later).
• 19% would come from $160 million in City-derived funding.
• That $160 million contribution does not include money for a garage that would have to be built to accommodate parking requirements for Cedar Fair, the company that currently owns and operates Great America.
• The contribution also does not include money for a potential relocation of the on-site power substation. The Merc pegs this cost at $20-30 million.
• The league’s G-3 loan program has been exhausted and it is not known if the 49ers will be able to utilize the “club seat waiver” facility used for other stadiums. The league and the team are still working on the source.
• The team would cover cost overruns.
• A stadium authority would be created to collect project revenues, own and operate the stadium.
• Some revenue would be captured for use in a stadium improvement fund, which would be utilized every 5-7 years.

What isn’t known is what the stadium authority actually is. Sure, it’s a quasi-public governing body, just as the Coliseum Authority or a mass transit joint-powers authority is. Beyond that, we’re getting into a gray area. When one resident asked if the stadium authority was really just an extension of the city (and as such the city would be liable for financing), 49ers CFO Larry MacNeil simply said that the project would not touch the city’s general fund.

Okay, but that doesn’t answer the question. Stadium authorities are sometimes created to pool resources from various jurisdictions, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here as the team would be dealing almost entirely with the city. If the authority is asked to issue bonds and the city owns the authority and the stadium, then it stands to reason that the city is ultimately responsible for a lot of the debt service. Honestly, it makes sense for the 49ers to ask the city to move in this direction since it would allow for access to lower interest and/or tax-free bonds. MacNeil was very careful not to specify which method of city funding would be required. One more interesting tidbit: the Authority would hire 69 full-time employees once the stadium is up and running.

Notice the fine print in the “Stadium Authority Project Funding” line item. There’s a ticket tax, naming and pouring rights, the usual suspects. But there’s also one other item that doesn’t look that familiar: Stadium builders licenses. Care to guess what those are?

Transportation
The team predicts that almost 50,000 game attendees would travel by car and park in the nearby area, which has 32,500 parking spaces within 1.5 miles. The other 18,000 would travel via some mode of public transit.

While I can’t argue with the charter bus estimate, the light rail number is overly optimistic. If anything, I can see it used by people who want to park at a VTA Park-n-Ride station (Great Mall, Tamien, Evelyn) and want to avoid parking fees and hassles. Those people would be missing out on tailgating. Tailgating is much more integral to a football experience than any other sport, so I’m skeptical that many would willingly take this option. It doesn’t help that only a limited number of 49ers fans even have access to VTA light rail. It’s also not known if the VTA estimate contains Caltrain users who might transfer in Mountain View to get to the stadium. Caltrain doesn’t have a station within a 3 mile drive of the stadium. A transfer would be required via light rail, bus, or even Capitol Corridor.

The block of Tasman Drive immediately north of the stadium site would be closed on gameday to allow for safe pedestrian circulation between the convention center, light rail station, and the stadium. Several major intersections would have limited or no cross-traffic to funnel stadiumgoers to and from the venue more quickly. Additionally, nearby residential neighborhoods in both Santa Clara and Sunnyvale would have restricted access to prevent fans from parking there. This policy is already in place on one day per year: Independence Day. During the fireworks show, 101 turns into a parking lot.

As for available parking, the 49ers have already talked with several nearby office park landowners and businesses about using some of their spaces. The landowners would get the majority of the parking revenue, while the rest would go to the Authority via parking fees and the remaining revenue cut. Yahoo! bought a large swath of land located kitty corner from the nearby Hilton, and while I don’t think they’ll design their parking facility strictly with football parking revenue generation in mind, they may want to figure out ways to bring fans in to check out Yahoo! technologies in the nearby tech showcase center. On a related note, West Valley-Mission Chancellor Stan Arteberry endorsed the project, no doubt seeing dollar signs in potential parking revenue (Mission College is slightly under 1 mile southwest of the stadium site).

I’ll end tonight with one more table that shows the various costs and revenue sources. Keep in mind that the revenue projections shown are net of debt service. I’ll have more thoughts on these numbers tomorrow.

Update 11:30 AM – There were a few more observations I wanted to put into the original post but it was getting late and my brain was fried.

• Vice Mayor Kevin Moore suggested the possibility of building flexible space into the stadium that could be used for offices, retail, or even an annex for the Convention Center across the street.
• 49 officers would be required on game days for all manner of functions. Some would come from surrounding jurisdictions such as Sunnyvale and San Jose, possibly the Sheriff.
• When the parking and traffic diagram was shown, I couldn’t help but think of FedEx Field, which has a similar sprawling parking structure. What Santa Clara has over Landover, MD is a vastly superior freeway infrastructure.
• A better parallel may be Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. The venerable “Murph” is in the middle of several freeways and a few major arterial roads. Tasman Drive has its equivalent down south in Friars Road, an east-west arterial that repeatedly gets clogged before and after home games.
• The team intends to have the CEQA process start in August or September, making the window for the council to make a decision on the project only 3-4 months.
• Santa Clara residents may have a shuttle available to them from an offsite parking lot only they can use.
• Debt service on the facility would run 25 years. The lease would be 30 years.

I plan to attend tonight’s Santa Clara City Council session, at which the 49ers will present the important details of their stadium plan. I didn’t originally plan to go but I’m curious about how well the 49ers make the sales pitch.

Coincidentally, the last time I attended a City Council session was when A’s President Mike Crowley traveled down here to talk up the A’s stadium proposal several years ago.

On Wednesday, the A’s rather quietly filed ” ‘an application to negotiate a development agreement,’ Fremont Economic Development Director Daren Fields said.” What Fremont mayor Bob Wasserman terms “a double, not a home run” is more like sacrifice bunt made to move a runner into scoring position. So far this season, the A’s have had only one player who has shown the ability to lay that bunt down. But I digress.

The A’s also dropped off $500K with the application. It falls short of what I’ve been looking for (the application, not the money), but it’s a start. The abrupt nature and timing of the application makes me wonder if there is something to my thought that the San Jose and Fremont development plans are somehow tied. There are plenty of factors in the Fremont deal alone that need to be addressed. An externality like San Jose would severely complicate matters. I’d like to think that the Fremont deal is completely standalone, but maybe it isn’t and Wolff is scrambling in light of the recent news in San Jose.

From SJSU’s standpoint, Don Kassing had little desire to cede control over a large piece of property to a private party. While it’s true that SJSU would not have had to pay for any of the construction, the land itself has significant value despite its mostly deteriorating condition. On the other hand, Earthquakes Soccer, LLC was paying for construction of everything, all they wanted was a cheap land lease to keep overhead low.

The Quakes were willing to pay $1 million guaranteed per year, plus a split of revenue based on the events held. SJSU would get revenue from Spartan events. The Quakes would get revenue from Quakes games. The two parties would split revenue from other events such as concerts.

That $1 million offered per year is essentially a lease payment. If you’re the Quakes you think this is a good deal considering the circumstances, and especially in light of other stadium deals in which the team not only doesn’t pay for the stadium, but also doesn’t pay for anything else like a land lease. If the Quakes have to pay $6 million, that payment severely cuts into the split you were planning with SVS+E, the likely stadium operator. If you’re Kassing, you’re thinking that $1 million for the Quakes to lease several dozen acres of public/university land is not getting bang for the buck. That may sound like more of a philosophical stand than a hard numbers stand, but Kassing has every right to do it.

In the end the deal has to pencil out for both parties. It obviously didn’t in this case, so they both walked away. The Quakes are tied to San Jose if they want to finance the venue since the Edenvale property is the apparent key. There are other site possibilities, but land costs now have to be a concern.

It’s the second week of the season, which means it’s time for Forbes to release its list of MLB team valuations. The usual suspects (Yanks, Mets, BoSox, Dodgers, Cubs) lead the pack. Towards the bottom of the list, the A’s estimated value jumped 24% to $292 million. That compares to the league averages of 15% rise in value and $431 million.

In the meantime, the A’s payroll has gone up much more gradually, only 1.3% from 2005 to 2006 and 6.7% from 2006 to 2007. Before you start on that angry e-mail to Lew Wolff and Billy Beane about how they could’ve afforded Frank Thomas or, um, someone other desirable free agent, take a look at the following table:

The payroll cost as a function of revenue is the key indicator. That was driven down from well over 60% to just under 55%. The owners must’ve gotten the memo from Bud Selig to go with the program and keep that player cost at that comfortable 55% threshold. Should franchise value go up again next season, I would expect payroll to jump a proportional amount. If growth is flat, payroll should stay flat.

However, that player cost as a function of value is intriguing. It’s akin to home equity, and it will come handy when the time comes to borrow for Cisco Field. It’s likely that the media buzz around Cisco Field helped drive the rise in valuation.

The A’s ranked 24th on the list and were surrounded by familiar faces: Florida, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota, and Cincinnati. Of those teams, the Royals pulled in an astounding $32 million in revenue sharing last year. The Marlins made $43 million (EBITDA) in 2007. It just so happens that the state/local governments and the Marlins are $30 million apart ($60 million over 30 years) in their efforts to fund a new Miami-area ballpark. How about applying some of that profit to bridge the gap and gain some seriously positive PR in the process? Perhaps that’s too much for Jeff Loria and David Samson to be magnanimous.

That’s right, folks. There were over 20K present at Tuesday’s game, yours truly included. Most came prepared for the cold despite the blanket giveaway, and most stayed until the end. There has always been talk about Croix de Candlestick pin nights and high winds. Tuesday night gave that legend a run for its money.

Temperature at first pitch was 52 degrees, with a noticeable breeze and the sun setting through partly cloudy skies. By the third inning, that breeze turned into a steady 20 mph wind. I didn’t bring my portable weather station to verify it, but I figure the wind chill dipped the temperature another 3-5 degrees.

Funny thing is I remember nights like this in mid May. And late August. With the Warriors wiping the floor with the B-team Mavs next door, a lack of parking could have dissuaded some from attending the game. On the BART train home I heard one rider talk about how he had to park at Wal-Mart for a weekend game. Nevertheless I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout (which had a little something to do with the blankets). The BART bridge was packed as some Warriors fans left the blowout early.

I’ve touched on this briefly, but I have to ask again: How much does weather affect attendance? I can recall numerous occasions when friends who are casual A’s fans chose not to go simply because of the cold. I could be way off base, but I sense that it has a greater impact than some think.

One note about attendance: The main difference between this season’s figures and last season’s is the fact that the Yankees didn’t play here Opening Day as they did last season. The combination of a Yankees game and Opening Day effectively removed one date from pulling a sellout crowd. That normally represents a loss of 10,000 fans or more.

The Merc’s ruffling feathers at Glass R2D2 in their attempts to get the pols to release information about negotiations between San Jose and Lew Wolff. Barry Witt’s already gotten the crux of the story, what remains are – what else? – details. Mayor Chuck Reed would prefer to draft and release a report summarizing the discussions, while others want the MOU (memorandum of understanding) between the two parties and supporting documentation. In requesting the report, Reed cites the need for sensitivity while the parties are still in negotiation. The hot topic isn’t so much the stadium at this point as the rezoning-entitlements deal that Wolff is pursuing in the Edenvale neighborhood (South San Jose).

Certainly some of the Merc’s muckraking comes from the notion that they’re trying to hold Reed up to the standard he created for himself when, during last year’s mayoral campaign, he claimed to be the true plain-talking, “open government” candidate. The platform earned Reed a landslide victory, so Reed has to be careful to manage this situation carefully. The ramifications of a bad negotiation don’t stop with the Quakes/SJSU stadium, they extend to Reed’s plans for redevelopment in his old North San Jose stomping grounds as well.

Not to be ignored is SJSU, the entity that owns the land on which the new stadium will be built. Negotiations continue between them and the A’s on revenue sharing, enough that University President Don Kassing came off sounding less than optimistic:

“I don’t know if it’s going to come together,” Kassing said. “I say that not to be pessimistic, but I don’t know. It would consume 40 acres approximately, so we would provide a parcel of land – they put a commercial activity on that land and then make money.
“So we provide an opportunity for them to make money by having a parcel of land. We don’t donate it, it’s our land, belongs to the State of Calif. – San Jose State, and we want a return on that land, and so far we haven’t found it.”

I sense this is just some poker table bluster. Kassing has every right to make sure SJSU gets a fair deal especially when dealing with a private wheeler-dealer like Wolff. But there has to be a recognition of two things:

• The stadium may be the best chance for SJSU to get a modern facility, which should help its suddenly resurgent football program.
• MLK Library II became hugely successful as a result of a necessary partnership between SJSU and San Jose, so there is a precedent for getting a modern facility built that doesn’t jeopardize the integrity of the school. In fact, there’s already an example of what the Quakes are pursuing in Carson, where the AEG-operated Home Depot Center sits on the Cal State-Dominguez Hills campus.

Practically speaking, people are getting excited a little too early in the process. Even if the city didn’t disclose any details of their negotiations prior to Wolff’s presentation, the public’s still going to have every opportunity to scrutinize the project in its entirety, including the rezoning scheme and public benefits such as new soccer fields. I understand where all of the interested parties (including the Merc) are coming from. Still, everyone needs to chill.

There is one other quote from Kassing from the Spartan Daily article linked above:

“I can’t tell you everything because I don’t want to compromise the confidentiality of the conversations,” Kassing said in a press conference on April 3. “But the Earthquakes, through a really creative idea of Lew Wolff’s, would seek from the city the rezoning of a parcel of property … and change the zoning from commercial/industrial to residential. Apparently when you do that, the value goes way up… . That difference would be used to build the stadium.”

The difference would be used to build the stadium? That sounds familiar…