Extending the comment period for San Jose’s Ballpark Draft EIR to last Thursday fairly allowed for a much greater amount of time for neighborhood residents and interests to properly review the document. Again, the traffic and parking estimates were roundly assailed as unrealistic or incomplete given the nature of event traffic. If you’re interested in understanding the tenor of these comments, I refer you to the recap of the first outreach meeting.

Now it’s come out the the Sharks have expressed concerns about the ballpark plan. From the Saturday Merc’s Barry Witt article:

A consultant for the Sharks wrote that the report “does not demonstrate that the baseball stadium can be developed without causing significant negative traffic or parking impacts on HP Pavilion.” Among other complaints, the Sharks questioned a conclusion that wider sidewalks near the ballpark would help keep large numbers of people walking toward games from tying up vehicle traffic.

This may be the Sharks’ way of saying “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.” It could also be a way of the Sharks’ trying to get concessions out of the ballpark plan. Look at the graphic below (taken from the EIR, click for a more expansive version) and you’ll see why.

The dotted gold line represents a boundary 1/3mile away from the ballpark site. If you’ve frequented HP Pavilion, you’ll see that the parking that exists there is the exact same parking that would be claimed for the ballpark. As the SJWC lot is developed, parking there would be at least temporarily impacted, making it difficult in the near term to fulfill the city’s obligation to provide at least 6,650 spaces within 1/2 mile of the arena. The numbers on the map also tend to be misleading because not all parking lots and garages are used the same. Adobe, for instance, doesn’t allow event parking in their existing garages because of security concerns. If Adobe goes ahead and builds another set of office towers on the SJWC east lot, how can Pavilion management and the city convince Adobe that it’s safe to allow event parking?

Should the city proceed with plans to redevelop the area between the arena and the proposed ballpark, even more parking would be reduced. The parking lots immediately to the east of Diridon Station are generally full during the weekdays because of commuters taking Caltrain and downtown workers, who use the lots as cheap all-day parking (they get a free shuttle that takes them downtown).

Complicating matters even further are the possibility that Diridon will become a major transit hub in the future. The station already services Caltrain, ACE, Amtrak, and VTA light rail. A BART station is planned for the area, and should high speed rail become a reality, Diridon will serve as either a terminal or hub station. Add all of that demand up and it would seem absolutely essential for additional parking to be built – not just for a specific interest such as HP Pavilion, but to properly accommodate all of the different services that are supposed to be built there in the next 10-20 years. That’s not even including the ballpark’s several thousand spaces or the requirements of high-density residential that could be built in the area.

San Jose desperately needs to have open, frank discussions with residents about its plans for Greater Downtown. The infrastructure that’s currently in place is not going to cut it, and if city leaders want to build more infill housing, greater commercial opportunities, or entertainment options like a ballpark, it can’t be assumed that existing resources will even come close to satisfying the needs of each project.

One thing that might be a saving grace for San Jose could the influx of mass transit options. The expected impact of greater development would eventually dissuade many from driving downtown. While redevelopment and planning officials referred to this, they didn’t give many details. It would make sense for city planners to allot for 3,000-5,000 additional spaces (that’s 6,000-10,000 total) on both sides of Hwy 87 to properly accommodate increased demand for commuters, downtown workers, entertainment seekers, and residents. This can’t happen until a Greater Downtown development document is discussed and written.

I haven’t gotten into the traffic problems. I’ll let Marc Morris’s traffic comments handle that. And the residents of the Shasta/Hanchett and Delmas Park neighborhoods are rightfully concerned, though I still believe that there are mitigation measures for them that can significantly reduce impacts to them.

Yesterday San Francisco made the list of five finalists for the US Olympic Committee’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The others are Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Notably absent is New York City, winner of the 2012 bid that eventually lost to London. USOC officials are scheduled to visit San Francisco for two hours on the afternoon of May 18, after first visiting LA in the morning. BASOC has a press release touting great business support throughout the region.

The debates that surrounded the last organizing effort at times highlighted how fractured and territorial the Bay Area is. There was criticism that the too many venues were centered in Stanford, not in San Francisco. The idea of bringing BART all the way around the Bay was also heavily debated, just as it still is today with the BART-to-San Jose effort. Plus there’s always a question about whether or not hosting the Olympics is just a gigantic pork barrel project.

What should be interesting is how the SF bid will look once it’s available to the public. Many things have changed since November 2002, when NYC narrowly beat SF in what shouldn’t have been considered a shocker (post-9/11 patriotism), but was a shocker nonetheless. Among the changes:

• Stanford Stadium, which was going to be rebuilt as the centerpiece Olympic Stadium, is being converted to a much smaller, 50,000-seat, football-specific venue. It could be a great soccer stadium for the Games, but it won’t handle much else.
• Where would the new Olympic Stadium be built? Would it be the 49ers’ new stadium? The Candlestick Point/Lennar development could be shaped to fit a Stadium/Olympic Village concept.
• Baseball and softball have been, for the time being, taken off the Olympic competition list. That would render AT&T Park and a future A’s ballpark useless, unless both were used for other field sports such as soccer or field hockey, or unless the IOC were petitioned to bring the sports back into the fold.
• An extensive plan was in place to develop Moffett Field into the Olympic Village. Since then Moffett has been split into multiple uses: consolidated military housing run by the Army, Air National Guard post, expanded NASA center, Google-plex. Would the Olympic Village even be feasible at Moffett at this point? And could someone figure out what to do with Hangar One?
• The 2012 bid had beach volleyball at Edwards Stadium at Cal. Since we’re conveniently located on the Pacific, how about having beach volleyball on, I don’t know, an actual beach like Santa Cruz Main Beach or Ocean Beach in SF?
• The tennis venue would not be at an existing facility, such as Taube Family Stadium at Stanford. A new complex would be built at Mission College (not sure how this would go over with my parents, who live in Sunnyvale less than a mile from the site).

Not to belabor the points, but the keys to this bid have to be the Olympic Stadium and Olympic Village. It would be best to place them in areas that are easily accessible by mass transit (BART or the very least MUNI or VTA light rail), yet are also easy to secure. Either Candlestick Point (if someone can figure out how to keep the place warm at night during the summer) or the Coliseum complex could be good candidates. Either way it would be expensive. A track stadium does not have preferable design characteristics for a NFL stadium, so it would have to be designed to temporarily accommodate the Olympics and permanently handle football. However, it would appear that such construction would be the only truly significant project to undertake, which, relative to what’s been done at previous Olympics in Atlanta and Salt Lake, would be peanuts. Many of the area’s venues have been built, recently renovated, or are undergoing renovation. This includes Stanford Stadium and Maples Pavilion on the Farm, and Memorial Stadium and Haas Pavilion in Berkeley.

That leaves the transportation problem. Several issues abound there – even if Santa Clara County Measure A passed in June, there’d be a big scramble to get BART up and running by the time the Olympics began. Caltrain would absolutely have to be electrified to make it efficient enough to provide the number of Peninsula trips that would be required. There’d be a few venues spread out in places like Napa and Sacramento, but those are for more genteel pursuits like equestrian events or niche water sports like canoeing and kayaking. How would the region deal with the traffic? Would BART run 24/7? Caltrain?

The Olympics’ possible effects on the A’s? Probably nil.

Before I left work today, I went to 511 and took a quick snapshot of the East Bay traffic scene. The typical choke points were heavy as usual, except for greater traffic near the Coliseum due to tonight’s game (click the pic for a larger version).

SFGate A’s blogger Vlae Kershner picked up on the snake-mongoose vibe between me and drummer510 through our traffic-related posts from a couple of days ago. That makes this snapshot a good illustration of where the problem doesn’t lie. 880 South from San Leandro on down is pretty clear, with an expected slowdown at the 92 interchange and another one at Mowry Ave in Newark. 680 south has a couple of short bad spots near Danville and Walnut Creek, while everything from the 580 interchange south is smooth sailing. 238 is acting like 238 does, so a detour from 580 along Fairmount/Hesperian would be in order.

From the South Bay, 880 is remarkably clear coming towards the ballpark (the pink “X”), while 680 has its usual backup as it approaches Mission Blvd/262, a few miles before the Sunol Grade. 237 eastbound is in better shape than usual. And from the Peninsula, both the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges are fairly congestion free, at least until they reach 880.

Periodically, I’ll take other snapshots of this reverse commute and of the journey into Downtown San Jose.

With all of the upheaval happening in cable and broadcast television, it can be difficult to keep track of the casualties. Take for instance the once-fledgling networks, UPN and WB. Both thought they could be the next FOX by following the FOX blueprint of making shows for specific target audiences. In UPN’s case the audience was blacks, followed by sci-fi. For WB, the target was the under-30 crowd. The failure of both experiments was finally made clear as parent companies Warner and Viacom announced a joint venture that would bring the best of the two networks together. The new network will be called CW, a nod to its Warner and CBS/Viacom roots. Its target audience will once again be young people, evidenced by its holding onto UPN’s WWE franchise and several WB dramas.

Most of the stations that will make the switch to CW are currently WB affiliates. This is not the case in the Bay Area, where current UPN station KBHK-44 will be the local CW affliate. Moreover, FOX’s recently announced and also youth-oriented My Network TV will appear on stations around the country formerly occupied by UPN/WB. The Bay Area is an exception in this case too, as KRON-4, once the proud local NBC affiliate, will carry My Network TV’s limited (and based on KRON’s existing programming, anti-KRON) lineup.

So what’s to become of KBWB, the current WB-20 (formerly KOFY)? Parent company Granite Broadcasting had its earnings call today, and it announced that KBWB and WDWB-Detroit will be sold to a consortium of investment groups (including at least one hedge fund) for $150 million. KBWB and WDWB were supposed to be sold last year to a group that included several Granite shareholders, but the CW announcement effectively killed the sale so no network would be affiliated. In 1998, former station owner James Gabbert (does anyone remember the subliminal message scandal from several years back?) sold KOFY for $170 million to Granite, which immediately changed the call letters to KBWB. According to WDWB’s Wiki entry, Granite is in danger of default (though it’s not clear if the default is for either station or both), so it makes sense that the deal was for cash.

This looked like a unique opportunity for certain Bay Area investors if they felt emboldened by their $54 million equity gain (hint hint). There were several advantages for the A’s if they acquired or partnered in acquiring KBWB:

• They’d be able to finally quell criticism about poor signal emanating from KICU-36. KBWB’s transmitter is on the always centrally located Mt Sutro, not in Fremont (KICU’s current locale) or near Loma Prieta (KICU’s former locale).
• In future arrangements, the team would have full control over how many games could be on KBWB, as opposed to either FSN Bay Area or Comcast Sportsnet. The A’s would finally have their own broadcasting megaphone, which should automatically give them some leverage over the regional sports networks (RSN’s) and cable operators. They could also exercise a “convenient” revenue agreement between the team and station, the kind KTVU-2 and the Giants supposedly enjoy.
• The entry price could be extraordinarily low, especially compared to the $700 million Young Broadcasting paid to buy KRON.
• The A’s would avoid the subscriber-carry problems that come with starting up a RSN.
• The A’s would immediately have a larger audience for advertisers than with a cable network relegated to digital-only, as CSN and FSN+ currently are.
• An agreement could be put together starting in, say, 2011, in which Bay Area broadcasts would be handled by KBWB while Sacramento and the Central Valley would have broadcasts on CSN.
• Control over the station would allow them to do more brand-building exercises, such as game replays or capsules (FSN did these a while back), or extended or more frequent pre-game shows. AN TV anyone?
• In 2004, Granite invested in a DTV setup to replace the station’s old analog equipment. That means the station is able to do HDTV out of the box, and they’d have the potential for two additional digital channels (AN TV anyone?). More HD broadcasts of A’s games can’t be a bad thing.
• Should the A’s really go after a MLS franchise, they’d immediately have a local broadcasting platform that MLS would kill for.
• By including the station in the A’s ownership group’s holdings, franchise value could go up significantly, perhaps as much as it would once a new ballpark is up and running.
• Success gained in the local television market should lead to the radio market opening up nicely for the A’s.

Obviously, there are caveats to such an acquisition. Programming an independent station outside of the sports programming tends to be a crapshoot these days, with the virtually unlimited number of syndicated shows – especially crappy shows that really don’t deserve to be in syndication. There are existing broadcasting agreements that would have to expire before the A’s could get really aggressive with their own network. They’ll have to hire industry veterans that know how to run stations – they could keep KBWB’s staff intact. The A’s have a long road towards proving themselves a worthwhile ratings performer on TV. And a “free” TV station wouldn’t net the handsome subscriber fees a cable-based RSN would. The price would have been $75 million for the KBWB. It’s easy for me to judge when it’s not my money, but $75 million doesn’t sound like a large amount when one considers the potential above.

Think about it. Wouldn’t this have been a great way to enter the media market and solidify the A’s presence? Would it not be a huge paradigm shift, moving from being a team with little leverage over its broadcasting future to one with potentially enormous leverage? If the A’s were surveying the market, they should have been aware of the possibilities. Did they show any interest? I intend to find out.

When news about the Pacific Commons location came out weeks ago, one of the chief complaints was related to traffic. The idea was that a Fremont-based ballpark would only exacerbate existing commute problems. However, I am here to tell you today that most of that claim is wrong.

Before I go further into “why” it’s important to understand how the commute through South Fremont compares to others in the Bay Area. Throughout the dot-com boom era, the routes from Alameda and Contra Costa Counties into Silicon Valley were nearly unbearable. With the bust came relief for many commuters, enough that no part of the East Bay-South Bay commute is on MTC’s Top Ten list. That’s not to say the area isn’t congested – it definitely is – but the picture of gridlock many have painted simply isn’t there. It should continue to get better as additional improvements are made in the area. Among these changes:

• Widening 880 between Mission Blvd (262) and 237. A revamped 880/237 interchange has helped to get commute traffic better separated from Milpitas local traffic, but it’s the widening of 880 that will have truly significant effects.

  The diagram above shows the existing bottleneck on the left. Three lanes to handle converging traffic is a recipe for delay. Once widening is completed, 680-based/bound and HOV traffic will be separated from the existing north/south flow. Of course, that relief won’t be fully realized until the…

• Completion of the 880/Mission Blvd interchange. Scheduled for opening in 2008, this new interchange will solve two big traffic problems by providing a direct route for 680-based/bound traffic and by offering a separate exit ramp for local traffic, which according to ACTA, accounts for 45% of the area’s congestion. Clearly, the original designers of the interchange had no idea that so much development would spring up around South Fremont.

  Current

  

  Future

  

  There will still be an issue in routing HOV traffic from 880 to 680, but solutions for that issue are in planning stages as well.

The 880/Mission construction project also causes a southbound bottleneck in the afternoon. Once completed, this should be eliminated since traffic is not particularly heavy at that time and in that direction. Along the 880 corridor, the 880/92 interchange would be the one remaining bottleneck. On 680, traffic should be fairly smooth, except perhaps for the area near 580 and Stoneridge.

The end result would be that if you’re driving to Fremont from elsewhere in the East Bay for an A’s game, you shouldn’t be adversely impacted. If you’re coming from the South Bay, you’ll have to contend with an existing commute backup, but one that will be made much more bearable with the improvements that should be completed well before a first pitch is thrown in a Pacific Commons ballpark. If you’re coming from the Peninsula, you’ll still have to contend with a bridge.

While the threat of franchise relocation may be cooling, some cities looking to keep their teams haven’t shown an aversion to throwing tons of public money a team’s way.

Take the Yanks and Mets deals. Both will rely on the issuance of public, tax-free bonds to finance both ballparks. No taxes are being raised to pay for either project, but both teams will pay off the debt using PILOTs, or “Payments-In-Lieu-Of-Taxes.” In this case, the taxes would be property taxes that would be levied on the land improvements. The use of government-issued bonds may be illegal, so the IRS is going to take a look at it.

The Twins are using the typical playbook in bypassing a referendum for their sales tax hike. Yesterday the Minnesota House passed the Twins’ stadium bill. The state Senate is expected to be more baseball-friendly than the House. All signs point to the Twins staying put.

Closer to home, Sacramento pols are trying to put together a public financing plan for a new Kings arena. To accomplish this, they’re attempting to circumvent the 2/3 voter approval required for a specific-use sales tax hike. If this sounds familiar, Santa Clara County is doing the same thing with their Measure A “BART tax.” If you’re wondering, there’s no mention of the A’s anywhere in that article, which should be a clear indicator of where Sac’s focus is – not on the A’s.

Tonight is the last San Jose ballpark EIR outreach meeting (City Hall, 14th floor, Room 1446, 6 p.m.). Thank you, SJRA, for scheduling it earlier – preventing a conflict with Sharks-Preds Game 4. I attended Tuesday night’s game, and the Tank really did hit 113 dB after the first Marleau goal. Marc Morris’s traffic-related comments document is available if you’re interested. I didn’t come away from the previous meetings overly convinced that the expanded traffic study (area and time) would take place. Hopefully the continually applied pressure will make it happen.

The June election is less than 6 weeks away, and some major things will be decided that could have an impact (direct or indirect) on the A’s future in the Bay Area. Among the issues:

• Oakland’s mayoral race could extinguish or revive any hope of retaining the A’s within city limits. Frontrunner Ron Dellums appears to be convinced that the A’s already have one foot out the door, while Ignacio De La Fuente has said he’s willing to fight to keep the team.
• San Jose’s mayoral race is wide open, and that means it’s getting ugly. Yesterday, a Merc report linked Vice Mayor/mayoral candidate Cindy Chavez to the 11th hour, backroom deal for the Grand Prix race. Opponents Chuck Reed, Dave Cortese, and Michael Mulcahy seized upon the story, with Mulcahy calling for the Santa Clara County DA to investigate the matter further.
• Santa Clara County Measure A proposes a 1/2-cent sales tax hike that would fund hospitals, emergency services, and transportation – chiefly BART. At 8.75%, the County would tie Alameda County for the highest sales tax in the Bay Area. This tax is expected to be the deciding factor in the push for BART to San Jose, as its revenue stream is designed to make up for a federal funding component that hasn’t materialized. Should BART not come to San Jose, the Warm Springs extension could be delayed indefinitely, even though they are technically “de-coupled.”

I haven’t been able to attend any Oakland forums/debates so far, but I’m going to try to make May 15th’s forum sponsored by Oakland Community Organizations (location TBD). For Oakland residents I have a request: If you have the opportunity to pose A’s or ballpark-related questions at any of the house parties or other events, please send me any feedback you get. I’ll be happy to devote a new post (and attribute you) on the subject matter. As a San Jose resident, I’ll be attending Saturday’s Public Policy Forum (at City Hall Council Chambers, no mayoral candidates expected), the Monday and May 13 debates (also at City Hall Council Chambers). Living in downtown SJ makes it quite easy to attend such SJ-related events, Oakland’s another story.

Over at The Hardball Times, Maury Brown provided an assessment of the three teams that are most often targeted for a possible move (Twins, A’s, Marlins), along with potential target cities (San Antonio, Charlotte, Portland, Las Vegas, Norfolk). In his judgment, we shouldn’t expect the A’s to find greener pastures outside the Bay Area. I’ve felt the same way for some time, and I’ll continue to concur until details about a knock-Lew’s-socks-off deal from outside California are revealed.

For those that think a big, free stadium is just around the corner anywhere in North America – think again. Those days are over. You can point to the DC deal and how the public has been swindled, but that took an extreme amount of coordinated (some would say collusive) effort by MLB and the owners, and the payoff had to be huge (which it will be). That payoff is not happening anywhere else.

drummer510 has started up a blog called “Keep the A’s in Oakland.” It’s an outreach-type blog that encourages like-minded folks to call and write Oakland pols and educate the public on what’s possible in Oakland. I’ve given the author a few pieces of info to get him going, including my mock-up of the Broadway Auto Row site.

The Twins appear to be in the home stretch of their political process to get a new open air ballpark approved. About three-fourths of the funding would come from a 0.15% sales tax hike in Hennepin County (Minneapolis, not St. Paul).

A new article in the East Bay Business Times covers Fremont’s vision for transformation, including the ballpark village concept and a new “downtown” area.

Forbes finally released their annual team valuation list today. The usual suspects are at the top of the food chain, with the Yankees being the first team to surpass the $1 billion mark. The Washington Nationals had the biggest gain, jumping all the way to #6 with its $440 million value. That figure is in line with the expected sales price of still-ownerless franchise. Other low-revenue teams got a big boost as well, including the A’s, who jumped from $180 million to $234 million in the calendar year the Wolff/Fisher group has owned the team. This rapid appreciation is due to the continuance of lucrative national TV deals and revenue sharing.

It gets more interesting when looking at how these numbers break down. Forbes usually gets the figures pretty close since franchise sale prices tend to come very close to Forbes’ appraisals, so it should be pretty easy to accept these values even with the limited information MLB and the teams make available. Take a look at how the A’s and Giants compare:

• Franchise value: A’s – $234 million (+26% change), Giants – $410 million (+8% change)
• Debt-to-value ratio (less than 40% preferred): A’s – 38%, Giants – 37%
• Wins-to-player cost ratio (% relative to per average wins-per-dollar of salary): A’s – 116, Giants – 76
• Market value: A’s – $73 million, Giants – $155 million
• Brand management: A’s – $21 million, Giants – $50 million
• Season ticket rolls: A’s – 8,000, Giants – 28,000

What do these numbers mean to you, the baseball consuming public? Not much if you’re looking for huge future payroll increases. These are not liquid or cash figures. And don’t be fooled by the Giants’ debt-to-value ratio. Other teams with higher debt have ancillary assets they can sell off to reduce the load, the Giants don’t unless Magowan and Co. are willing to dig deep into their own portfolios.

On the other hand, the market value and brand management numbers are telling. In both cases, the Giants more than double the A’s. The Giants have 350% more season ticket holders, though that could change drastically for the worse next season. This raises more than a few questions, such as:

• How much are the A’s and Giants tapping into their relative markets, and the Bay Area as a whole?
• Are the A’s low values due more to the stadium, ineffective marketing, or other factors?
• How much of a difference will a new ballpark for the A’s really make in the grand scheme of things?

Should the A’s get a ballpark built soon and ink better media deals, they could see a surge similar to what the *ahem* Anaheim Angels experienced.