02.02.15
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FanFest and BlogFest on Sunday 2/8

It’s that time of year again. The Super Bowl takes over the nation’s imagination, followed by baseball, waking from its annual hibernation. That means FanFest, which will be held on Sunday, February 8. Last year’s FanFest was also held on February 8, which was a Saturday. The Giants chose to hold their FanFest on February 7 this year, so this avoids a date conflict.

BlogFest will also be held again, starting at 10 AM. Like last year, bloggers will be taken to a suite on the East Side, where we will be interviewing:

  • David Forst
  • Jesse Chavez
  • Ike Davis

Oh, the questions for Forst will come aplenty. The blogger interviews are usually held after the regular media session. And of course, there will be the regular player interviews and introductions held inside Oracle Arena. Tickets are still available online. Since the event was restarted in 2011 it has sold out. The Coliseum will also be used again, which will give everyone an opportunity to check out the state of the scoreboard project – though the system is not expected to be fully built or operational by Sunday.

A fairly heavy storm is forecast for the weekend in the Bay Area, so the soggy FanFest day tradition should continue. Check the weather reports and plan accordingly.

If anyone wants to meet up inside the Coliseum (not the arena which will be cramped) to talk stadia and Coliseum City, let me know.

02.01.15
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CBS Sunday Morning profile of Daktronics

Runaway success scoreboard manufacturer Daktronics was profiled today on CBS Sunday Morning. The segment covered Daktronics’ humble beginnings as a company started by two engineering professors who simply wanted to keep students from South Dakota State from fleeing the region. It’s a classic tale of American innovation and ingenuity.

Daktronics makes all three new scoreboards going up for the Earthquakes and A’s, at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, and O.co Coliseum in Oakland. The 49ers had a graphic created comparing the sizes of other NFL scoreboards to theirs. While the displays at Levi’s Stadium are labeled “Sony,” they are in fact Daktronics products. The Coliseum scoreboards should ultimately bump the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium out of the top 10. It doesn’t make up for the Tuck Rule game, but it’s something.

scoreboards

Enjoy the Super Bowl, everyone.

01.31.15
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McKibben to become next JPA Executive Director, Raiders want ENA canceled?

BANG’s Matthew Artz reports that Scott McKibben will be the next Coliseum Authority Executive Director, filling a position that had been vacant for over six years. JPA counsel Deena McClain has been the JPA’s interim executive director since 2008, when Ann Haley left. Zennie Abraham notes that the vote was unanimous.

McKibben says his goal is to “keep the A’s and Raiders in Oakland.” Having someone with sports experience not limited to negotiating leases is important for the Coliseum’s future.

Andy Dolich endorsed the hire, and McKibben apparently had several recommendations, far above and beyond the previous candidate, the controversial former Assemblyman Guy Houston.

Having McKibben in place will allow the JPA to move forward in concert with the City of Oakland and Alameda County, the partners in the JPA which have been at cross purposes throughout the Coliseum City process for the last three years. If McKibben can lead a team including McClain and the City and County working on the deal terms, they’ll have a much better chance at success. It’s a much better situation than a year ago.

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More interesting is a tidbit from Steven Tavares at East Bay Citizen, referring to AlCo Supervisor Scott Haggerty:

However, Haggerty made it clear Raiders ownership does not favor an extension of the ENA. Over a lengthy lunch recently with Raiders owner Mark Davis, Haggerty said, the team lobbied for the county to vote against the extension with New City. Progress is being made, though, added Haggerty.

Why would the Raiders want to kill the ENA? They wanted to provide a competing bid at the last minute, which may indicate that they already have a developer on board for whatever they’re planning. If the Raiders (like the A’s) now want little to do with Coliseum City and New City Development, it would make sense to cut the middleman out altogether, though that would open up a lot of questions about how to steer redevelopment of the Coliseum. The EIR and Specific Plan are moving forward, and the latter piece is valuable to Oakland for planning purposes. But the feasibility studies that have been done on Coliseum City to date would be lost. New applicants like the A’s and Raiders would commission their own supporting work. It’s almost moot at this point since the ENA is set to be extended again, yet from now on it’s worth questioning the value of New City’s place in all of this if both teams would rather go it alone.

If the teams would prefer to not work with the Coliseum City team, it’ll be up to McKibben and the JPA to figure out a way to bring the teams together. In all likelihood, both teams will provide competing visions with little-to-no room for each other. How the two visions can be merged to both sides’ satisfaction along as the City/County – well, that’s not like scaling Mt. Davis. It’s more like trying to climb Mt. Everest.

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P.S. – Remember those shady looking campaign contributions from Lew Wolff to Rebecca Kaplan during last year’s mayoral campaign? Turns out they were legal. Oh well.

P.P.S. – The Orange County Register reports that Mark Davis teamed up with an investment firm last September in order to buy the Hollywood Park site. That attempt failed. 

P.P.P.S. – Mark Purdy has a different telling of the ENA situation.

Did Haggerty interpret the talks wrong, or is someone from the Raiders covering something up?

01.29.15
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Lalalala

This picture, posted to the Dodgers Photogblog on January 7, depicts new shortstop and Alameda native Jimmy Rollins yukking it up with GM (former A’s exec) Farhan Zaidi. There’s something else odd about this photo, which, when combined with those other two pieces of information, makes the photo look like an unintentionally epic piece of trolling. Unintentional, right? Yeah, completely unintentional.

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Thanks, @LionDarrin for the heads up.

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Update 1/30 11:00 AM – The picture has been removed from the original post.

01.29.15
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Kephart responds

New City’s Floyd Kephart hung out in the comments briefly today. He was gracious enough to take the time to respond to the previous post and some of the comments. I’m posting his entire comment here:

I will try an answer some of the questions and respond to some of the comments from this morning.  Yes, this is the “real” Floyd Kephart.  Who would want to be me anyway:-)There  cannot be a “deal” discussion until the City and County agree on a process that can result in a proposal being submitted to the City and County legislative bodies for approval.  We (including the Mayor Schaaff and President of the Board of Supervisors, Haggerty) are working to put that process in place but it is not there yet.

The Master Plan and the DEIR covers 800 acres and that has not changed.  The 3 sports teams and most of the publicly owned land are contained in the approximate 200 acres that comprises Phase 1 of the development plan being considered.  This has not changed nor has the land shrunk even though it is occasionally engulfed in water.

The Transit Hub is a major reason the Coliseum district is a potentially viable project,  The expansion and full utilization of BART is necessary for any investment to be made….by anyone.

The documents submitted by us to date that are final are available and those that are being created or reviewed and still purely analytical to establish actual facts are not.  We are trying to establish real facts instead of those continuing to be made up or have become anecdotal and not real so the City, County and yes, New City can make a rational decision on what can be done and under what circumstances.

No one has submitted any proposal that details a development plan and probably won’t until there is a negotiating group on the public side with whom to submit such a plan for consideration.

I am not sharing our considerations or decision making factors during the discussion stage with anyone that is not a principal in the transaction and that leaves you out of that distribution Marine Layer.  Once we have something that can be considered by the public, it will be presented for you to analysis and report accordingly.  Until then………I will continue to attempt and correct misstatements of fact although my time to review the various press reports and blogs are limited.  This morning I just happened to be on line when the post went up.

As for my PR or lack thereof, my intent is to not embarrass myself or the City of Oakland.

Hope this helps clarify some of the situation.

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The EIR and Specific Plan were presented as an 800-acre plan at the outset. That parameter is effectively locked in, thanks to language in the document that limits the number and types of alternatives. As noted previously, even the “Reduced Development” alternative doesn’t reduce the amount of land used, instead limiting building heights to reduce density. All of this was done in the name of the economic feasibility of the project.

Yet Kephart’s own action in December alludes to a different type of reduced development, only 200 acres. And Mayor Schaaf herself referenced 120 acres, not 200 or 800. The process may be talking 800, but the real talk is about much, much less. Anyone who follows urban planning knows full well how projects get down scaled once they hit reality. That reality, as you might guess, is the market.

Again, thanks to Floyd Kephart for his contribution today. With that I can say, job done. 😉

01.29.15
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Shrinkage

When Coliseum City was originally conceived it was supposed to look something like this when fully completed, 800 acres in all.

cc-800acres

800 acre concept

 

Last last year we heard from Floyd Kephart and others that the project would be scaled back to around 200 acres.

cc-200acres

Coliseum City at 200 acres

 

Now we hear that it’s down to 120 acres, which is basically the original Coliseum complex plus the Malibu and HomeBase lots leading out to Hegenberger.

cc-120acres

120 acres

 

With the Raiders and A’s signed up to offer competing bids, the team working on Coliseum City now plays the role of facilitator and competitor, all at once. A single stadium’s footprint will be 14-20 acres. Two stadia would cover 35 acres. When you add the necessary streets and easements for other infrastructure, that should leave 60-70 acres to develop. I was not terribly optimistic from the get-go about the financing coming through, so I wasn’t surprised when one financier after another bailed out on the project. Now that the project’s size has shrunk a whopping 85%, the questions about its viability are even more pointed, especially when trying to pitch it as a way to keep both the A’s and Raiders in town. Just as we saw over the last year, we’re going to let the numbers (or lack thereof) prove these concepts out. If the Raiders can make it work with whatever developer they’re trying to get onboard, bully for them. If the A’s plans prove most feasible, then they get the spoils of developing one of the last large infill developments in the Bay Area. And if Kephart’s New City group somehow gets capital and the teams on board, they will have truly worked a miracle.

However, ask yourself this: If capital wasn’t biting at 800 acres and two stadia, why would they bite at 120 acres and two stadia? 

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P.S. – The infrastructure price tag on the whole 800 acre project was supposed to be $344-425 million. Now that it’s 85% smaller, did that cost also proportionately decrease? Nope. The cost of infrastructure for the 120 acres, including the new transit hub and utility relocations, is $170 million. Factor that into your thinking. Some of that figure will be offset by grants, though really only for the transit hub. It’s still a nine figure infrastructure price tag.

 

01.28.15
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New info about Coliseum scoreboard project

People have been asking me everyday about the state of the new Coliseum scoreboard project. Until this week, all I could say was that most of the work would be happening in February and March. That’s partly because the Coliseum’s two scheduled major events: AMA Supercross last weekend, and Monster Jam on February 21.

Jane Lee’s column on Monday answered a question about the scoreboards.

Any update on if the A’s will have new scoreboards this year?
— Mike S., Alameda, Calif.

According to David Rinetti, the A’s vice president of stadium operations, the process for implementing the new HD video boards began Dec. 22, the day after the Raiders’ final home game, and is on track to be completed by the time gates open for an April 4 exhibition game against the Giants. Along with new scoreboards, new ribbon boards will also be on display by this time.

The new scoreboards will each measure approximately 36 feet tall and 145 feet wide.

Today a new Clubhouse Confidential blog post shed more light on the project. Renderings were also provided.

Rendering of new display package

 

To put things in perspective, each new board, which will take up the entire scoreboard frame in LF and RF, is almost 50 yards wide and 3 stories tall. There will be no permanent ad signs, though you can be sure that ads will be fixtures in the new video presentation. Still, there’s plenty of room on the boards themselves. Daktronics’ 13HD LED tech is being installed, just like the recent installations at Levi’s Stadium, Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, and Jacksonville’s EverBank Field. If you’ve been to Levi’s, the new Coli’s boards compare with Levi’s south end zone board, which is 48′ x 142′.

Behind north end zone

Behind north end zone at Levi’s Stadium (view of south scoreboard)

Each pixel is 13 mm in size, or roughly a half-inch for those of you stubbornly stuck on Imperial measurements. That plots the pixel count at 854 x 3400, a very long panel though not so tall it can do Full HD (1080p). That’s the literal constraint the scoreboard frames provide. Considering that most people will be at least 150 feet away from a clear view of either scoreboard, I doubt anyone could tell the difference.

Ribbon boards are also being installed along the front of the plaza level seats. Those will be 5 feet high (Update: 3’6″ high) by 415 wide. 5 feet high is a bit curious, because it’s taller than the 3-4 feet high ribbon boards often seen elsewhere. I wonder if the boards will obstruct views from the lower concourse more than the already low-hanging second deck does. They only go from the end of the deck (Sections 200, 234) to the edge of the infield (211, 223) so at least the prime viewing areas won’t be affected. For those of you wondering about how ads and other information will be presented, consider that with few permanent signs remaining, ad space on both the ribbon boards and main scoreboards will be done on a sort of time-share basis. Sponsored promotions will appear far more prominently than before, which should lead to higher advertising rates by the A’s and the JPA/Raiders, who split revenue during Raiders games.

According to the Chicago Tribune’s 2014 visual comparison, each of the two new main scoreboards would place in the middle of the pack among MLB ballparks, though having two is something no ballpark can boast (nor should it). Recently there’s been a sort of Jumbotron arms race, with many displays less than a decade old being replaced by larger, crisper versions.

SB Nation comparison from May 2014

Chicago Tribune scoreboard comparison from May 2014

Yes, for once a key feature at the Coliseum will be superior to that at China Basin. However, the Giants have the scoreboard front and center, a much better placement than at the Coli. We all know what sits beyond CF in Oakland.

So say goodbye to this old relic, and hello to new technology at the Coliseum, which is always welcome.

The old scoreboard and DiamondVision combo

The old scoreboard and DiamondVision combo

One thing to keep in mind about all this scoreboard hubbub is that the A’s and Earthquakes (same ownership group) have been working on three different scoreboard projects in the last year: at Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, and now the Coliseum. If there’s anything they’ll have a lot of experience with going into a new ballpark in Oakland, this is it.

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P.S. (2:45 PM) – I checked with David Rinetti. He confirmed that the ribbon boards are 3’6″ high, so there shouldn’t be any obstruction issues. He also told me that the old scoreboards parts are being recycled, so they won’t be donated or auctioned off. Much of the original equipment has already been hauled away.

01.26.15
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The Manfred era begins – Did anything change yet?

Over the weekend, the commissioner’s torch was officially passed from Bud Selig to Rob Manfred, starting the Manfred era in earnest. Manfred’s tenure as commissioner will depend largely on how he deals with specific business and big picture issues the sport needs to address. Selig handed Manfred a highly effective business model, surpassing $9 billion in revenue in 2014 along with the lengthiest uninterrupted labor peace of the four major pro sports. Certainly, Manfred could keep the ship pointed in the same direction while keeping the motor running, and there would be few complaints from the owners who elected him. But people don’t get commissioner’s jobs just to be caretakers; they’re expected to have their own agenda to push baseball beyond its current audience. That’s the part we the public don’t know much about yet.

In Manfred’s letter to fans, he mentioned that his top priority is to bring more people into the game, by greater youth outreach to foster the next generation of players and by streamlining the game to make it more palatable to casual fans, especially younger ones. The letter is quite high-minded, masking Manfred’s reputation as a tough yet also conciliatory negotiator. Manfred’s in his mid-50’s, which places him in the baby boomer era, seeing the worst of the 60’s and 70’s as a youth: concrete multipurpose donut stadia. His predecessor helped get rid of nearly all of the cookie cutters, though Manfred played the heavy in many stadium talks. League attendance has largely plateaued with only Oakland and Tampa Bay stuck with bad parks, so if he and the other owners want to see continued growth at the turnstiles, they’ll have to do something about those two teams.

CBA talks will begin before or during the 2016 season, and unless it goes badly there should be a deal struck by the World Series. That’s 20 months away. If talks are contentious, they could take out the 2017 World Baseball Classic or worse. We shouldn’t expect to see contraction on the table, as it won’t help extort new stadia out of those two markets, plus it will only anger the player’s union, who will see 50-80 jobs (not including hundreds of minor league jobs) disappear. And no, adding a player or two to every roster is not a good substitute. There will be some calls for greater revenue sharing, along with greater pushback against it by the big market teams. Players will want earlier free agency, tweaks to arbitration, and other perks. Talk of a soft or hard salary cap has largely died. Umpires signed a new CBA over the weekend, allowing their agreement to run concurrent with Manfred’s term, one less hassle for the new commish.

That doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing. There remain numerous legal disputes to work out, internal ones like the Nats-O’s-MASN deal, and external issues like the minor league antitrust and television blackout lawsuits. As a long time insider, Manfred is keenly aware of these battles, and of the future CBA negotiations.

That leaves little room for Manfred to take on the A’s and Rays’ respective plights. Manfred and Selig have remained committed to the Bay Area while rather noncommittal to Oakland. Quoth Selig from John Shea’s sendoff profile:

“I think two teams can exist in the Bay Area. Certainly, (A’s owners John Fisher and Lew Wolff) want to stay in the Bay Area. When I say Bay Area, you understand there are several alternatives.”

Manfred from two weeks ago, asked by Bill Shaikin about the A’s:

Not much difference there. Manfred’s going to leave both Oakland and San Jose dangling, knowing he has a plan A in Oakland if public officials choose wisely, and a plan B in San Jose if not. Plan B is not considered an easy plan because of the Giants, yet if a solution can’t be found at the Coliseum, Manfred will have to come up with a solution that works for both the A’s and Giants.

This site is coming up on 10 years old. I never thought I’d be at it this long. As I’ve said on multiple occasions, I’ll keep following the story where it leads. That’s Oakland, San Jose, Fremont, Mesa (for spring training), wherever it may go. A’s fans deserve nothing less than as complete coverage as this site can provide. Thanks for hanging in there, friends.

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P.S. – Manfred aroused discussion yesterday when he said that he’d like to forego defensive shifts. I don’t consider that much of an likelihood, since there really aren’t rules that dictate how to set up defenses right now, so creating new ones would be an inevitable mess that would be difficult to enforce – as if certain rules aren’t already improperly enforced. Instead, I look at Manfred’s statement as something that got baseball in the national discussion at the beginning of Super Bowl week, a difficult thing to do. It is Manfred’s job to help promote the sport, after all.

P.P.S. – More from Manfred in an AP interview:

“I don’t think of the Oakland issue as Oakland-San Francisco. Oakland needs a new stadium. There’s a new mayor in Oakland. We just prevailed in the San Jose litigation, so things are moving around a little bit out there, and I’m hopeful we can make progress on getting a new stadium in Oakland in the relatively short term.”

01.22.15
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Hohokam Stadium’s A Day At The Diamond on 2/21

In celebration of the reopening of Hohokam Stadium, the City of Mesa is holding an event at the ballpark titled A Day at the Diamond on Saturday, February 21 from 11 to 5. There will be tours of the stadium and attractions for the family, including a zip line and tethered hot air balloon rides. I’m going to be back and forth between the Bay Area and Arizona throughout February and March, but I’ll figure out a way to make sure I attend this cool event.

dayatdiamond

 

One of things to keep in mind about Hohokam and Fitch Park is that under the terms of the lease agreement, the facilities are essentially a co-op with the A’s running it throughout spring training (three months) while Mesa gets it the rest of the year. Mesa had to put up some money for improvements (as did the A’s), but budgetwise the deal projects better than with no tenant, where both facilities would slowly deteriorate with no funding for maintenance.

If you’re in the Bay Area, you probably won’t be out here for the event. I will and I plan to take lots of pictures. Here are some from earlier this week when I stopped by the yard.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

01.21.15
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Sharks to become two-headed with top affiliate move to San Jose

For a casual hockey observer, this seems out of the blue: Mark Purdy is reporting tonight that the San Jose Sharks will move its top affiliate, the Worcester Sharks (MA), to San Jose starting with next season. The Worcester Sharks are in the American Hockey League, the hockey equivalent of AAA baseball. TSN hockey reporter Darren Dreger reported last month that the move is part of a five-team shift to establish a true division of West Coast teams. The AHL had operated strictly under a Western/Eastern conference alignment this year, when divisions were introduced.

The problem with the new alignment is that even in the Western Conference, the team furthest west was in San Antonio, with no teams in the Mountain or Pacific time zones. By re-establishing five existing teams on the West Coast, those teams will be able to support each other with less travel distance between them. In conjunction with the new two-headed Sharks in San Jose, Calgary will move its AHL affiliate to Stockton, displacing the ECHL Thunder. According to Dreger, the other teams expected to jump on the bandwagon are the Kings, Ducks, and Oilers. Strangely, that leaves the Canucks without a West Coast AHL mate, their current AHL city being Utica (!), NY, pending a future move or new affiliation. The Pacific Northwest is already well represented in terms of minor league hockey thanks to several junior teams (WHL) in place for years or even decades.

So far the Sharks are the only franchise to agree to house its minor league and big clubs under the same roof. Purdy thinks it’ll be a short-term move, the to-be-renamed minor league team farmed out to Oakland after the Warriors leave, Sacramento when the new arena is completed, or elsewhere in a few years. Next fall will be an interesting experiment in observing how much hockey San Jose and the Bay Area can tolerate. The Bulls and Spiders both failed at the Cow Palace, but that was largely due to the Cow Palace’s age and location. There is a real risk of oversaturation, especially if the Sharks don’t improve from their uninspiring (but playoff-bound) state. The counter to that argument is that the real hardcore Sharks fans will have an opportunity to really indulge their ice jones, by being able to watch the big show and players on the cusp of the NHL. The AHL has a 76-game schedule, so if you halve that you get a total of 79 regular season home games between the Sharks and mini-Sharks, plus preseason and potential playoff games. That’s almost as many as a baseball home schedule.

View from my 10-game SharkPak seats during the 2013-14 season

View from my upper level 10-game SharkPak seats during the 2013-14 season

Pricing is the perhaps most curious conundrum. The Sharks want to price AHL games affordably, to attract families and casual fans, yet they don’t want to undercut their premium NHL product too much. Currently, season tickets for the Worcester Sharks at 80’s vintage DCU Center run from $12 to $20 per game depending on the package, an absolute bargain compared to the Sharks or any other NHL team for that matter. They have a number of all-season promotions, including $79 family four-packs including concessions and $2 popcorn, hot dogs, and sodas on Fridays. A family four-pack in San Jose costs $120-360 depending on where you sit.

Naturally, operating costs at SAP Center are going to be a little higher than in Worcester, so we may not see prices quite so low for AHL games. The organization can choose to run a smaller operation by curtaining off the upper level, limiting the capacity to around 10,000 seats. I figure if they can pull in 5,000 a game, they should be able to break even if most tickets are around half the price of their counterparts at a NHL Sharks game. Many of the concerts, ice shows, and other paid events the AHL games would displace are meant for crowds of 10,000 or less, with numerous sections “backstage.” Unless mini-Sharks attendance is extremely poor, the organization shouldn’t lose money.

I overlaid the Worcester Sharks home schedule on top of the SAP Center’s event schedule and found 19 date conflicts. A handful involved touring shows like Disney on Ice or Marvel Universe, dates for which games could be easily rescheduled. Only 7 were SJ Sharks home games. Again, most of those could be rescheduled by either swapping dates with the visiting team or changing dates. For some weekend games day-night doubleheader situations might be appropriate. It would allow the arena to stay in rink configuration for two events over a full day. Downtown San Jose businesses would love that. Worcester and other AHL teams also have the unusual practice of scheduling the same opponent for back-to-back home games on consecutive nights. That may not be doable given the number of events at SAP Center.

Purdy alluded to new dressing rooms being built at the arena. I figure that the cluster of smaller auxiliary dressing rooms will be modified for that purpose. Another dressing room would have to be built at Sharks Ice as well. A very fan-friendly move would be if the mini-Sharks offered more open practice sessions.

Finally, the team name will not be San Jose Sharks, or Sharks 2.0. I wouldn’t be surprised if the team dumped the Sharks moniker for the team and even went with the “Silicon Valley” locator. The name would resonate with sponsors, most of whom are Valley tech companies who already have their names on the ice and boards. Maybe it’ll be something that Purdy himself has used frequently, the Tiburones. Silicon Valley Tiburones. There are no sharks in a valley, you’ll say. Hey, I’m no marketing genius and it’s only a minor league team. They can afford to experiment.

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P.S. – Names I would not like: San Jose Chips, Silicon Valley Brogrammers, San Jose Apps.