02.20.14
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Ninth Circuit grants San Jose’s expedited appeal request

A simple, one page order came out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today. In it, the court granted the City of San Jose’s request for an expedited briefing and hearing. While it was previously thought that briefs wouldn’t be field until the summer at earliest, the court is setting a March deadline for the opening brief.

Before: LEAVY and TASHIMA, Circuit Judges
Appellants’ opposed motion to expedite briefing and hearing on appeal is granted. The opening brief is due March 5, 2014. The answering brief is due April 4, 2014. The optional reply brief is due within 14 days after service of the answering brief.

This case shall be placed on the next available calendar after the completion of briefing. Any request for an extension of time to file a brief is disfavored and must be made under Ninth Circuit Rule 31-2.2(b). No streamline requests for extensions of time in which to file briefs will be approved.

While I’m not going to go so far as to say that the court will rule in favor of San Jose (the case still looks pretty weak), this shows that the court acknowledges the high-profile nature of this case. Both San Jose and MLB will get the opportunity to make their filings, just as spring training and the regular season are starting. It could mean a summer trial oral argument date, too. Even if San Jose’s chances of winning aren’t great, it means a potential resolution for this case could come more quickly and a little more work for MLB in the meantime. Plus the timing of the briefs will keep the story in the news cycle.

Of course, March 5 is coming pretty soon. Chop chop, Joe Cotchett!

02.19.14
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Slusser: A’s could play in Taiwan to open 2015

Chronicle beat writer Susan Slusser has a big scoop tonight: the A’s could play yet another opening series on the other side of the Pacific in Taiwan (Chinese Taipei). The team opened the 2008 and 2012 seasons in Japan, hosting a pair of “home” dates against the Red Sox and Mariners, respectively. Like MLB’s Dodgers-Dbacks (thanks Dan) opening series in Sydney, regular season games in Taiwan would be a new experience. The only MLB games played in Taiwan were a 5-game exhibition set in 2011, scheduled after the regular season, and a 2-game exhibition set between the Dodgers and CPBL clubs in 2010.

Unlike the venues in Japan in Australia, the parks in Taiwan (4 total) all have grass and tend towards the cozy end of the scale. The largest ballparks on the island seat only 20,000, or the tall end of AAA parks. That made the 2011 “All Star” series feel especially exhibition-like. If the two games teams play in Taiwan are in the same venue(s), it’ll be an intimate affair with in all likelihood a top-tier price. Then again, if you’re going to take China Airlines on a nonstop from SFO just to see the A’s, you probably can afford it.

Because of the small capacities in the Taiwan ballparks, MLB won’t have to rig scheduling to bring in teams with established Taiwanese stars, the same way Boston had Daisuke Matsuzaka and Seattle had Ichiro Suzuki. It wouldn’t matter anyway, since there’s no established Taiwanese star in MLB. Chien-Ming Wang has been struggling to hold onto his MLB career, and most Taiwanese players associated with MLB are actually in MiLB. If MLB chooses to go that route anyway, we could see the A’s playing the Orioles, who have a young upstart in starting hurler Wei-Yin Chen.

My favorite park of the 4 pro Taiwan parks is Intercontinental Baseball Stadium in Taichung. The 20,000-seater has distinctive arches down each base line to hold up the expansive fabric roof. The park hosted Pool B of the World Baseball Classic last year, and I found it a good, energetic venue (at least on TV).

Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium

A’s management remains open to these barnstorming trips, since it seems to promote team chemistry – at least when Bob Melvin is at the helm. The loss of two home dates would cause some folks to grumble, but consider them replacements for those early-May Monday-Tuesday night games that few would go to anyway.

02.17.14
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Getting there: Levi’s Stadium early thoughts

Let’s be clear about one thing can be agreed on when it comes to Levi’s Stadium: it will be much easier to get in and out of there than the painfully difficult Candlestick Park.

Beyond the obvious technological improvements and swankier facilities, Levi’s Stadium has much better built-in infrastructure than the ‘Stick. There is light rail service directly in front of the stadium, with links to Caltrain in Mountain View and San Jose. There’s also a Capitol Corridor and ACE stop even closer, which will bring in fans from the East Bay and Central Valley. Highways 237 and 101, which define the Golden Triangle region of Silicon Valley, feed the area surrounding the stadium, which is where the majority of the parking spaces will be found.

VTA, Santa Clara County’s transit authority, announced a plan to bring fans to Levi’s Stadium from various parts of the Bay Area. Existing partnerships with other transit agencies will have to be leveraged, whether it means transfers to light rail from Caltrain or to express buses from Fremont (by 2017, BART-to-light rail in Milpitas). Still more options will be available from some of those other agencies running their own buses straight to the stadium, along with private bus operators providing a more upscale trip from San Francisco and the North Bay.

The transit debacle at the Super Bowl highlighted the difficulty associated with trying to forecast transit ridership for special events. The New York/New Jersey and San Francisco/Santa Clara dynamics are similar. For the Super Bowl, most of the hotel rooms and peripheral events will be in San Francisco. That makes it doubly important that the link between SF and SC are solid. New Jersey transit severely underestimated the number of fans that would take the commuter train option from Penn Station to the Meadowlands through Secaucus, which led to hours-long delays for many frustrated fans. Since the NFL and local officials were encouraging transit use instead of driving or busing, designated public parking lots near MetLife Stadium were relatively empty, including certain bus lots. Meanwhile, buses that were scheduled to pick up fans from various hotels in Manhattan were underutilized.

When I took NJ Transit to a mere Jets preseason game at MetLife Stadium in August, the trains were quite packed and total ride took 45 minutes despite going less than 9 miles, was an ordeal. The biggest problem was the required transfer at Secaucus Junction. Because the train to the Meadowlands complex is a separate rail spur, all NJ trains forced the Secaucus transfer. Then fans had to go inside the station, change levels, and move to different platform where the Meadowlands train could be boarded. Secaucus Junction works fine for daily commute levels of ridership, but it is terrible for a big event such as the Super Bowl. If there is a next time, NJ Transit has to figure out a way to allow trains to go directly from Manhattan to the Meadowlands. While Secaucus can’t handle the crush, Penn Station can (though not without discomfort).

Like the NY-NJ transfer issue at Secaucus, there is a huge potential bottleneck at the Mountain View Caltrain station, where most fans coming from SF and the Peninsula will transfer. Trains from the Peninsula will stop along the station’s southern platform, which will mean that fans will have to cross at least 3 sets of tracks (2 Caltrain, 1 VTA) in order to make the switch. While the southbound platform has a decent-sized queuing area, the northbound platform, where fans would wait for train going home, is notoriously small and narrow. Each Caltrain train set (5 cars + engine) is designed to hold up to 1,000 riders. Compare that to a 3-car light rail train, which holds about 500 riders including standees. That means that two light rail trains would have to pick up a single full Caltrain’s worth of riders.

There’s also a bottleneck just east of the station, where trains run on a single track to cross Central Expressway. VTA plans to construct a second track and pocket track for train storage, which should get rid of the bottleneck. That project is expected to be completed in two phases, the whole thing done by 2016.

Even with those changes, it’s hard to say just how many people will take Caltrain to Mountain View and then transfer to light rail. 6-8 Caltrain trains worth? That’s about 10% of the total crowd. There could also be single trains from Capitol Corridor and ACE covering another 2-3000 fans.

Since the single-tracking bottleneck will take a couple years to resolve, there’s a good chance that fans going to Levi’s Stadium will instead use one of many express buses parked at the Mountain View station to get to the game. The route would be more direct, and much of it would be on a freeway or expressway.

I suspect that buses may be an even more popular mode of transport than they were at the ‘Stick. Rides from the North Bay will be especially long, requiring serious lead time. It’s not hard to see a fairly new institution already in place being used extensively for 49er games: the private Silicon Valley tech bus. Sure, there are already private coaches that take fans to games, especially groups that can charter. In this case I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same buses that shuttle workers to Google and Apple used on Sundays to take fans directly to Santa Clara from North Beach or Marin. Tickets are already much more expensive and cater to a move affluent crowd than before, why not provide luxury transit? The controversial private busing highlights a problem that has been generally ignored by the national media who have attempted to cover the issue: the disjointed Bay Area transit system. Caltrain runs through the downtowns of numerous cities on the Peninsula, which is mostly good and convenient. But if Caltrain or BART ran down 101 to near Google or 280 to Apple, there would be less of a need for such solutions. Levi’s Stadium, which is across the river from Cisco and a mile away from Intel’s headquarters, is in a similar situation: one or more transfers, inelegant design, faster alternatives. For the Super Bowl, these buses will be in even greater demand, especially as certain operators are contracted directly by the NFL for official use (teams, personnel, media).

Fortunately, the vast majority of games will be at 1 PM on a Sunday afternoon, not during commute hours. For the first season there will be no Thursday or Monday night games, with a Cal Friday home game snuck in as an exception. The 49ers’ 2014 promises to be a year of settling in, on the field for the team and in the stands by the fans. Getting there will literally be a process of trial and error for all involved.

02.13.14
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Port of Oakland tables motion to reject 3 maritime proposals at Howard Terminal

Following a staff recommendation made last week, the Port of Oakland’s Board tabled a motion to reject three proposals for maritime use at Howard Terminal. The motion will be considered at the next Board session in two weeks. Located just west of Jack London Square, Howard Terminal has been touted as the latest great ballpark site by many Oakland boosters and city officials because of its waterfront locale and proximity to downtown Oakland.

One bid from Bowie Resources involved the shipping of coal or other to the Port, which I noted in December. That bid was rejected due to the use not being green enough as the offloading and storage of coal would release pollutants in the air, hurting Oakland’s air quality. The bid also would have built storage domes up to 150 feet high. Coal storage domes are probably not the kind of visual icon Oakland wants along its waterfront. The CCIG bid faced a staff rejection because it was considered incomplete, whereas the bid from Schnitzer Steel was similarly not considered because it only used a small piece of HT land. Representatives from Bowie were on hand to press their case that staff had not thoroughly vetted their bid. This may be a case of delaying the inevitable, since the prospect of bringing coal to Oakland’s waterfront is likely to bring out the full force of the Sierra Club, not to mention enormous amounts of CEQA red tape.

The Port had no choice but to pursue maritime uses in the wake of SSA Terminals vacating Howard Terminal and consolidating operations at Berths 60-63 in Middle Harbor. That’s because the BCDC’s Seaport Plan considers HT as part of its “Port Priority Plan,” meaning that any designated maritime (shipping, cargo) use lands should be kept that way unless additional capacity can be found elsewhere to make up for it. With Howard Terminal, the idea is that SSA’s (and Matson’s) consolidation should be able to make up for any lost capacity from converting HT. From the report:

Using Howard Terminal for non-maritime uses conflicts with this designation, and de-designation of lands from Port Priority Use requires a Seaport Plan amendment, which is a fairly lengthy and involved process. To pursue an amendment, the Port would be required to provide evidence that sufficient capacity exists within the remaining Port seaport properties, or elsewhere within the Bay Area Port priority lands, to support the long term maritime growth demands for the region. BCDC would then independently analyze that information before proceeding with an amendment.

Such a move has a major precedent in San Francisco, where huge swaths of waterfront along The Embarcadero were converted to commercial use after Loma Prieta, along with the teardown of the Embarcadero Freeway. That conversion allowed Oakland and Richmond to take up much of SF’s cargo shipping capacity. Note that there’s no mention in the report or agenda item of HT being used for anything other than maritime uses in the report, even a ballpark. But that’s how ballpark boosters see the plan progressing, with the hope of the BCDC’s blessing. OWB, the group offering to negotiate a lease for a ballpark and additional development at HT, can’t negotiate anything with the Port until the maritime use question is resolved. Even then, other agencies could easily gum up the works, as the Warriors are seeing with their SF arena project.

Additionally, the State Lands Commission could get involved because much of the waterfront part of HT (including a wharf in the southeast corner) is Tidelands Trust land, which also requires discussion and perhaps even legislation.

Approval from the State Lands Commission would be required for any uses of the property that are not Tidelands Trust compliant. Many non-maritime activities are not considered Trust compliant uses and thus may require lengthy negotiations with the State Lands Commission, and potential legislation, before the Port could proceed with such non-Trust uses for the property.

Sketches of a ballpark at HT show the stadium recessed from the water’s edge, perhaps enough to avoid SLC jurisdiction. Even then, it’s a gray area due to maritime use. It’s not as if Oakland needs another marina or ferry terminal, since such facilities are already adjacent to HT at Jack London Square.

The rejection was considered to be a fairly quick rubber stamp of ballpark boosters’ plans, which are supported by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. Port Commissioner Bryan Parker voted to table the motion, a move that looks funny since he’s running for mayor against Quan yet supports a waterfront ballpark. That puts him in the odd position of needing to show due diligence, while trying not looking overtly political in the process. This may end up being a mere footnote in the history of a Howard Terminal ballpark (whether it happens or not), but it goes to show that when it comes to getting something built in the Bay Area, nothing is ever as easy as it seems.

02.13.14
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San Jose files reply brief in Ninth Circuit

The City of San Jose fired a salvo in the appellate court case against Major League Baseball. In the reply brief submitted yesterday, the City asserts that a decision by the Ninth Circuit court should be made before the land option agreement expires in November.

A decision on the antitrust issues concerning the Athletics’ move should be made before November 2014 or the Athletics may choose another site for their new stadium. Reed Decl., ¶22. If that occurs, San José will suffer irreparable harm because an eventual judgment in the City’s favor will be too late to allow the Athletics to successfully relocate to San José.

While damages for the economic harm caused by MLB would still offer some remedy to the City of San José, such a remedy is inadequate. Ultimately, MLB’s illegal conduct would have been successful in preventing free competition in the baseball market. Dkt. No. 1, ¶ 133; Gregory Decl., ¶2, Exhibit A. The only true remedy is an expedited briefing schedule and hearing with a final decision from this Court prior to November 8, 2014 in order that the Athletics will be permitted to exercise the option set forth in the Option Agreement.

This seems like a hollow stance for the City to have, since the land won’t necessarily go away just because the option agreement will expire. It will still be there, waiting for development, whether from a ballpark or something else, and in the future the land could easily be negotiated at the same price, as long as Santa Clara County and the Successor Agency signed off on it.

The other takeaway is the phrasing in the first paragraph: “…or the Athletics may choose another site for their new stadium.” Well, that would certainly be a November Surprise, wouldn’t it?

In addition, the City argues that MLB has delayed long enough – which it certainly has, but MLB has responded time and time again that it can make a decision on whatever timeline it chooses thanks to its antitrust exemption. If the judge rules in the City’s favor, that would be an indication that there’s substance to San Jose’s argument about economic damage.

Speaking of the antitrust exemption, another lawsuit was filed yesterday against MLB. This time it’s a potential class action suit in federal court alleging that baseball fails to pay minor league players minimum wage. At Fangraphs, Wendy Thurm wrote an examination of the lawsuit and its ramifications. With this suit and related ones, attacks on MLB’s broadcast blackout policy, and the City going after territorial rights, the antitrust exemption is defending itself on at least three fronts. Essentially all of these lawsuits go after the outdated notion that baseball is not a business, but rather a number of recreational exhibitions. As an $8 billion enterprise, you have think that at some point that notion shouldn’t hold water.

02.11.14
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FanFest 2014 – Making the best of it

The A’s sold 20,000 tickets to FanFest this year, double the number of last year’s total. Not wanting to put too much strain on the concourses, the team announced a cutoff at 20k and considered it a sellout. Yes, the event was to be held in both the stadium and arena, but as the even larger lines this year showed, the facilities strain when trying to accommodate people on the concourses instead of the seats.

While the player introductions continue to be held inside Oracle Arena, most of the rest of the festivities took place inside the Coliseum, particularly the Eastside Club. Lines for autographs and photos with the World Series trophies stretched through the length of the club and along the concourse outside the club. If you were there solo, chances were that you wouldn’t be able to get both a picture with the trophies and an autograph unless you waited in line the entire time. Yet the use of the club was important since it’s the only space in the entire stadium that has enough space to handle such lines. The old, rain-soaked part of the Coliseum has terribly narrow concourses, and there were leaks in the Westside Club and elsewhere in the bowels. While I was just walking around, I happened upon the batting cage and heard constant dripping on the Astroturf inside the netting. There was even a garbage can set up next to the netting to catch additional rainwater. The whole experience felt a bit like rain delay theater, which is something California baseball fans are generally not familiar with.

As a media member, I’m not allowed to get autographs, so I didn’t bother trying. A handful of bloggers, including me, hung out for the first couple hours before we were whisked to one of the centerfield plaza suites. The suite had a green A’s backdrop in front of the fixed seats and was ready to serve as our interview room. Our interview subjects were David Forst, Bob Melvin, Jim Johnson, and Sonny Gray, in that order. I asked questions of everyone, but I really wanted to have Forst field a question germane to the the $ side of running the A’s. So here’s our exchange.

NBP: How much did the influx of national TV money have an impact on Coco’s extension, the payroll for this year, and perhaps the next several years?

Forst: There’s no doubt that payroll this year will be higher than, well, probably ever. We’re significantly above where we were last year. That’s what allowed us to get Jim (Johnson), knowing that there’d be $10 million price tag on him. To sign Kaz (Scott Kazmir), even a move like signing Eric O’Flaherty, where you’re only adding a little for this year but we’ve already bumped up against our number. Lew Wolff and Mike Crowley were open to what we were trying to do with Eric for half a season and backload the money. So there’s no doubt that whether it’s TV money, the success of the team – all these things have gone into ownership being very willing to let us do some things this season that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.

NBP: You guys were so clear in the past about not having long-term commitments – whether that’s happenstance or a philosophical belief.

Forst: It’s a little bit of both. We’ve benefited from a lot of flexibility over the past few years. There’s re-signing Coco, but other than Yoenis and Kaz there’s nobody signed past 2015. Look, we don’t necessarily want to recreate the team every year – because fans like the players that are here and we like the certainty of players that we know – that we’ve given ourself the ability to do it is a huge factor in our success. With Coco we know the guy, we know the player, we know that this is the right dollar amount to commit to him over the next few years.

Melvin continues to be a solid, honest interview, and Jim Johnson lived up to his reputation for dry humor. Sonny Gray still seems like a kid, as he was spinning in his chair while waiting to be interviewed. Youth is served, and the team certainly has gotten younger since October.

02.05.14
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Rangers Ballpark to be renamed ‘Globe Life Park in Arlington’

The Texas Rangers announced that insurance company Globe Life will be their home ballpark’s naming rights sponsor today. The deal, at 10 years for an undisclosed amount, runs concurrently with the remaining lease years. Globe Life, a subsidiary of Torchmark based out of Oklahoma City, is not among the largest insurance companies in America, but the deal will give the company a fairly high profile.

Doesn't get much more generic than this.

Doesn’t get much more generic than this.

The originally monikered “The Ballpark in Arlington” was so named when the stadium opened in 1994. A decade later, sub-prime mortgage lender Ameriquest bought naming rights. Those rights were relinquished as Ameriquest collapsed at the outset of the financial crisis. Since 2007, the park has been known as “Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.” As the second company to secure naming rights, Globe Life probably didn’t have to pay anywhere near the amount a brand new, untainted stadium would fetch.

Looking down the road, the rights deal is an early sign that the Rangers see the end of the road at TBiA. With the naming rights deal ending with the lease, the Rangers will have the freedom to start their own discussions about a successor to their current digs, which the Braves are doing with similarly-aged Turner Field. Ameriquest’s deal was to run 10 years beyond the current lease. Rangers ownership knows what they want, and with discussions about improvements (such as a rolling roof) as done as Nolan Ryan’s tenure as an executive, don’t be surprised if talks about a new ballpark somewhere in the metro start in a few years.

UPDATE 7:00 PM – The name may be generic, but at least it’s not the Smoothie King Center.

01.30.14
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Rams owner Kroenke buys SoCal land, sparking relocation talk

Sam Farmer of the LA Times reported late today that Rams owner Stan Kroenke has purchased a 60-acre parking lot situated between The Forum and Hollywood Park in Inglewood.

Farmer lays out the myriad complications that could arise if Kroenke tried to move the Rams back to Los Angeles. While 60 acres in hand is always good to have, there’s still the question of who would pick up the tab for the $1 billion or more in construction cost. The NFL has had a tepid response to two other NFL stadium initiatives by AEG (Farmers Field) and Majestic Realty (City of Industry), mainly because both developers have wanted stakes in prospective relocating franchises. In the Rams’ case, Kroenke could build it himself with the NFL’s help, though public funding in Inglewood is a nonstarter. It would take an enormous amount of corporate and upfront support to make it work, a recipe that yielded great results for the 49ers. That shouldn’t be an issue in a market the size of LA, but the market is a notoriously fickle place when it comes to pro football. Kroenke could even run into interference from the likes of USC and UCLA, who have the local football landscape to themselves with no pro team as competition.

Speculation about Kroenke’s intentions with the Inglewood land could amount to nothing, as he has substantial holdings throughout SoCal and these 60 acres could by ripe for a shopping center, housing, or other non-sports uses. More plausible is the idea that Kroenke could use the land as leverage to extract the maximum amount of concessions from the State of Missouri and the City of St. Louis, the latter party having already lost an arbitration case over planned improvements to Edward Jones Dome.

The Raiders and Chargers will look at Kroenke’s moves with some interest, as LA remains a potential relocation target for them. Both teams’ owners have prioritized staying in Oakland and San Diego, respectively, but interest from LA remains a phone call or meeting away. It might make the most sense for two relocated teams to share one stadium from a financial standpoint. Such a plan is problematic in execution, as exhibited in the sterile environment at MetLife Stadium. If Kroenke were to declare a move and get sign off from the NFL’s owners, he’d have to play at the LA Coliseum or Rose Bowl for at least a few years while the EIR process and construction were completed.

Land acquisition should put more pressure on Missouri/St. Louis to act. The benchmark there is $375 million provided by Jackson County for improvements to Arrowhead Stadium. That’s well short of the $700 million in improvements the Rams are entitled to as part of their arbitration win. Any team that wishes to relocate has a league-imposed deadline of mid-February each year to declare their intentions. Last year, all three relocation candidates chose to stay. With land in hand, the Rams are for now the best positioned to move.

01.25.14
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Why would Lew Wolff ask for a 5-10 year extension at the Coliseum?

Lew Wolff visited the JPA on Wednesday. Staying consistent in his stance from last month, Wolff was seeking a lease extension, up to 10 years in length. Matt Artz’s Tribune article references the lease but not Coliseum City.

If Wolff is willing to hear out CC plans, chances are that he won’t make any kind of commitment unless a lease is in place first. Last month, the A’s put out a press release in response to a Matier & Ross column claiming Wolff’s interest in CC.

We are only prepared to meet with our landlord, the JPA, or elected and designated officials of Alameda County and the City of Oakland, to discuss any aspect of our venue or lease.

Remember that before lease extension talks broke down between Wolff and the JPA last summer, Wolff was seeking a 5-7 year extension with an out clause should the Raiders’ new stadium plans interfere with the A’s being able to play at the Coliseum. Two years at the Coliseum is only somewhat helpful, since there’s no way a ballpark will be ready at the end of the lease. Wolff will continue to ask for a lease extension as long as this uncertainty post-2015 remains.

Shortly after the press release I wrote a lengthy post about Wolff’s motivations, should they extend beyond merely getting an extension. Area A of Coliseum City (east of 880) is divided into three phases, starting with the new Raiders stadium, then the ancillary development designed to support the stadium, and finally the remaining surrounding development and a ballpark in the A Lot.

Three phases of Coliseum City have ballpark built out at the end of the project

Three phases of Coliseum City have ballpark built out at the end of the project

As part of Phase III, the A’s ballpark couldn’t come earlier than the end of the decade unless there was a major reshuffling of priorities. That’s where a 10-year extension could come into play. If Wolff wants to partner up on Coliseum City and the schedule can’t be significantly altered, the A’s would have to play at the Coliseum for the full length of that extension until the new ballpark was in place. MLB may have wielded the AT&T Park threat against Oakland successfully when it inserted itself into last fall’s lease talks, but sharing AT&T Park for any length more than a season or two will create enormous logistical problems for MLB, the Giants, and San Francisco.

Impacts from construction have to be minimized, which is a big reason for the phased approach. Not only does Coliseum City include new venues, it has tons of new infrastructure, including a new BART pedestrian overpass, new bridges over 880, and the “spine” that links all of it together. To understand those impacts, let’s compare the Coliseum complex now and what’s envisioned.

overhead-coliseum

The current Coliseum complex

Coliseum City with all Area A phases completed

Coliseum City with all Area A phases completed

The above image has the new stadium slightly overlapping the current Coliseum footprint. Previous images had the stadium turned slightly and oriented further away from the spine, which could allow the current Coliseum to remain in place – or at partly demolished as was the case with Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. To accommodate the football stadium where Mark Davis wants it (and where it’s shown in the image), the Coliseum would have to be demolished. That’s unavoidable, even though the new stadium’s footprint isn’t exactly on top of the old Coliseum. That’s also not a huge problem for the Raiders, since they could room with the 49ers for a couple years in the interim. It’s a huge problem for the A’s, who would be displaced. That’s why Wolff wants to get the lease in place. The A’s face eviction in this plan, even though there’s little chance for a new ballpark at CC or at Howard Terminal after the A’s are evicted. The lease would at least force BayIG and the Raiders to work around the A’s and the Warriors, who would be tenants for some time to come.

Another piece of infrastructure could be a huge factor: the power transmission lines running through the south parking lots. A big reason for building where the current Coliseum exists is that the power lines can be avoided. The cost of moving overhead transmission lines could be several million dollars, and easily double that cost if the lines were rerouted underground. In the end it may be best to move the lines underground, as it would free up land for other uses. Whether the lines remain overhead and are relocated down the road or moved underground, it’s a big infrastructure cost that has to be accounted for. Earlier renderings had the stadium displacing the power lines, so if there’s a consensus to avoid the lines, you’ll know it was a big factor. Besides the cost, PG&E and the Public Utilities Commission would have to be involved in the process, which could create delays.

Going back to the A’s and Wolff, as long as Wolff keeps some sort of dialogue going, he can have skin in the game. That disappears this summer, when BayIG is expected to have its anchor tenants signed on to the project, the Raiders being the first (I expect the deadline to slip). If Wolff can get an extension first, he’ll continue to have a say in how Coliseum City is developed. If not, and BayIG and the JPA can’t figure out a way to keep both the Raiders and A’s happy, Wolff can turn to MLB and force them to come up with a solution. That solution can’t be Howard Terminal in the short-term, since we don’t know what can be built at the Port site right now or in the future. Then there’s the possibility I wrote about in December:

If the Raiders stadium proves too costly, the A’s could easily slot right in with a much less expensive stadium option that has a much smaller funding gap, say $200-300 million. Plus with only one stadium there instead of two, there would be additional land to develop or reassign as needed. Wolff’s in a good position to wait and see how the market analyses work out for them and the Raiders.

Wolff can play this multiple ways, but the #1 issue is ensuring the A’s a home for the next several years. The rest is all process that should work itself out over the next 6-9 months. Lew may claim constantly that there’s no Plan B. I’ve never believed that. He’s not going to explain his contingency plans until he absolutely has to. That’s business.

01.24.14
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Like Montreal, Portland wants in

The lovely city of Portland, Oregon, expressed renewed interest in a MLB franchise this week. It’s been a decade since Portland lost out to Washington, DC, in the race to land the relocating Expos. In the offing, Portland traded its AAA baseball team for an MLS franchise, to rousing success. At the same time, multiple sites that were considered for a permanent baseball home ended up being developed for other uses. While a short season A team started up in the nearby suburb of Hillsboro, until now there has been little momentum towards attracting an MLB franchise.

Tracy Ringolsby has details on a renewed effort. New mayor Charlie Hales supports a site next to the two arenas at the Rose Quarter. Instead of an open air stadium, the plans now call for a retractable roof park with a smaller, 35,000-seat capacity. A funding mechanism that could pay for much of construction remains in place, though rising costs and the including of that retractable roof probably would cause PDX advocates to majorly revise the plan.

Most importantly, Portland interests have inquired with A’s ownership to see if they’d be willing to either move the team to PDX or sell to PDX-aligned interests. As expected, they were told no on both counts. Sacramento, Portland, and maybe in the past Las Vegas have inquired. Lew Wolff and John Fisher remain focused on the Bay Area, refusing to play the stadium ransom game. Someone had to temerity to brag about swindling the public earlier this week:

The Portland effort bears striking similarities to Montreal’s recently launched efforts. Both underestimate the cost of the stadium and the cost to acquire a franchise. Montreal’s study pegs the total cost at just over $1 billion, which would’ve been a better bet three or four years ago, during the recession and before the new national TV contracts. It’s hard to see any team being available for less than $600 million, maybe even $700 million because the revenue streams are so attractive. That would put the total cost at a combined $1.2 billion, maybe $1.3 billion when including infrastructure and land. Both cities also appear to be dependent on a rich investor group or corporation to fund the private side. That’s a lot to ask for, essentially a subsidy to be borne by a company. Guggenheim Partners made the overbid work because they had two things in their pocket: a to-be-negotiated local TV deal and 100 acres of land with huge development potential at Dodger Stadium. Neither Montreal nor Portland have such potential. Both teams stand a good chance of being future revenue sharing recipients, even with new ballparks in place.

With both the Rays and A’s entrenched in their current stadium malaise, it’ll be up to the next to the next commissioner to determine if Portland or Montreal gain entry to MLB. The new TV contracts are in their infancy, so the owners are only starting to see the benefits. At this point, it’s unlikely they’ll want to split up the pie 32 ways instead of 30.