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Estuary Photo Overview
After the A's unusual 1-0 win over The O.C., I drove out to the Estuary to finish taking pictures of the site. For those that are curious about what the Estuary site is, I've compiled the pictures into a PDF presentation with captions and descriptions. For now, I've refrained from adding much of the information in my previous Estuary posts, but at some point I'll put it into a complete site analysis.I intend to give all of the likely candidate sites this same treatment. The sites I will cover are: - Estuary (Oak-to-9th)
- Oakland Coliseum South (Hegenberger/HomeBase)
- Oakland Coliseum Parking Lot (B & C lot)
- Oakland Uptown (Telegraph/San Pablo & 18th/20th St)
- Oakland Howard Terminal (west of Jack London Square)
- San Jose Diridon South
- San Jose Reed & Graham Plant
- Fremont Warm Springs
- other sites as they are publicized
Here's the link for the Estuary presentation. You'll need Adobe Acrobat or another PDF viewer to open the file.
Pointers or suggestions are appreciated.
4 comments:
Marine Layer: First, I wanted to say this blog is really cool. You've obviously put a lot of time into it and have a lot of knowledge to share. So, thanks for doing it.
My comment about the Estuary site (and JLS for that matter too). There's an intrinsic problem with any Bay front location in the East Bay. You would of course want to have the stadium facing the water to take advantage of the view. But in doing so, you'll have the prevailing winds blowing right into the stadium. Pac Bell works because it faces the Bay and the superstructure blocks the wind for most spectators. We wouldn't get that benefit in the East Bay unfortunately.
I'm curious what you think about that issue. Thanks!
The wind issue is a good point. There's one thing that will help - the field can't face west. It can face north, south, or preferably east or northeast, but not west.
In all likelihood, the ballpark will be a simple L-shaped structure to reduce costs and limit seating. That means there will be less grandstand to block the wind.
There's no way to completely mitigate the wind especially in the summer, but the designers could take a page from HOK and UC Davis's work on PacBell and orient the field east, and it should be OK. They probably shouldn't place field too much northeast, or else the onshore flow will turn the ballpark into a launch pad. Then again, the indian summer offshore flows could play a factor as they used to in the old Coliseum configuration. I'm no engineer, but I've sailed on the bay many times.
I don't think having a park directly on the waterfront will work. It might even seem too copycat. The designers could take a buffered waterfront approach as HOK did in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and it could work. If there's a push to preserve the 9th Ave Terminal building, waterfront is pretty much out of the picture anyway. The views from the upper deck would be cool though!
I'm with you on the waterfront idea. Conceptually, it sounds great, but I just don't think it will work for several reasons. So, I'm becoming more a fan of the uptown location (if that or something similar is even a viable option anymore) or Coliseum South.
I know it's not possible, but wouldn't it be cool to have the stadium built on Lake Merritt, with views of downtown and the hills beyond? Can you picture the beauty shots of that on TV?
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