Push for a waterfront ballpark

Chip Johnson of the Chronicle writes in his column that building on...

the Coliseum parking lot -- would be the most expedient, but perhaps not the most desirable, choice of sites.

He notes that the Uptown site is due for groundbreaking later this month. The best site would be along the waterfront, anywhere from the Oakland Army Base to the Estuary. The Army Base does have some potential because it is city owned, but despite the waterfront feature, it's far from downtown and would require a BART station to be built there. All waterfront sites would also require environmental cleanup, which would cost in the tens of millions per site, and there's the issue that the City and Port may actually want to get some amount of money for these sites, since they have some value.