Pics of Coliseum North coming soon!

After today's game, I drove around the 90-acre site and took pictures of the various buildings in the area, the roads and railroad tracks. I'll put them into a Photo Overview soon enough. (And no, I was not accosted at any point.)

In the meantime, there's a new report from the CBS-5 (KPIX) with video of the area and feedback from local businesses.

The Price of BART

Paul Rosynsky's Tribune article on yesterday's announcement has a couple of eye-popping revelations regarding BART:

BART spokesman Linton Johnson said it is possible for such a station to be built, but estimated it could cost at least $70 million.

In addition, Johnson said, BART would have to buy at least 10 additional train cars to service the station and residential units and would ask Wolff and the team to pay for them. That cost could be as much as $40 million.

I'm flabbergasted. I figured the station might cost $50-60 million, so $70 million isn't out of line, but the cost of buying extra train cars really pushes the price up. $110 million for a station one mile north of the Coliseum station? That's enormous. This sets the stage for the BART issue to become a showstopper. It's up to Oakland officials to get really creative on financing this piece.

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Elsewhere the Trib, Dave Newhouse's column trumpets the convergence of two catalytic events for the A's. Eric Gilmore of the Contra Costa Times also chimes in with his column, which expresses a fair amount of optimism. And to answer one of the financing questions:

Wolff said he hopes to use money from the redevelopment project to help fund the A's stadium. What he won't do is sell personal seat licenses, which contributed to the Raiders' debacle.