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31 March 2006

You want hills? You got 'em.

I played around with Google Earth and put together a stadium overlay. The scale is pretty close though not exact. Here are three smaller images, and you can click on them to get the larger images.

First up is the overhead view. This is just to get a sense of scale. The line indicates the view from home plate through center field. Use the freeway interchange (Auto Mall/880) on the lower left as a reference point.


Next we have a "helicopter" view that's similar to the shots that I posted earlier. The ballpark's footprint looks deceptively small due to the perspective.


Finally, here's the piece de resistance, a near-ground level view looking east. Yes, Virginia, those are hills. The line terminates at the top of Mission Peak, which is 2,517 feet above sea level and makes for one of the more popular hikes in the area. The "crow flies" distance from Mission Peak to the site is 4.7 miles. Contrast this with McAfee Coliseum, which is 3 miles from the Chabot Park hills in East Oakland. That ridge rises to just over 1,100 feet at most. Leona Quarry is around 800 feet above sea level.

In a place that lacks skyscrapers, at least it's something to look at.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good stuff. Thanks ML. So it would sit to the south of the site, pretty much in the middle of the area between the existing commerical area and the road that already goes through the wetlands. They would clearly need to rearrange much of the existing plan for Pac Commons, but I guess that goes without saying. I'm glad to see they wouldn't necessarily need to encroach on the wetlands.

Google Earth sure has old shots of the site. It doesn't show any of the already built retail out there. That's been there at least a year, hasn't it?

Marine Layer said...

The ballpark could be placed anywhere but I'm thinking that it'll be placed towards the south end to create a buffer between it and the existing retail. That buffer would contain the housing and the ballpark village. A garage could be placed in one section with surface lots nearby.

The pictures are at least three years old. The shopping center has been around for two years now.

Georob said...

BTW, how often do they update those satellite pics?

At least the ones you can get for
free, that is.

Anonymous said...

The only issue I have with the Fremont site is the proximity to the salt ponds. In Milpitas a few years ago there was an issue with the filters at one of the Cagrill ponds that caused a horrible stink that covered a fairly extensive area for weeks. Obviously this wouldn't be a typical situation, hopefully they'd be able to work out something with Cagrill to do extensive monitoring of those filters, I can't imagine having to deal with something like that in the middle of a long homestand in the middle of summer.

I couldn't find a full story but here's a little blurb about it...
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1:90948802/Rotten+stench+invades+Milpitas~R~(Knight+Ridder+Newspapers).html?refid=ip_hf