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09 July 2007

All-Star Break Newswrap

As our green and gold heroes sputter into the break, there's a lot of news to cover. Where to begin? Let's start locally. From the Argus:
  • Lew Wolff and former Fremont mayor Gus Morrison will meet today over coffee to discuss the ballpark village plans, and Morrison's misgivings over them. I'm guessing Massimo's?
  • The Tri-Cities Landfill at the west end of Auto Mall Parkway closed to the public at the end of June. Fremont, Newark, and Union City garbage is going to the new Transfer Center a mile away, and soon the refuse will be trucked from there to the Altamont landfill. In the future Tri-Cities will be covered over with grass so that it looks less like a landfill and more like, um, a grass-covered former landfill.
  • The City of Oakland is opening a four-month window to negotiate with the Wayans Brothers and Pacifica Capital Group on their proposed movie studio and entertainment center concept. There would be 100,000 s.f. of studio lot, 457,000 s.f. of retail, and a 331,250 s.f. for a "Creative Factory business park." I know you're going to ask, "Why would the City support this as opposed to keeping the A's?" The 70-acre plan doesn't include any housing, which would conflict with Port operations. Housing is the linchpin to the A's Town concept.
From Chron:
Finally, the Merc details how the ballpark in China Basin helped create the real estate boom. Frankly, the internets was always far more influential to me.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regarding that Argus piece about former Fremont Morrison misgivings about the new ballpark, I'm confused over his problem with there being too much retail. Haven't Fremont leaders for years complained about the lack of retail? I'm remember reading many articles about how much tax money Fremont loses to neighboring cities that have more retail (Newark & Milpitas).

Marine Layer said...

He's mostly concerned with potential development efforts being siphoned away from the downtown area. That's almost a certainty if A's Town comes to fruition, but there has to be a question of whether those retailers would go to downtown Fremont or anywhere else in Fremont for that matter - especially without the ballpark as an anchor.

The way downtown Fremont's set up, you can drive through it and never know it's a designated downtown area because it simply doesn't fit the profile. At least the Fremont Hub has some life now, a few years ago it was just a dated outdoor shopping center.

Anonymous said...

If the The Tri-Cities Landfill will closed to the public at the end of June, why did Vice Mayor Bob Wieckowski asked, "Who wants to be next to the dump?"

Would a project thst large would kill efforts to revitalize Fremont's downtown area?

Can they build three or more level of garage parking instead of across the busy Auto Mall Parkway from the stadium?

Anonymous said...

ML,

Now the A's officials would create
700,750 square feet of commercial land instead of create 550,000 square feet of mixed-use/retail space?

Would it be Larger than Santana Row?

Marine Layer said...

anon 6:51 - The dump's going to be there for a long time to come. Fremont doesn't have to look far (Oakland, San Jose) for the mixed results that come from that kind of investment. Fremont doesn't have an original downtown to build upon. Instead it has five small towns that are pretty well separated.

Why would they build 3 levels of garage across Auto Mall? That would be enormously expensive and unnecessary. If anything, a garage should be built closest to the village across Christy St.

anon 8:05 - I don't know where that calculation comes from. It's 518K without the hotel's retail space, 623K with. There's also the commercial space associated with the ballpark, but that will probably include the team's offices and probably the museum. As for Santana Row, I'm not sure what the final size is especially when the movie theater is factored in.

Jeffrey said...

where the heck is downtown fremont? There is such a beast?

Anonymous said...

ML,I didn't say put garage across Auto Mall?I suggest to build Parking garage near the Stadium .They shouldn't put a Parking in across Auto Mall.

Can they just demolish Tri-Cities Landfill?

Marine Layer said...

Sorry anon - read your comment too quickly. We're on the same page there. Issue there is as always, cost. Garages are not cheap, and they'll need to arrange a proper road access plan. But they should have the parking across Auto Mall. There's even a creative way to make that work - I'll save that for later.

Can't demolish a landfill. Where would the garbage go?

j - If you have to ask, there isn't much else to say.

Jeffrey said...

I went on and read the city website for a description of downtown. I have to say that if you could have a ballpark anchored retail district that serves as more of a downtown than the area described on the city web site, I wouldn't be concerned with the amount of redevelopment funds available for the area between the hub and bart.

For people like me who are wandering where "downtown" Fremont is a link:
http://www.ci.fremont.ca.us/Business/BusinessDistricts/DowntownBusinessDistrict.htm

Anonymous said...

Fremont has no downtown and shouldn't spend any resources trying to create one. It does have 4 separate vintage commercial districts, which serve the same purpose. Warm Springs doesn't really have one, but Irvington, Mission SJ, Centerville and especially Niles do. PC could certainly act as the Warm Springs equivalent. Morrison is wasting energy if that's his only concern.

As for the articles in the Chron, I actually thought they were pretty fair, although with their requisite inaccuracies that favor SF. They say a limitation of the Santa Clara site is lack of mass transit, which is patently false. One of the many benefits of that site is light rail.

That aside, their overall message seems to be: don't let these billionaire owners fleece the taxpayer to make them even richer. Can't argue with that. Of course, they won't go the next step and say that Wolfe's proposal is a good one because it avoids doing just that. But I've come to expect the Chron to twist facts or avoid topics that support any of our local teams moving south.

SexFlavoredPez said...

ML, any thought as to wtf this means?

"None of the lots is close enough to the stadium to meet city parking requirements, Morrison said."

Do you know of any local laws that require parking to a public venue such as a ballpark to be within a certain distance? If so, wouldn't this defeat the purpose of creating a village to surround the park with sometihng other than asphalt?

Marine Layer said...

SFP - I did some digging and will address that in the next post.