Let's talk transit

The typical questions I'm getting now are "Where is the site?" and "How far is it from BART?" I've put together a couple of photos that give a pretty good representation.

First up is wide view of central and south Fremont. The yellow line represents the planned Warm Springs extension. The extension would run 5.4 miles, south from the existing Fremont terminus to Warm Springs. There is also an optional station that could be built in Irvington, roughly halfway between the two ends.

The aerial distance between Warm Springs BART and the Pacific Commons eastern boundary is 1.25 miles. Driving distance is 2.25 miles because there is no straight-line route. The next picture shows potential routes, yellow representing a bus/car route and pink an elevated guideway route for a BART, people mover, light rail, monorail, or aerial tram.

Now let's look at possible infill transit options. The assessment of positives and negatives is based on data I've seen for other transit projects and should be judged as speculative since there are no formally studied cost estimates. It also assumes that the Warm Springs Extension will be built, which is no certainty yet. BART could be extended west to the Pacific Commons site, but it could cost at least $200 million per mile. Because of the cost I will leave a BART extension off the list of solutions in the poll.

• Light Rail (LRT) could run on either surface streets in the area or on an elevated guideway to the area. Cost: $40-70 million per mile. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-7 minutes.

  

  Positives: Use of existing street infrastructure, familiarity, proven technology.

  Negatives: If street-based, would be the slowest system due to train sharing the road with cars. Some impact on businesses in affected area as roads are fitted with rails.

• Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) are buses an "express" variant of the a bus route, with high-tech features (GPS) and fewer stops. Cost: $5-10 million per mile. This would involve separate lanes for buses either along the median or along the curb. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 8-10 minutes.

  

  Positives: Usually will bypass unnecessary stops. Can use existing bus fleets if necessary. Traffic signals can be programmed to detect buses and let them through. Lower infrastructure costs than rail or dedicated guideway options.

  Negatives: May not elicit the same kind of public response as a solution with a dedicated guideway. Shares roads with other traffic.

• Shuttle bus. Cost: unknown. This option would probably use as much existing infrastructure as possible without building new infrastructure. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 10-12 minutes.

  

  Positives: Lowest startup and capital costs. Can accommodate the most stops. Can use existing bus stock, though new buses may need to be ordered as new routes are added. Buses can be easily added to accommodate demand.

  Negatives: Lesser public perception of buses when compared to rail-based service. Can add to short-term congestion before and after games.

• People movers are used throughout the US in airports for inter-terminal automated transportation. Cost: $30-60 million per mile. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-7 minutes.

  

  Positives: Less required right-of-way than BART. Lower construction costs when compared to other elevated guideway systems. Often fully automated. Can operate on high frequency headways.

  Negatives: Requires dedicated guideway which may be expensive.

• Aerial tramway (gondola) Cost: $40-70 million per mile. A project is underway in Portland, OR to ferry passengers between two sites using such as system. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-8 minutes.

  

  Positives: Possibly lower right-of-way and construction costs than rail options. Less environmental impact than other options. Could have lower maintenance costs. May become a tourist attraction on its own.

  Negatives: May hold an image as less safe than other options because the Bay Area is Earthquake country. Not a mainstream technology that immediately comes to mind as a mass transit solution.

• Personal or Group Rapid Transit (PRT/GRT). Cost: $30-60 million per mile. PRT uses numerous small, 4-8 person cabs on an elevated guideway. GRT uses larger cars that can hold 30 or more. Can run fully automated. Estimated one-way trip time from WSX BART: 5-7 minutes.

  

  Positives: Good on-demand potential. Supporters tout low startup costs.

  Negatives: May not be suited for event-based, high-demand usage such as baseball games. Not a widely deployed solution.

For now I've ruled out a pedestrian bridge option because of the 1.25-mile distance between WSX BART and Pacific Commons. The Warm Springs extension could open as early as 2012 should funding materialize. If this funding does not come through, or if the San Jose extension is not funded, the only solution for BART riders would be a bus that runs from the Fremont station. The trip would take 20 minutes. BART carries 15-20% of A's fans on any given game date. I have not included a monorail in this discussion for the time being because its benefits and costs are covered by other options like the people mover.

Oakland bites on the extension

In what can be construed as the only positive news to come out City Hall re: the A's in some time, Oakland officials and the Coliseum Authority agreed to a three-year extension for the A's. The extension could potentially keep the A's in the Coliseum through 2013. The structure of the deal is such that the pre-existing deal, which was guaranteed through 2007 and had one-year options through 2010, now guarantees the A's stay through 2010 and push the options out to 2011-2013. Some of the finer points:

• The lease allows the team to leave with 120 days notice without penalty if it moves to a 40,000-or-more capacity stadium in Alameda County.
• Should the team leave the area, it would have to pay the remainder of its lease and a $250,000 penalty.
• Whether the 2011-2013 years are optional or guaranteed has not yet been finalized.
• The payments will be higher than in the pre-existing lease, totalling $4.7 million over the last five years. The A's payment for 2006 is only $500K.

On the surface this sounds like a nice reciprocal goodwill gesture, but as I wrote earlier on this matter, simply pushing the options out three more years mostly benefits the A's since they get a nice safety in case a new ballpark is beset with delays. I suppose it makes City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente look better during an election year, and he certainly needs the help.

Taking off my cynical cap, it's possible that once the election's over, Oakland pols can get to work on a good Oakland site. Council member/mayoral candidate Nancy Nadel nixed my Broadway Auto Row idea. I think it deserves a second look.

Wolff confronts rumor mill

A second Argus article by Chris De Benedetti has Wolff fielding questions about the seemingly endless rumor mill (yes, I'm partly responsible for this) regarding the A's intentions. Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty comes to Wolff's defense:

"I don't think in any way are the A's playing us against another community," said Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, who represents Fremont and grew up there. "The Wolffs are genuine people. They're the most sincere people I have ever met."

Wolff tried to quash the rumors as well:

"We don't have any hidden agenda," Wolff told The Daily Review last week. "Anyone who's a sports fan thinks everyone has a hidden agenda. Even if I wanted to go, I couldn't go."

Both Wolff and baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, a longtime friend and former college fraternity brother of Wolff's, also have said they have no intention of challenging the Giants' territorial rights in Santa Clara County. But supporters of bringing the A's to the South Bay point out that Wolff has several real estate holdings in San Jose.

The Mulcahy-DiNapoli connection was downplayed as well, simply as longtime business associates:

... the day after meeting with Fremont leaders, television cameras showed Wolff at the A's-New York Yankees game in Oakland, sitting next to San Jose mayoral candidate Michael Mulcahy.

Mixed messages?

"There is no intention of that," Wolff said.

He said there was little significance to their visit during the game, adding that Mulcahy owns A's season tickets near Wolff's seats and the two have known each other for years. Mulcahy's cousins are John and Jason DiNapoli, who own a small interest in the A's and have partnered with Wolff in some San Jose real estate deals.

"I've been a friend and a business partner with Lew Wolff for 30 years," Mulcahy said. "He's a supporter of mine."

Finally, Wolff issues a "firm" denial:

"We really want to stay in California, in the Bay Area, in the East Bay," he said.

"I don't know how many times I have to say that."

So are you satisfied with the responses? I know one thing: when this saga has finally played out and the A's have a new home, this blog will make for some interesting - and at times painful - retrospective reading.

Props to De Benedetti for tackling the rumor mill head-on.

Confidence in Fremont

The Argus's Chris De Benedetti reports that Fremont City Manager Fred Diaz is exuding confidence regarding the city's chances of luring Fremont.

"I think we are the lead candidate for the new home of the A's,'' Diaz added. "If there's a deal to make for both the A's and the City of Fremont, then we'll find it and make that happen.''

Though little news has emerged in the last week, the article appears to further confirm Fremont's now frontrunner status. Lew Wolff even has a few words for naysayers who dislike the current lack of transportation options at the Pacific Commons site:

"Everybody is looking for the negative here,'' he said. "There are lots of issues, and we'll deal with all of them. I don't have all the answers this minute.''

There will have to be three or four distinct mass transit solutions.

• Shuttle from the existing Fremont BART station
  
• Shuttle from the planned Warm Springs BART station (if it's built)
  
• ACE/Amtrak to the planned Pacific Commons station
  
• Bus/shuttle from Santa Clara County
  

Wolff also reaffirmed the notion that he's not looking for a public subsidy.

Santa Clara County - San José settlement

The long, bitter battle between Santa Clara County and San José appears to finally be over. A $33.5-36.5 million settlement to be paid by the City will go towards a new crime lab (excellent idea IMO). City and County had squared off in dueling lawsuits over County's desire to build a 7,000-seat, House of Blues-run concert hall on the County Fairgrounds. City wanted the concert hall downtown, either next to the new City Hall or across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The settlement doesn't mention anything about the concert hall, which leaves County with a dilemma: Do they go forward with it? Frankly, putting a swanky auditorium on County Fairgrounds makes little sense due to its location and lack of ancillary development, and when accounting for rising costs and litigation expenses, the concept may be less feasible than before. There happens to be one other venue that, because of a similar white elephant status, is now closed: Henry J. Kaiser Center in Oakland. SF's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and SJ's Civic Auditorium have also struggled at times. Here's a suggestion for County: a soccer/football stadium with adjoining fields.

Beyond the concert hall, there are a few important impacts. Chief among them is that City will be able to go forward on its North San Jose development plans. City will still need to contribute other money for transit projects and it has issues to iron out with neighboring Santa Clara and Milpitas, but this is basically a green light. While most of the first phase of 5,000 housing units is spoken for, plans eventually call for up to 32,000 homes and 26.7 million square feet of office space. The glut of available commercial space makes office expansion unlikely, but homes can work should related infrastructure be built accordingly.

This potentially opens the door for the A's, who would have difficulty putting 2,000 homes anywhere near the Diridon South site (my guess is about 800-1000 tops). As part of a ballpark deal, SJ Redevelopment could local steer local tech firms with excess land towards the A's. That would allow the financing of a ballpark to take place and, more importantly, create a more palatable ballot measure for June 2007 that looks quite similar to the deal SF made with the Giants - only the A's wouldn't be overly dependent on ballpark-based revenue streams to pay the mortgage.

One problem with the deal: the settlement will come out of City's Redevelopment funds - the same funds that are being used to buy Diridon South. Will City have to sell additional land to finish the Diridon South purchase? Or will the payment occur after Diridon South is purchased?

This shouldn't surprise, but it will

Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal just posted their interview with Wolff that appeared in the April 7 print edition. Lots of non-answers to the questions that were posed. At some point these interviews will start to look like the lecture scenes in "Real Genius".

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So my eyes weren't deceiving me when San Jose mayoral candidate Michael Mulcahy appeared next to Lew Wolff in the first row on Tuesday. The Merc revealed that Mulcahy's cousins, John and Jason DiNapoli, are in fact part of the A's ownership group.

(pause to allow this to sink in)

Each adult member of the immediate Wolff family (that's five if you're counting) has given $500 to the Mulcahy campaign. You may remember my December post in which I mentioned Wolff selling a portion of downtown San Jose's Park Center Plaza to a group headed by two other DiNapolis. Naturally, the parking garage that's part of that block next to Hwy 87 has a Mulcahy banner hanging from the roof.

What's more interesting is the portion of the block that Wolff kept. In the southwest corner, across the street from the Adobe headquarters, is a rather nondescript, low-slung building with a sizable amount of surface parking. According to the Santa Clara County Registrar, this parcel is owned by a firm fronted by Wolff. Until recently the building held San Jose's first charter school, Downtown College Prep. In December, DCP moved into a more campus-like facility along the Alameda, west of downtown. The building found a new tenant quickly - another Latino-focused charter school called Escuela Popular. Unless Wolff is interested in allowing nonprofits to keep using an underutilized property in perpetuity, it's likely that the building will eventually be replaced. One of the biggest concerns San Jose residents have regarding the ballpark concept is the lack of parking, at the very least in relation to the requirements a new ballpark would entail. The 2-acre parcel could be extremely valuable at some point in the future. Wolff could build a 1,000-space parking garage (with Redevelopment's financial help, of course) there to handle the increased demand should a ballpark be built there. Or he could do a swap with Adobe, who's gunning for the SJWC property across the river/87. Or if he's bidding on the SJWC parcel and gets it, the school parcel could be a sort of gateway to the ballpark village. Housing may not be doable because of the SJC flight path overhead, but there probably aren't too many limitations on what could be done in terms of commercial use.

Going back to the DiNapoli-Mulcahy links, it's pretty obvious now that any talk of moving the A's out of state would have to come after all Bay Area opportunities are exhausted. With the combination of San Francisco interests (Fisher) and South Bay interests (Wolff-DiNapoli), it would appear that San Jose will have something to say about the A's future, whether by bringing the A's to San Jose or by pledging its support for Fremont.

Progress on the Fremont front

Today's Tracy Press has an article on the A's ongoing talks with Fremont and Cisco. Quotes come from Fremont city manager Fred Diaz, who appears to be up to his eyeballs in negotiation work.

The deal is still very much in the talking stage, and that places Fred Diaz, Fremont’s city manager and Tracy’s former city manager, right in the middle of the conversations.

“Everything is very positive right now,” Diaz told me over the phone this week. “I’ve met with Lew Wolff (the A’s owner) a number of times and more often with his son, Keith. They are very serious about this.”

...

Diaz said negotiations between Wolff and Cisco are nearing the final stages.

“Figuring out naming rights for the stadium is one of the last unresolved issues,” he said.

I had heard that Wolff already had a naming rights sponsor in mind when he entered these talks. Perhaps things have changed now that Cisco is officially in the picture. The San Jose-based networking firm already has a heavy advertising presence in the college basketball TV and pro football markets. The naming rights market has gotten sophisticated enough that much more than just the stadium can be sponsored. Club seating sections, lounges, and other architectural elements can all have a corporate name attached, as seen by Comerica's recently inked deal with HP Pavilion.

Odds and ends

Good links:

• A great technical document describing the noise problem for the University of Minnesota's planned football stadium is available. It contains an explanation of the impact of concert noise, which the San Jose Draft EIR has basically glossed over. I have yet to find anything that properly explains the impact of the inversion layer on sound, especially in the warm months. For those that wonder why I'm focusing on the noise issue so much - it's because any Bay Area location will probably have a huge environmental noise impact on surrounding neighborhoods. This is true whether it's in Oakland, Fremont, or San Jose.
• Marc Normandin's Beyond the Box Score blog has a nice interview with economist Andrew Zimbalist, who recently penned a book that I have purchased but haven't had a chance to read: In The Best Interests of Baseball: The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig.
• On the heels of the opening of Busch Stadium III is a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about the Ballpark Village concept that is going up alongside the ballpark. Cleveland State economist Mark Rosentraub, who like Zimbalist has written extensively on the problems with publicly-financed sports venues, extends some hope that a properly planned development can work for St. Louis in a better way than other stadium-based resurgence projects in other cities. Incidentally, I don't count San Diego and San Francisco as good for comparison, since for both of those cities it's generally thought that their ballparks are but one factor in causing accelerated development, in conjunction with soaring land costs and other unrelated encroaching development.

Next week I'll be attending two mayoral debates/forums. San Jose's next event will be on Monday, April 10, 7 p.m. at the San Jose Stage Company (490 S. First St., San Jose). The forum's theme is Creativity & The Arts, and it's sponsored by a number of arts-related organizations including 1stAct. Oakland's next event is on Thursday, April 13, from 6-8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum's James Moore Theatre. The forum is sponsored by the Marcus Foster Educational Institute and the League of Women Voters.

China Basin noise data gathering happens on Wednesday.

Noise measurements inside the Coliseum

The measurements made last night will provide a baseline for measurements I'll make outside the Coliseum, China Basin, and other ballparks. The decibel (dB) scale is logarithmic like the Richter scale, so 70 dB can be interpreted as twice as loud as 60 dB. (There's a good primer on sound and noise propagation at quietsolution.com.) Last night I measured crowd noise in the bowl at three different points: Section 137 of the LF bleachers, the concourse behind Section 107, and the 4th row of Section 203. I don't have a very sophisticated sound level meter that has real time logging or analysis capabilities, so take these measurements with a decent margin of error (± 3 dB) and several grains of salt. I used "A-weighting" for the measurements.
The ambient crowd noise in the seating bowl was in the 70-75 dB range when the crowd was idle. Drums and chants brought the noise up 5-8 dB. Between innings, the PA caused the range to be 75-82 dB. Compare that to the interior of a BART train (60 dB stopped/71 dB moving).

Readings from the bleachers (first three innings):

• Giambi intro/BALCO chant: 92 dB
• Giambi groundout to 1B: 99 dB
• Matsui HR to RF: 96 dB spike, 92 dB roar
• "Let Go ___" chant: 90 dB
• First 2-2 pitch to Sheffield: 90 dB
• Sheffield HR: 95 dB

Concourse behind 107, where a group of shrill young girls (A's fans) were chanting back-and-forth with another group of slightly less shrill young boys (Yankees fans).

• Jeter drop/error: 101 dB
• Bradley single, 2 RBI: 104 dB
• Payton single: 104 dB
• "Let's Go Oakland" chant: 96 dB
• Kendall beats out DP: 102 dB
• Bradley walks, scoring Ellis: 107 dB
• "Yankees Suck" chant: 95 dB
• Waiting in line for dollar dogs: 82-84 dB

Section 203. After the Scutaro single, many Yankees fans departed. The Thomas double begat a mass exodus. The readings:

• Damon grounds out to Duke: 92 dB
• "Take me out to the ballgame": 82 dB throughout, 88 dB climax
• A-Rod K's: 94 dB
• Giambi intro: 83 dB
• Giambi flies out: 93 dB
• Sharks highlight on DiamondVision: 91 dB
• Bradley triple: 99 dB
• Cano error, Payton safe: 104 dB
• Kendall single: 98 dB
• Scutaro RBI single: 101 dB
• Thomas double, 2 RBI: 101 dB

Other readings taken elsewhere in the stadium:

• Concourse behind the bleachers: 82 dB
• Section 103 aisle during Dot Racing climax: 95 dB (proving that Dot Racing isn't the most cheered event at A's games)
• BART bridge almost underneath southbound tracks before the game: 88 dB
• BART bridge before game, middle: 75 dB
• Standing platform in RF near flags, end of game: 89 dB
• BART bridge after game near saxophone player but not while he's playing: 67 dB
• When the sax guy is playing (I really should ask him to play "Take the A Train" more often): 77 dB

It's important to note that very few of these "events" lasted for more than 2-3 seconds. There was a slight trickle of people leaving as early as 9:00 p.m. Roughly half the crowd was left at the end.

I'll make the next measurements in the Giants-Astros series next week, on the promenade outside the ballpark and McCovey Point (the little park across Mission Creek from the stadium). These will be important because unlike the current Coliseum, China Basin is an open design that doesn't trap or absorb noise as well as the Coliseum.

Attendance Analysis, Part I

Update: This post just got a mention in the SFGate "A's Drumbeat" blog. Sweet!

Now that the first three games are in the books, it's time to do a comparison between the new, smaller Coliseum and last year's larger model. Having the Yankees series at the beginning of the year creates a disadvantage for the A's because Opening Day usually brings in 40,000+, so to have a Yankees game on Opening Day effectively eliminates one potentially high attendance date from the schedule. The Coliseum's stated capacity this year is 34,077 plus 1,000 or so standing room admissions. Last year the capacity was 48,219.

First, let's look at the first series this year vs. the first series last year:

• 2006 (vs. NYY): 35,077 / 31,284 / 30,165. Total: 96,526. Average: 32,175 (94.4% of capacity)
• 2005 (vs. TOR): 44,815 / 10,106 / 15,860. Total: 70,781. Average: 23,594 (48.9% of capacity)
  

The drop-off in 2005, as noted by local media at the time, was precipitous to say the least. A small dropoff has occurred this year, though it really amounts to 6-7%. That should at least get the press off the A's backs for now. The next homestand against Texas and Detroit will paint a more realistic picture. Since the first series was against the Yankees, let's look at how May 2005's Yankees series stacks up against the last three days:

• 2006 (vs. NYY): 35,077 / 31,284 / 30,165. Total: 96,526. Average: 32,175 (94.4% of capacity)
• 2005 (vs. NYY): 38,636 / 41,180 / 37,237. Total: 117,053. Average: 39,018 (80.9% of capacity)
  

This puts the A's over 8,000 ahead of last year's pace but almost 7,000 behind last season's Yankees series. Those that decried the third deck closure referred to reduced capacity as reduced revenue opportunity. However, the new pricing tier structure appears to be meant to establish two things: a greater amount of revenue per ticket sold, and a less elastic demand curve for A's tickets. The first goal will be reached by default simply through the removal of 10,000 $9 seats per game, many of which turned into $1 seats on Wednesdays. There's too small a sample size at this point to know if the second goal has been reached, but I would expect that the last year's game-over-game standard deviation, 10,511, could be cut in half with these changes.

I didn't attend Tuesday's game, but Wednesday's game showed how effective the structure has been so far. Most of the empty seats were in the furthest reaches of the Plaza and Field levels, along with hundreds of Plaza Bleacher seats. That's exactly what the team wants on a regular basis. The removal of the third deck from inventory was not about staffing or security concerns. Excess inventory was a factor in creating the perception of reduced value - not just of any A's ticket, but of all pricing tiers as well. Once pricing tiers and their value are well-established, demand should rise and that terrible standard deviation figure should drop, perhaps as much as 50%. That should, in turn, create a stable fanbase to which the A's and their sponsors can market.

Of course, this completely ignores on-field performance. That's what it's supposed to do, because records can vary from year to year. Some years teams make the playoffs. Then again, they could lose 100 games. Whatever the case, this fanbase stability is supposed to provide a built-in insulation against record fluctuations. Premium seats are often sold in 5-7 year increments with the promise of controlled price hikes. The same could be said for luxury suites. The hope is that should the A's leave the Coliseum in the next 3-4 years, much of the fanbase will be precommitted to the new ballpark, wherever it is in the Bay Area.

When looking at the model from a distance, it bears a kinship with the "Moneyball" philosophy. It's about identifying market inefficiencies and exploiting them whenever possible. If basic microeconomic ideas can be applied successfully to the running of the baseball side of a franchise, it only makes sense that they also be properly applied to the place they were developed in the first place: the business side.

Coming tomorrow: Crowd noise measurements

KC Royals/Chiefs to get renovations

The drama over Kansas City pro sports futures may have finally ended peacefully as voters approved a sales tax hike to fund $575 million of upgrades to Kauffman Stadium (Royals) and Arrowhead Stadium (Chiefs). The Royals and Chiefs had different problems. Middling attendance and small market size hurt the Royals. The Chiefs, on the other hand, have had 14 consecutive years of sellouts and a much more rabid fanbase, yet are limited by their lack of premium seating and facilities. After the talk over a Downtown KC ballpark finally died down last year, the two teams (and leagues) put together a large package of improvements that was broken down into two separate ballot items: the stadium upgrades (approved), and a huge rolling roof that could cover either stadium (rejected).

Pro-stadium groups clearly followed the "new digs" playbook to get the deal done. It's equal parts hope, fear, and subterfuge. Here's a recap of how it got done:

1. Promote fear over the team(s) leaving. Not that Chiefs would ever leave, but fear motivates. A most telling quote came from Steve Glorioso, one of the campaign’s strategists: “I think the campaign struck the right balance between keeping the teams and the subtle threat that they might leave.” It also doesn't hurt to point out the economic impact losing one or more teams would have on the local economy.
2. Get media support. The Kansas City Star (a Knight-Ridder publication) came out in favor of the project two days prior to the election.
3. Break out the celebs and memories. Royals great George Brett and some current Chiefs players were out in public hawking the paper - the same paper that supported the initiative. The campaign didn't hesitate to evoke memories of past Royals/Chiefs glory days.
4. If you have to have a vote, don't have it in November. Putting ballot measures like these on a spring or primary ballot tends to make for better results since supportive fans may be more likely to vote than those who simply look at the ballot as limited and otherwise not worthy of their time. This time the stadium package brought more voters than expected out of the woodwork.
5. Outspend the opposition. The pro-stadium group spent $1.55 million on their campaign. The anti-stadium group spent $501. That's well over a 3,000-to-1 ratio.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. You may see some portion of this strategy used for an A's, 49ers, or Raiders stadium in the next year or two.

Interesting sighting

Just after Rich Harden got out of a first inning jam by blowing away Jason Giambi with a 98 mph heater, a shot was shown of the seats behind the A's dugout. Lew Wolff was there, as would be expected. But who was that young guy seated next to Wolff? It was none other than San Jose mayoral candidate Michael Mulcahy. Mulcahy also happens to be part of Baseball San Jose and is a scion of the influential DiNapoli family - the same DiNapoli family that has done business with Wolff for years. I wonder what they were talking about...

Wolff meets Fremont City Council + Opening Night

One of the first steps on a long road to a Fremont ballpark was made on Monday as Lew Wolff, presumably coming from his daughter's residence in Los Gatos, stopped in Fremont to meet with members of the city council and city manager Fred Diaz. Diaz has been responsible for much of the policy-related work that has gotten Fremont to this point.

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I didn't notice any significant changes at the Coliseum last night, but there were a few minor things that popped out:

• There are now signs that separate the gate/security line and the traffic headed towards the will call booth.
• Some plasma screens were scattered around the field concourse. The panels only showed ads. Anyone who wanted replays or game video needed to look at an older tube TV.
• One of the souls in the always lively left field bleachers posted a sign that said "IF U BUILD IN FREMONT WE WILL NOT COME". Or at least that's what I think it said. It was impossible to see from section 123, where I was sitting. I had to walk halfway to the BBQ Terrace to see it clearly, and I have pretty good vision. Guys, I know that the purpose is to get the sign on TV, but you're trying to sell the idea to fans in the stands too. Make a bigger sign.
• I loved the Bill King tribute. If they could only make the sign above the broadcast booth permanent.

Tomorrow I do noise measurements at the Coliseum.

Pacific Commons pics

Good pictures from the one day with decent weather in a while.

First up is a wide shot from the northwest corner of the site. Mission Peak is the mountain on the left covered in shadow.

Then we have a closeup that's more representative of how close and tall the mountains are to human eyes.

This next photo was taken from the southeast corner of the site away towards the mountain range. The fence in the foreground represents the boundary between the buildable land and the protected marsh.

Here's a view of the fence running the opposite direction towards the west/Bay.

The protected area, with the causeway that runs over the land, allowing for uninterrupted tidal flow.

This picture was taken on the causeway section of Cushing Parkway, looking northwest on the way to Pacific Commons. The road is four lanes wide with ample space for bike lanes and sidewalks on both sides. Parking is not allowed anywhere on Cushing Parkway. South of the causeway, it becomes a six-lane road. The road conveniently terminates at its south end at an intersection with Fremont Boulevard, where Cushing Parkway becomes an on-ramp for I-880 South. Northbound drivers can make a left at the intersection and drive an extra 1/4 mile before reaching the on-ramp for I-880 North.

The ecosystem in the area continues to thrive despite encroaching development. The last shot I got was the next one. If you can guess what that is in the middle of the picture, you may be able to pick up on the irony of it.

Matier and Ross stir it up again

And now for the most speculative article yet:

At the same time, Wolff held out little hope of the team remaining in Oakland.

"It's a built-up area, and I can't ask them to do the impossible,'' Wolff said, adding that even "if they came up with a $400 million check, we still don't have a place to play.''

Then comes the obligatory Las Vegas reference:

Others, however, think the Fremont play is just another step toward the team leaving the area.

"He has to show he's tried to make a 'go' in Oakland. Then he makes an effort to make a 'go' in Fremont,'' said one Major League Baseball insider. "Then Wolff can go to the commissioner and say, 'OK -- now let me go.' ''

The inside betting is that Las Vegas is high on the A's list. But Wolff says his old fraternity brother, Commissioner Bud Selig, isn't keen on putting a team in a city that allows sports book betting.

No one can ever deny that Vegas will be a player as long as they don't have a team. It's also in Wolff's best interests to have as many open options as possible. That includes Vegas, which MLB supposedly has taken off the table for the Florida Marlins. Has Sin City been set aside specifically for the A's should it get to that point?

In January I wrote a treatise on Vegas and the challenges it faces. What do you think is more likely? That the gaming industry will accede to MLB's desire to take baseball out of the sports books? Or that MLB will let a team operate in Vegas with the sports books intact? Or that Fremont will be able to get an efficient mass transit solution for its site? Or that somehow San Jose will magically open up for the A's due to a MLB in-house negotiation?

That's why I can't handicap any city's chances. Those questions are hard enough to answer. They're even harder to quantify.

Not an April Fools joke

A recap of the Oakland mayoral debate has the following bit about candidate Ron Dellums:

Dellums said that after meeting with Oakland Athletics owner Lewis Wolff, he concluded that the time had passed to keep the baseball team from leaving the city.

For those that held out that the frontrunner Dellums would provide hope for keeping the team in Oakland, this is troubling. Others who have observed Dellums' political career can't be terribly surprised as Dellums hasn't previously shown any significant interest in sports business during his three decade tenure.

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I attended the second San Jose ballpark EIR public outreach meeting. This time the questions got more pointed as community members repeatedly poked holes in the draft EIR. I arrived halfway through the meeting because I felt I didn't need to sit through the Powerpoint presentation again, so I might have missed a few comments or questions. Here's what I picked up:

• Flaws in the traffic and parking study were pointed out repeatedly. Marc Morris, who submitted an analysis of the parking study prior to the first meeting, said that he was working on a similar analysis to traffic study. He pointed out some assumptions that may not be valid based on the idea that the EIR is not team-specifc: statistical data is based on extrapolation of usage patterns during Sharks games, and 20% (or 9,000) of those fans come from somewhere in the East Bay. Depending on how many mass-transit options are available, it may be higher. The traffic study will be expanded to include impact on intersections outside the Downtown Core and Didiron/Arena areas. The reason for this is that it is expected that as gridlock ensues, some fans will decide to take different routes to get to the ballpark, and that means increased use of other roads and intersections as well as parking in areas that don't currently see high demand.
  
• SSV member Don Gagliardi pushed the working group to have a soccer stadium as a studied alternative. No commitment was made, but it will be put under consideration. Gagliardi also distributed a letter to project principal Michael Rhoades touting the reduced environmental impact of a SSS (soccer-specific stadium). I think it would be help if soccer supporters provided something more specific as a counterpoint. If designed correctly, a SSS could provide significantly less impact, but if it's designed without noise mitigation built in the difference could be much smaller. This isn't easy since it costs money to design and study such impact, but that's where it will take the soccer community to provide something substantive that can be taken seriously as an alternative.
• Delmas Park and Shasta-Hanchett neighborhood residents were present, expressing grave concerns over the impact of the ballpark. I met Joe Bentley, a S/HNPA member and the guy who pointed out the problems with noise propagation in the concert configuration on Tuesday. There was a request of the working group to simulate different levels of noise in order to better inform the neighborhood what those impacts mean. Again the group was non-committal. Early last year some of you know that I bought a basic soundmeter. I plan to have a little surprise rigged up just in case nothing is prepared by the City. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have effective, realistic TPMP in place, since the prospect of regularly bringing in 60,000 people into the area looms should this project move forward.

I'm off to take pictures of the Fremont site.

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.

Assorted newsbites

Mayoral debates were held in Oakland and San Jose earlier tonight. I couldn't make it to the SJ debate but the Merc's Phil Yost ran a running commentary. Candidate/BBSJ member Dave Cortese (remember the Wave article from earlier in the week?) got the baseball question. His response sounded much like his stance during the 3/1 study session, but he also got a plug in there for soccer. That can't be a bad thing for the Quakes fans who felt like they got the shaft on Tuesday night.

It would be nice if the Oakland Tribune had a similar blog for the Oakland mayoral debate.

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Got a few more bits of information on Pacific Commons. Real estate firm Colliers Parrish still has their Pacific Commons website up though it has some outdated information. It should give you a sense of the property's size and location. Here's a map I clipped from the site:


The building layout is reflective of the campus plan for Cisco. It's different from the typical Valley industrial park plan in that the buildings front the street. Most of the time these buildings are well-recessed from the street and act as islands surrounded by parking. On the map above, the areas on the left side are already developed. The bottom left has a planned park (green), a water treatment facility (blue), and an Amtrak/ACE station (orange). Surprisingly, that station is the same "crow flies" distance from the main street Pacific Commons as the planned BART station on the other side of 880. Tomorrow I'm lobbing a call into a local firm that designs and builds people-movers. Seriously.

As for the ballpark village, I found out that:

• 1600-2200 housing units is the target depending on the amount of land acquired
• A hotel and meeting facilities are planned
• A baseball museum would be integrated into the footprint

Lastly, the Merc's poll has "Yes to Fremont" beating "No" 66% to 34%. More tomorrow.

Fremont in the news

Last night Lew Wolff spoke at a Washington Township Men's Club function, which was held at the Fremont Elks Lodge. He was there rubbing elbows and selling the plan to Fremont business and civic leaders. Merc reporter Barry Witt has a must-read recap, including greater detail of what Wolff's vision is than what we've heard publicly. (For the record, I haven't heard that much privately.)

Wolff discussed a many-faceted plan:

• Work with Cisco to get control of the parcel Cisco controls within Pacific Commons.
• Get entitlements from Fremont to build the ballpark and the mixed-use ballpark village plan. This includes some 2,000 housing units, from which some portion of profits would provide $200 million towards a ballpark.
• Scope out Fremont's requirements to provide services to this new area.
• Figure out how to get 15,000 parking spaces on the property along with the ballpark and other development.
• Work with city and transit officials to complete a usable mass transit infrastructure (shuttles from BART and buses at this point).

Here's an updated picture that shows the lay of the land (10:28 PM - changed to reflect land that can be developed and land that is protected):

Now let's address these issues one-by-one.

Cisco: Cisco currently has no way of pushing the conversion of its industrial-zoned land to residential or mixed-use. It also has an option to purchase the land and a long leasehold. They are interested in having land available for future expansion should it be required, so they may not be willing to simply sell without getting something back.

Limited land size: 143 acres sounds like a lot, but not when parking is factored in. A typical surface parking lot has around 125 parking spaces per acre (The Coliseum complex is roughly 100 acres) . To get 15,000 spaces, 120 acres would have to be devoted to parking - the typical endless sea suburban model. Since that's not likely, some garages will have to be built. The ballpark will take up 15 acres. Streets and parks may take up another 15-25 acres. Wolff may want to place a hotel on the site. There would be an undetermined amount of commercial activity as well, though the existing Pacific Commons shopping center would cover some of that. Given all of these space requirements, it's easy to see how difficult it could be put it all together. A previous news item points to land in Dublin that could be used for the housing requirement, though that's another issue altogether.

Transportation: Other than a planned Amtrak/ACE station to the west of Pacific Commons, there are no existing plans to bring rail-based mass transit to the area. BART isn't going to expand to the west. Event-based shuttles are probably the most feasible option at this point. If BART's Warm Springs Extension (WSX) gets funding, service could start by 2010 or shortly thereafter. MTC and BART are still trying to figure it out. WSX is also dependent on the San Jose BART extension being approved, so there's still a lot of stuff to figure out there.

Fremont's growth and land use: Having 2,000 new units built means introducing 5,000 new residents to an area that has little infrastructure. There will have to be a mixture of medium-density and high-density development, perhaps even towers. Fremont will have to assess the costs of provide the full range of city services, including fire and police. Housing is expected to be sold or rented at market rates, so there probably aren't any huge risks of increased crime. Environmental issues are bound to crop up. Original landowner Catellus (now part of warehousing giant ProLogis) ended up with a smaller development plan than what they initially wanted, including the protection of over 1,200 acres of wetlands - much of it offsite. The introduction of residential could cause that agreement to be reopened and may shape the final development plan. Traffic will also be a driving force since Pacific Commons is only a couple miles north of one of the largest bottlenecks in the Bay Area, the 880/Mission Blvd/680 interchanges. The revamped 880/Mission interchange is scheduled for completion in 2008, but there will be some negative impacts from ballpark-related traffic.

The good thing about this is that there are plenty of options to get this kind of development done. Conditions may dictate a compact, reduced-sprawl model. There are also smaller issues such as where to place the ballpark on the site to allow for paid parking when a large retail center with free parking is nearby. Just because the parties are moving quickly doesn't mean they won't be thorough. There's one more extremely important factor: the way it's shaping up, a public vote won't be required.

No fireworks, but...

Tonight's session ran for two hours. The format was explained at the beginning:

• Presentation of different Draft EIR findings
  
• Break - during which the public could fill out comment forms
• Q&A session based on responses to the comment forms
  

While the format allowed for most comments to be addressed, there was little room for any kind of debate or exchange. This didn't sit too well with the large contingent of Quakes supporters on hand, all of whom were looking for some indication that the City is still interested in bringing MLS back to San Jose in the next millenium. I'll go into more detail on that tomorrow in a commentary piece.

Any questions that were addressed were narrowly focused on the EIR. This meant that anything that might have been missed or glossed over in the Draft - well, there were no clear explanations other than the fact that comments would have to be noted, addressed, and inserted into the Final version. This included:

• Little explanation of the TPMP (Traffic & Parking Management Program). Residents of the St. Leo's/Cahill Park and Delmas Park neighborhoods have not been impressed by the TPMP imposed when the Arena was built, so many eyes rolled. The City really needs to get this piece in place or else it risks severe backlash. I happen to live in the Horace Mann neighborhood just to the northeast of City Hall. Horace Mann has a daytime parking enforcement plan because of its proximity to San Jose State, and for the most part it works well. I imagine it's harder to make this work at night. Some combination of street closures and increased police/metermaid presence will be required.
• The parking study may be significantly flawed and not reflective of downtown's typical parking usage patterns. Mark Morris submitted a seven-page document outlining his concerns over the parking data (I'll post that sometime tomorrow). Merc reporter Barry Witt also explained that the consulting group doing the traffic study was the same one that did Santana Row's traffic study. That study was also flawed as its sampling was not as "worst case" as it should've been. Anyone that drives in the Santana Row/Valley Fair area knows how much of a nightmare it presents on a normal day, let alone the holiday shopping period.
• Dual stadia (baseball/soccer) is not looking good. It wasn't just merely shot down, it appears that that none of the concept that was floated regarding a soccer stadium in December had ever been considered. More on this later.
• No study was done on the impact of weekday games (business person specials). The lots in the area tend to be used for transit-related parking, so scheduling games during a weekday at noon or 1 p.m. would severely impact available parking. This will be investigated and put into the study.
  
• The concert sound contour was not considered realistic because of the way sound would propagate in the "amphitheater" configuration. Such a setup would use a single-point source at the stage instead of the ballpark's distributed sound/PA system, which is designed for efficiency. I have a feeling that should this get built, any concerts will be limited to the daytime hours, such as weekend music festivals. Night concerts could be off the table early.
  

Some good came out of the meeting, especially since my other ballpark-specific comments were addressed.

• It was acknowledged that the environmental impacts presuppose a worst-case scenario featuring a 45,000-seat stadium. However, I had also asked Planning to include an alternative that featured a 35,000-seat stadium, since its advertised impacts should be less and may include built-in mitigation measures. I didn't get any assurance on that.
• Planning will check into the field orientation change. I suggested 15-30 degrees (preferably to the north). I can't say how much impact it would have, but if such a change were combined with special site considerations in the ballpark design to absorb more noise and light pollution, mitigation could be significant.
• There will be an alternative that includes "perimeter lighting," which places lighting on the rim of the ballpark's roof instead of on poles/standards. On a related note, there was an inquiry about the impact of a ballpark's light on Lick Observatory. UC-Berkeley looked into it and stated that it would have no negative impact.
  

The format doesn't lend itself to open discourse, so if you come to one, you probably don't need to come to the rest. When it came to the inevitable question about the "East Bay team that shall not be named," there was more awkward dancing than a typical junior high Sadie Hawkins. For the April 27th meeting, I might just show up dressed like Stomper. At least then everyone would have to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

One last thing - I saw around 20 Quakes/Soccer Silicon Valley supporters decked out in Quakes jerseys. I didn't see any A's apparel anywhere, which highlights a problem: since the Baseball San Jose site is no longer active, it's hard to get the word out locally to Valley baseball supporters. Then again EIR's tend to be pretty dry so I can hardly blame folks for not being interested if they don't live in the affected neighborhoods

SJ Public Outreach Meeting tonight + Aramark

I'm not expecting fireworks, but tonight's first of four public outreach meetings for the Diridon South ballpark site should have some interesting and varied viewpoints. There should be representatives of the local neighborhood groups, some baseball supporters, the anti-tax watchdog group, and a contingent of Quakes supporters as well. The Soccer Silicon Valley folks are going to ask for the EIR to include a soccer stadium alternative.

Since the meeting is going to be focused on stadium environmental impact, I'm going to bring up a few topics/suggestions that could push things in a positive direction:

• The A's have cited 35,000 as a likely capacity for their new ballpark. The EIR cites a 45,000-seat stadium, with an appreciable noise increase over the study sample - Qualcomm Stadium with 40,000 in attendance. Noise should be somewhat (though perhaps not proportionally) lower with a smaller stadium design.
• A capacity of 35,000 should require a smaller footprint and less height. I'm going to recommend using PNC Park as a proper example since it's closer to the right size than any of the other HOK ballparks built over the last 20 years.
• A roof with lights built in should help reduce light spill more than with typical light standards.
• Is the dual-stadia concept possible or not? (I didn't think this was well-addressed at the study session)

If you're going to be there, I look forward to seeing you. I'll be the short Filipino guy with a shaved head, in a red sweater. We'll have a talk, no big whoop.

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Aramark has put together a new website promoting the various types of concessions they will make available for this upcoming season. You might like the front page since it has a familiar look to it...

Among the new items available at McAfee Coliseum this season:

• Bagel dog
• Chili cheese dog
• Crispy chicken sandwich

Now if they could only have a chili cheese "big dog" - and a gurney + EMT's to go with it.

Staying on point

At this point Lew Wolff must be getting tired of giving the same unrevealing answers about the state of the A's. Here's another set of vague quotes, courtesy of SF Business Times scribe Eric Young. Young also wrote an article on how stadium enhancements are allowing both the A's and Giants to pull greater revenues during spring training. One interesting factoid: the A's pay the City of Phoenix $400,000/year on rent at Phoenix Muni. That's almost as much as what they pay at the Coliseum for far fewer dates.

The A's are playing a sold-out exhibition game on Thursday against the River Cats in Sacramento. If a reporter or columnist with the Sacramento Bee gets ahold of Wolff, we'll see how the inevitable "What about Sacramento?" is handled. We can almost be certain of another Marcus Breton love letter to the A's.

If for some reason you still had some hope for the A's new home to be at the Oakland Uptown site, the final nail has been pounded into your optimism's coffin. Forest City and Macfarlane Partners signed a 66-year ground lease on the Uptown land. Yes, construction has already started there.

Uh-oh, break out the conspiracy theories

The Wave Magazine's "The Buzz" column captured the anger of neighborhood groups around the Diridon South ballpark site, since it appeared that San Jose officials were trying the ram EIR through. It doesn't note that there are four community outreach meetings scheduled over the next month for neighborhood groups to talk about the EIR:

• Tuesday, March 28 @ 7 p.m. @ City Hall Council Chambers
  
• Saturday, April 1 @ 10 a.m. @ City Hall Council Chambers
• Wednesday, April 19 @ 7 p.m. @ City Hall Council Chambers
• Thursday, April 27 @ 6 p.m. @ City Hall Council Chambers
  

At least this time it won't be a matter of sending out last minute flyers to notify residents.

The juicy bits in the column come in the form of quotes by city council member/mayoral candidate/Baseball San Jose member Dave Cortese. Here's an excerpt:

... a rumor has surfaced that the Oakland A’s could be moving to San Jose. In fact, mayoral candidate and councilman Dave Cortese told The Wave he’s personally confident it’ll all work out.

...

Assuming the team’s negotiations with Oakland collapse, and the A’s decide to move to Fremont, Cortese conjectures that the Giants could then be persuaded to let the A’s move to San Jose in return for some territorial rights compensation.

“They’re going to lose the market either way, so would they prefer it with or without money?” Cortese asks. “We know the stage is probably being set along those lines. As we speak, wheels may be in motion to set up that quid pro quo – and if that happens, ultimately that’s the kind of scenario that would quite possibly result in the territorial rights issue being resolved in one way or other, and we think MLB would rather, if they’re going to be the San Jose A’s, [be in] a stadium [on] Montgomery Street than anywhere else.”

What does that sound like to you? Something who is expressing hope out of desperation? Or someone who knows something that we don't? Hmmm...

I'm keeping firm on my stance: I'll believe it when I see it.

Thanks to Tony D. for alerting me to the article.

Wolff responds + Matier & Ross write obit

Neil Hayes' new column in the CoCo Times has quotes from Lew Wolff. There's no doubt that Wolff pays attention to the media and fans, as seen from this quote:

"I didn't know we needed to stay within the city limits of Oakland to serve our market," Wolff said in a phone interview. "We haven't discussed anything outside of Oakland at this point, but we haven't come up with anything, either. It's not for lack of trying."

Wolff also sought to clarify the circumstances that surround the A's and Oakland:

"It's a priority (for Oakland), but if you list the priorities it's not a No. 1, 2 or 3 priority, and I agree with that," Wolff said. "They have school system issues, crime issues and limited resources. Nobody is at fault here."

Hayes, for his part, helps by painting Wolff as a tireless worker who has spent the last three years looking for a site within Oakland:

So, let's recap: Wolff is uniquely qualified to develop a new ballpark. He has spent three years trying to identify a potential site in Oakland, even promoting a plan for a new stadium near the current Coliseum location that would have cleaned up a blighted area, spurred much-needed economic activity and helped relieve the city and county's financial burden.

Wolff's final quote has me searching for a shrugged shoulder emoticon:

"I've been so pleased with my first year, with the fan base and the employees, that my decision is that if it's humanly possible, I want to stay in Alameda County," he said. "If someone doesn't believe that or sees it as treachery, well, what can I do about it?"

In light of this response, I'm not sure he'll now elicit more understanding or more venom. Only hindsight will provide any real clarity.

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Chron's Matier & Ross throw a log on the premature funeral pyre at the end of their column today with a short chronology of recent Oakland tribulations.

To those that think Oakland is going to somehow come up with an 11th hour proposal, consider that the three of the most prominent pols that can positively influence the process are all vying for the mayoral job. They're all differentiating themselves and are rallying support. Who among De La Fuente, Nadel, and Dellums is going to risk adding the A's as a platform item? They're talking about a state of emergency in the city and a teacher strike. All things considered, focusing on the A's seems a bit trite.

SJ Water Company lot to Adobe?

In December I posted a chronology of events that have occurred in San Jose over the past year related to various developers and landowners who have property near the Diridon South site. One of the more important developments was the decision of San Jose Water Company to sell its downtown lots. A parcel on the 8-acre SJWC property may finally have a buyer. The Merc reported today that Adobe is interested in buying the eastern 5-acre parcel, for which there are entitlements for up to 1 million square feet of office space. Adobe would build a fourth tower to complement the three-tower complex Adobe currently occupies on the other side of Guadalupe Parkway (CA-87). The location would make the new tower smack dab in the center field view, with the other three towers in the right field view. Adobe would get so much free publicity from having those sites visible from the ballpark that they wouldn't have to bother with naming rights since having the buildings in plain view would be much more cost-effective for them.

The article didn't reveal any potential buyers for the 2.5-acre parcel to the west of the Adobe-coveted site. That site is zoned for 325 housing units and up to 15,000 square feet of retail. It'll be interesting to see who ends up with that parcel, since those entitlements could be key for a San Jose financing plan. To see how close it is, take a look at this map link. The residential parcel is the triangle defined by Delmas Ave to the east, Los Gatos Creek to the west, and light rail/W San Fernando St to the south. It's only a few hundred feet northeast of Diridon South.

The San Jose Sharks may have a say in the end about how the parcels are developed. The team has an agreement with the City of San Jose to have a minimum inventory of parking available for all events. If the property were to be developed without replacing parking the inventory would be reduced by 855 spaces, which is nothing to sneeze at since the lots get heavy use for all heavily attended HP Pavilion events.

Oakland: A's not a priority, Wolff: Oakland isn't either

UPDATE: Trib columnist Art Spander fired off an angry column this morning in response to the news.

Out of today's Tribune comes the following quote from Lew Wolff:

"We've spent most of our time focused on Oakland; now the next goal is to stay in Alameda County," he said. "We haven't ruled out any place, but Oakland is difficult because it has lots of priorities that are very important to the community beyond sports."

Oakland officials were apparently taken by surprise (italics are my emphasis):

"He has not told us anything like that," said Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente. "Until we are told something different, we are going to continue working. But Mr. Wolff is right, we have many other things on the front plate."

Among those are a rising crime rate, beleaguered public schools and a hot mayoral race in which De La Fuente, the city's lead negotiator in the baseball talks, is a candidate.

"It is very difficult. With all these campaigns going on, our plates are so full," said Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele, a member of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority.

There had been whispers that the A's haven't been a priority for Oakland pols, but this confirms it. It's hard to see a set of conditions under which the A's can stay in Oakland unless all other local alternatives fall apart, leaving the two parties to start from scratch. Perhaps it comes from a collective distrust of Wolff, but if it is, no one has said anything publicly about it.

SJ Ballpark Study Session (3/1)

While I was travelling a few weeks ago, I completely missed out on a ballpark study session given for the San Jose City Council on March 1. Previously it was reported at this session that the EIR commenting period would have to be moved out a couple of weeks, but there was more to the session than that. Consultant HOK+Sport was on hand to present the details of their study. Even though the minutes were short, the session provided clarification on a few matters of debate. Excerpted from the Q&A discussion:

8. So we finish the EIR in June, what are possible next steps? Do we build a stadium for the Oakland A’ (sic) and they will come?
No, a development agreement with the A’s would be necessary. The San Francisco Giants territory would have to be resolved. Any team agreement would have to be approved by the major league team owners and the Commissioner of Baseball.
9. Why do we need to go to the voters? What percentage of the vote do we need to move forward?
The Municipal Code provides that the City may use tax dollars to participate in the building of any sports facility with a seating capacity of greater 5,000 only after obtaining approval of the majority of voters. If, however, the proposed source of the public funds is a special tax, a two thirds vote would be required for the tax.
10. OK, so you need a franchise and a developer. What might they bring to the negotiation table?
There is a broad range of possibilities under a development agreement. A developer could add a range of possibilities including development of adjacent properties (assuming they have site control) including residential, commercial and hotel development. They could also bring financing in the form of equity or debt to the project.

There are a total three files to check out: the agenda (posted prior to the session), a study update (also posted prior to the session), and the aforementioned Q&A notes. You can also view the session on the city's website. Take a look at list of archived meetings, then find the one titled "SJRA Ballpark Study Session." Considering the 9 a.m. timing of the session, it wasn't surprising to see the tiny smattering of attendees aside from the city council and presenters.

Some interesting nuggets culled from the session:

• Excavating the site to have a below-grade field is considered the main option in order to reduce height.
  
• The PG&E substation may not have to be moved, but if it isn't the ballpark design would be constrained. One option under consideration pushes the ballpark towards the northeast corner of the site and preserves the substation.
  
• Council member Ken Yeager asked for an example of a similar ballpark/existing neighborhood development. HOK couldn't cite a recent development that closely resembled the Diridon/Arena/Delmas Park situation. Camden Yards was the only one with a neighborhood close by.
• Council member Chuck Reed asked for a clarification on the legality of the pursuit of a ballpark. City attorney Rick Doyle addressed this previously in a memo, which he paraphrased during the session by saying that the money spent on the preliminary study and EIR process is required to get to the point of being able to present something to the voters. Reed expressed concern about the lack of a financing plan and asked "somebody, and it's not gonna be someone at this dais" to scope out the scheme. He then brought up the Baseball San Jose group and found County Assessor Larry Stone, who is a BBSJ leader, in the audience.
• Council member Forrest Williams asked about territorial rights, since he has received numerous questions from his constituents. Economic Development Director Paul Krutko cited the need for a partnership with a team. Krutko also incorrectly cited the DC-Baltimore situation, which is not the same because the Orioles had TV market rights to DC, not exclusive stadium territorial rights. Mayor Gonzales then pointed out that the Arena was built on spec, which isn't realistic now or in the future regarding a baseball stadium. Williams followed up by saying that he's been echoing many of the same statements, but that the public is looking for something more solid, more substantial. Williams asked about an optimal size, and one of the HOK presenters noted that Coors Field was built too large (50,000) because the public was caught up in getting a team. Once the novelty of having a team and a new ballpark wore off, the Colorado Rockies, mired in a lack of on-field success, has had difficulty selling out the stadium.
• Vice-Mayor Cindy Chavez wanted information on surrounding development and economic impact. Redevelopment head Harry Mavrogenes talked about development in the area between HP Pavilion and the ballpark site. Recently the Planning department submitted design guidelines for this area and other transit-close areas in and near downtown. Diridon/Arena, including Diridon South, is part of this newly expanded downtown area.
  
• Council member Nanci Pyle brought up the concept of soccer as an alternative, a dual-use stadium, or a dual-stadia concept. HOK replied that dual-use stadium would be an option should the substation be moved to the south end of the fire training site.
  
• Council member Dave Cortese brought up the idea of pushing the A's to make a decision. He also promoted a separate socioeconomic study, focused on the impact on the immediate area and surrounding neighborhoods, with research done on other cities who have done similar urban stadium projects. Cortese finished up by posing the issue of financing not as a future bridge to cross when a team comes, but as an issue that needs to be proactively addressed to avoid missing opportunities should they arise. He also called for laying out a detailed, real timeline that the public can view and assess. Mavrogenes replied that the timeline could be produced in the next 30-45 days. I'm looking forward to a non-fluff economic report, if they really have the cajones to commission one.
• Representatives from Ballpark Tax Watchdogs, the Shasta/Hanchett Park Neighborhood Association (west of site) and the Burbank/Del Monte Neighborhood Advisory Committee (southwest of site) spoke during the public comment period. Word of advice to Ballpark Tax Watchdogs: if you're going to arm yourself with information, don't just refer to a book that's almost a decade old, especially when the plea's bound to fall on deaf ears (namely the Mayor's). Instead, check out the Field of Schemes website or an article published today in the Boston Globe. They're a little more up-to-date. S/HNPA and BDMNAC expressed their disgust over the lack of disclosure regarding the ballpark process and plans. Their outrage appears to have brought results, since the EIR commenting period was extended to April 20 and four public outreach meetings were scheduled shortly thereafter.
  

I was surprised at the lack of certainty within the city council. It wasn't just about the EIR - there was no real consensus on how San Jose should proceed. Cortese was right in calling the situation a Catch-22. It made the most sense to push the process out not just to accommodate a more comprehensive review of the EIR, but to allow the numerous variables in the situation to settle. If the A's really do move to San Jose, it will be a result of equal parts hard work and serendipity.

P.S. Read that Boston Globe article (registration required) I cited earlier if you get the chance. It's the most well-balanced treatment of the subject matter I've seen, perhaps, ever.

Scarcity (AP/SI.com)

An AP article I found on SI.com broadly covers the trend towards smaller stadia. The A's are mentioned first. Towards the end is an admission by A's officials that season ticket sales have increased "from 7,000 last year to about 8,000 so far this season." I'm assuming that's counting full season ticket packages or their equivalent, combined partial packages.

More DC Ballpark Images

The many-hatted Maury Brown got an interview with HOK Sport principal Earl Santee. The interview's not up yet, but in the interim Santee provided Brown with more drawings of the Nats' next home. The one I was most interested in was a cross-section, just to see how it compared with drawings I've worked up.

I properly scaled and overlaid one of my own cross-section images and here's what I got:



The DC cross-section is somewhat faded in the background for better contrast. Look at how high it is. The lights on my concept are lower than the middle row in the upper deck. My top row is only 83' above the field compared to 115' in DC. I'm no architect, but I have an understanding of space and sight lines, and the DC design would be offensive to me if I didn't already know that the extra height is a necessity borne of the premium facilities the building will contain. I also acknowledge that at 41,000 seats, it's a full 6,000 more than what I've put together, but it wouldn't be too hard to add a few thousand in the outfield or on a temporary basis within the seating bowl since there's plenty of space to do so.

The $611 million, triple-deck ballpark will actually have six circulation levels (not seating levels) whereas mine has four (four-and-one-half, really). That's a lot of extra concrete and steel. Building some 30-40 feet higher will necessitate more hefty structural work. Since the DC ballpark will have 78 luxury suites on two separate, unconnected levels, there will be additional costs associated with added concourse and lobby space. Like China Basin, there will be two club areas: one at field level behind the plate and another taking up the entire mezzanine. Extra amenities like the "innovative" conference center and the more familiar centerfield restaurant will both be decked out appropriately for both gameday and non-gameday use (think maple tables and cabinets).

The sad part of this is that it doesn't appear that there are many places to cut costs unless quality is sacrificed. The decision to use glass and limestone-colored concrete instead of glass and limestone is an indicator of this. The lack of escalators to the upper deck is another. The District will absorb the vast majority of the bill, and unless they can figure a way to make a private group (such as the team) pay for underground parking, there's a good chance that costs will only increase over time.

Key Upcoming Dates

The next two weeks are going to be very interesting. Not just because of the prospects of a new season, but because Lew Wolff is set to make some sort of announcement around Opening Day about the ballpark effort. Beyond that, there are other key dates of which to make note, because they could have a definite impact on how each city moves forward.

• April 3 - Opening Day is the "deadline" Wolff imposed last year. After this date, it is presumed that Wolff will formally expand discussions with other cities. Since Fremont is already in some talks with the A's, it could be said that Wolff is already ignoring his own deadline. Then again, he made the rules, no? The intrigue lies in how far the search will be expanded. Will it still be confined to Alameda County? What about Contra Costa County? And what of Santa Clara County, which seems to be putting a lot of pieces in place? Sacramento? Portland? Vegas? Will Wolff make a definite statement about the A's future in Oakland? Will he impose another deadline?
• Spring '06 - Fremont's initial study should be available, as well as more advocacy-based information from Fremont.
• May 4 - San Jose Ballpark EIR review and comment period ends. Community outreach meetings are scheduled for March 28 @ 7 pm, April 1 @ 10 am, April 19 @ 7 pm, and April 26 @ 6 pm. The first three are in SJ City Hall Council Chambers, the last meeting will be in City Hall room 1446. I'll probably be at most of them.
  
• June 6 - Statewide primary elections. Mayoral offices in both Oakland and San Francisco will be up for grabs. Oakland has three candidates, San Jose has ten (!). Should either election result in a majority winner, there will be a run-off on November 7. Note: I plan to attend at least two San Jose and two Oakland debates.
• July 12 - SJ Planning Commision public hearing to consider certification of Ballpark EIR. Previously submitted comments will be made available for review 10 days prior to the hearing.
• September 30 - End of regular season.
• November 1 - Estimated end of the season including postseason.
• November 7 - General Election, including run-offs for Oakland/SJ mayors if necessary. SJ's ballpark ballot measure will not be on this ballot.
• January 15, 2007 - Estimated end of one year deadline made by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman over the availability of Union Park ballpark parcel.

You're probably wondering why the Fremont information is so vague. There's an effort to respect the delicacy of the ongoing discussions. That's all I can say about that for now.

Note: there was a problem with the previous version of this post as it caused errors in the publishing engine. Comments were lost.