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Post by mikecubs on Sept 1, 2018 6:30:55 GMT -6
Legislature passes bill to help Oakland A’s streamline construction of a Howard Terminal stadiumThe Legislature approved a bill that would help streamline the constuction of a ballpark for the Oakland Athletics at the Howard Terminal site at the Port of Oakland. AB734 requires that any complaints about the project at that site be resolved within 270 days[/u][/b], although the team has not settled on whether it will build there or at the Coliseum site where it currently plays. It was less important, the team said, for the Coliseum site to be the recipient of judicial streamlining because the land has already undergone an extensive environmental review process and is therefore less susceptible to legal challenges. Under the legislation, the stadium and adjacent buildings at the Howard site must adhere to a host of environmental standards, such as maintaining net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and boosting the number of fans who travel to games by public transit. The Senate approved the bill 33-0. The Assembly passed it 60-2. A’s President Dave Kaval said the legislation “ensures we can stay on track” to complete ballpark construction by 2023.“This is the key piece,” he said. “It’s really critical for having a project that meets its dates and opens on time.” The team is studying the Howard Terminal site and its current Coliseum home as potential places to build a new ballpark. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said negotiations with the A’s to come up with deals for both sites are ongoing. Team executives, alongside city, county and port employees, are hashing out financial terms, transportation plans, community benefits agreements and projects to build affordable housing next to the future stadium, among other issues. The Coliseum land is jointly owned and overseen by Oakland and Alameda County. The Port of Oakland is the steward of Howard Terminal. “Both sites are still in play from my perspective,” Schaaf said. “We want to keep our options open for the A’s.” A ballpark at Howard Terminal would still have to go through the full environmental impact review under the California Environmental Quality Act. But complaints stemming from such a review that might otherwise stall the project will now have to be adjudicated within the 270-day time frame. Kaval called it a “very reasonable request.”Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, who introduced the bill, said it guarantees the ballpark’s environmental requirements go “above and beyond” any other recent stadium project in California. “We want the Oakland A’s to stay in Oakland,” Bonta said. “We want them to build their long-term home here.” www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Legislature-passes-bill-to-help-Oakland-A-s-13198503.php
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 1, 2018 6:38:00 GMT -6
In the NBA the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors got help like this for their new arenas.
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 3, 2018 23:37:46 GMT -6
Eastshore Empire @eastshoreempire Well this is newsworthy: it looks like the Oakland A's are in the process of purchasing 10 Clay Street, basically the closest building to Howard Terminal.
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 3, 2018 23:41:07 GMT -6
OaklandStadiumWatch @oakstadiumwatch Sep 1 More ✔️ A's win ✔️ Mariners lose ✔️ Astros lose ✔️ Howard Terminal ballpark bill passes Legislature ✔️ News that A's are starting to buy up Jack London Square real estate
A pretty solid Friday night for #RootedinOakland folks
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 3, 2018 23:42:46 GMT -6
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 4, 2018 17:01:46 GMT -6
Kimberly Veklerov @kveklerov 35m35 minutes ago More What will A's do with 10 Clay Street, by Howard Terminal, if lease gets @portofoakland approval next week? Retail space or ballpark exhibit probably, team says.
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 7, 2018 20:46:14 GMT -6
New Alameda park planned along Oakland EstuaryA new park along the Oakland Estuary would sit across from where the Oakland A’s might have a future ballpark — and under a possible pedestrian and bicycle bridge that would span the waterway, helping fans get to a game.The future park at Fifth and Bette streets would feature a plaza and promenade, as well as a kayak launch and a water taxi landing just 1,000 feet from the public dock at Oakland’s Jack London Square.
On Monday, Alameda’s planning board will consider a plan for developing the 4.5-acre site and its design. If the board approves the project, the park will go before the City Council, though no date for that has been set. The upcoming meeting follows Port of Oakland commissioners approving a one-year agreement in April for exclusive negotiations with the A’s to locate a ballpark at the port’s Howard Terminal. The terminal is directly across from where the Alameda park is proposed. The terminal, just northwest of Jack London Square, is one of two sites the A’s are looking at for a ballpark. The other is the team’s current home at the Oakland Coliseum. The Alameda park is being developed as part of Alameda Landing, a mixed-used project in the city’s west end that includes a shopping center with Target and In-N-Out near the Posey and Webster tubes that connect the Island with Oakland. “I would support anything that makes traffic a little less in the Bay Area,” said Angie Jewell, 44, of Oakland, as she exited the Target store. “Water taxis? That can be pretty cool.” Ethan Starkey, 23, who moved to Alameda just last month from San Francisco, was intrigued by the possible proximity of the Alameda park with a professional ballpark. “Will you be able to be on a boat or kayak and watch a game?” Starkey said. “Maybe balls from home runs will end up in the water.” That would turn the stretch of estuary into another spot similar to McCovey Cove, the spot in San Francisco Bay where baseball fans gather in boats, hoping to catch balls that overshoot AT&T Park during San Francisco Giants games. Currently, the vacant site has a run-down concrete wharf and is overgrown with weeds. A warehouse for boats, docks for the Commodore fleet and the Cardinal Point retirement home are nearby. The site was once part of the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Industrial Supply Center, which served the now-shuttered Alameda Naval Air Station. The future park’s promenade would include an 18-foot-wide path that would be a segment of the Bay Trail, and the park would have a pergola, benches and a climbing structure for kids.
The park is part of an overall project — which the Catellus Development Corporation is behind — that calls for up to 400 apartments and condominiums on 15 acres, as well as at least 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.Just the waterfront plaza and park will be before the planning board on Monday. As part of its deal with the city, Catellus must build the park before the future residences, or at least build it concurrent with completing the homes and retail space. The park would be “a major new public asset for the benefit of the Alameda community,” Andrew Thomas, the city’s assistant community development director, wrote in a staff report. Although not proposed as part of the park, the city is exploring a possible bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the estuary that would connect the neighborhood with the Oakland shoreline. No estimate on what the bridge might cost was available. The bridge would be about 18 feet wide and would begin at Mitchell Avenue near Fifth Street, and cross over the park as it spanned the estuary. When the bridge crosses the park, it would be up to 35 feet high. It would eventually descend to a landing between the Oakland Ferry Terminal and the foot of Broadway, according to the city. Among those working with the city on the possible bridge is Bike Walk Alameda and the Port of Oakland. The planning board will meet at 7 p.m. Monday at Alameda City Hall, 2263 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/09/06/new-alameda-park-planned-along-oakland-estuary/
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 19, 2018 7:11:47 GMT -6
MLBcathedrals #Athletics new ballpark (if Howard Terminal location) will, per sources, likely:
* Be an intimate two deck park
* Be closest to JLS side of HT
* Face SE w/ views of Estuary and JLS
* Integrate existing 213’ tall shipping cranes
* repurpose historic power plant building
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Post by mikecubs on Sept 19, 2018 7:12:24 GMT -6
Facing southeast is HUGE because you get to incorporate the crains!!!!! Keep in mind Fenway Parks green monster is 37 feet and that dominates the park. The crains will really dominate at 213 feet Here is the view it will face. Also some cool drone footage of the crains and Jack London Square Another pic giving an idea of where the park will be located in Oakland
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Post by mikecubs on Oct 4, 2018 15:25:30 GMT -6
Oakland A's On Track To Announce New Ballpark Deal By Year's End, Club President SaysThe Oakland A’s have come off an extraordinary and unexpected 97-win season, which ended with Wednesday’s loss to the New York Yankees in the American League wild-card game at Yankee Stadium. But the best may still be to come. The A’s are on track to announce a tentative deal to build a new ballpark by the end of the year, Dave Kaval, the club’s president, told Boomskie on Baseball, with a solid projection to open by 2023. Though the A’s are currently still analyzing two sites, the preferred destination seems to be Howard Terminal on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay near Jack London Square.
“It could be an extraordinary location for a ballpark,” Kaval said.
Revenue is up as the A’s have enhanced the fan experience at the 50-year-old Oakland Coliseum. So is attendance, from 1,475,721 in 2017 to 1,573,616, but it still ranks just 26th among the 30 major league teams. A marked uptick at the gate, though, usually happens a year after unexpected success on the field, particularly if that competitive success is sustained. “We’ve already had a lot of success bringing in sponsorships and monetizing what the team has done on the field, which is great,” Kaval said. “We’ve already seen more success at the gate for next year with our season-ticket base and our A’s access plan. It’s up hundreds of percent. It’s really amazing.”The A’s are seeking to privately fund the building of a 34,000-seat ballpark with some public assistance for infrastructure costs, pretty typical now for private-public partnerships on arenas and stadiums. The cost has been estimated as high as $700 million. The Coliseum land is the alternative to building at Howard Terminal, which has huge cleanup and transportation issues but can serve as a 24/7 hub for business around the ballpark. The A’s already have a problem visualizing and projecting that kind of environment in the area around the current ballpark, which has better parking and access to mass transportation. The A’s already moved their offices earlier this year from the Coliseum to Jack London Square. “It’s still something we’re highly considering,” Kaval said. “Until you get that [Howard Terminal] deal you have to keep your options open, so we can have a deal in Oakland that can work.” This, though, is the way Kaval envisions it happening at the Howard Terminal site: “By the end of year, we’re looking to have an economic deal, finalize our economic deal with the city, county and port. There are a lot of things that have to happen even after that, but at least that gives you a course. It’s very realistic. There are things that can still get in the way, but we have to push down hurdles and move toward that.”A big hurdle, Kaval said, was the signing of a bill – AB734 – by outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown that limits the time of legal exposure for the A’s dealing with any lawsuit that might arise out of environmental studies and issues at the Howard Terminal site.[/b] Any legal complaint would have to be resolved in 270 days from the lower courts up to the California Supreme Court. The California Senate passed the bill, 33-0, and the State Assembly added its approval, 60-2. “ That’s a big deal,” Kaval said. “The Warriors had that in the building of their new arena in San Francisco; the Kings had that doing the same thing in Sacramento. It’s so important to the timeline. Without that, it’s almost impossible in California to build.”The NBA's Warriors are on schedule to open the $1 billion Chase Center just south of AT&T Park in San Francisco next season. The Kings opened the $558 million Golden One Center in downtown Sacramento on Sept. 30, 2016. In contrast, baseball’s San Diego Padres didn’t have that sort of legal exemption when Petco Park was built in the late 1990s. A series of lawsuits set the project back by several years. Even though voters passed a ballot measure approving the ballpark in 1998, it didn’t open until 2004. Construction and the bond-funding mechanism had to be stopped for a time while 16 individual lawsuits wound their way through the system. All of them eventually lost. “A lot of the teams subsequently pushed to pass this kind of legislation because of what happened to the Padres,” Kaval said. “The fact that we have that, the support of the state legislature, the support of Governor Brown and our local elected leaders, is very important. “That’s a big step because it means we can start the CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] process on Howard Terminal now that we have that done. And that takes 12-14 months. And we’d be in a position where we could break ground by early 2021, late 2020, take two years to build the stadium, and have this done by 2023.”Time is now of the essence for the A’s, who are slowly losing access to MLB’s revenue sharing funds. As a top 10 market team, those funds will disappear after the 2021 season, the final year of baseball’s current labor agreement with the players. They have been exempt from that top 10 exclusion as they've tried to build a new ballpark. The A’s have been in a quest to build a new ballpark since John Fisher bought the franchise in 2005 from Steve Schott and Ken Hoffman. So far, projects have failed to materialize in nearby Fremont, San Jose and at Laney College in downtown Oakland, where a deal fell apart late last year. It took the Giants 20 years and four referendums to build a new ballpark in San Francisco to replace the windy and aging Candlestick Park. Their current ballpark opened in 2000. The A’s are in good financial condition. They closed the season with a $66 million player payroll and only $13.8 million in contracts committed for 2019. “This good, young team we’ve put together is one that can blossom in this new ballpark,” Kaval said. “It’s important to know when you look at these players, their arbitration years, when they become free agents, how we have this critical life cycle. And we can bridge to a new ballpark with a much higher payroll. That’s very, very important.” www.forbes.com/sites/barrymbloom/2018/10/04/oakland-as-still-primed-to-move-into-new-ballpark-by-2023-club-president-says/#10c59e3a7a8e
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Post by mikecubs on Oct 10, 2018 5:17:35 GMT -6
Richard Ignacio @raidernacho @davekaval Hi Dave! Not sure if this has been asked but any thought on transplanting an oak tree(s) worthy to be placed at the new ballpark?
@davekaval 17h17 hours ago More Dave Kaval Retweeted Richard Ignacio Yes. We are looking at placing a large Oak tree in the site plan. 🌳 Several folks in the community have made this great suggestion. #rootedinoakland
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Post by mikecubs on Oct 10, 2018 5:18:22 GMT -6
This is a great idea given that Oakland is named after oak trees and the city flag has an oak tree on it.
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Post by mikecubs on Oct 11, 2018 18:06:01 GMT -6
Dave Kaval Verified account @davekaval Great two hour weekly meeting with City of Oakland planning on the ballpark! Making solid progress. On track for 2023. #RootedInOakland 0 replies 0 retweets 14 likes Reply Retweet
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Post by mikecubs on Oct 24, 2018 6:22:18 GMT -6
Sunset at Howard Terminal
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Post by mikecubs on Nov 28, 2018 12:22:07 GMT -6
A’s Propose Howard Terminal Ballpark, Coliseum RedevelopmentThe Oakland A’s are proposing construction of a new ballpark at the waterfront Howard Terminal site, part of a larger initiative that includes redevelopment of the Oakland Coliseum property. The new Howard Terminal ballpark would be a fairly intimate facility, calling for a seating capacity of 34,000. It would be surrounded by a series of high rises, as well as a rooftop public park. In an attempt to offset some access concerns that have long surrounded the industrial Howard Terminal property, the A’s proposal also calls for an aerial gondola that would lift fans over railroad tracks and Interstate 880 from downtown Oakland.For the Howard Terminal property, the A’s are expected to launch a yearlong environmental review process. Building at the site would also require an agreement with the Port of Oakland, the property’s owner, and the team will have to secure either a purchase option or long-term lease by April in order to avoid losing a $100,000 deposit. The Howard Terminal ballpark is one part of a larger proposal that would also see the A’s take control of and redevelop the 111-acre Coliseum site. One of the highlights of that component of the project are plans for the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum itself, which would be converted into a small sports park/amphitheater (as shown in the rendering above). Surrounding land would be redeveloped to include housing, a tech hub, a youth sports complex, retail, and light manufacturing. In addition, the A’s propose leaving the adjacent Oracle Arena open for concerts, sporting events, and other gatherings. Oracle Arena is currently home to the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, but the Warriors are set to move to a new venue in San Francisco at the start of the 2019-20 season. In pitching this plan, the A’s believe that a new Howard Terminal ballpark can provide the substantial boost that the franchise needs in terms of attendance and revenue. However, adding the Coliseum redevelopment concept to the mix would make a privately financed ballpark more viable while allowing the A’s to extend community benefits to the area surrounding the Coliseum. More from the San Francisco Chronicle: “This is a big vision for our city,” A’s President Dave Kaval said. Kaval said the A’s call for control of both the 55-acre Howard Terminal waterfront site and 111-acre Coliseum site in East Oakland is essential if the team is to deliver on its promise of a “100 percent privately built ballpark.” The A’s see a downtown ballpark location as the only viable option to excite fans, and generate new ticket sales and revenue needed to make the deal pencil out. The A’s have been searching for years to replace the Coliseum, and this is the most tangible plan to surface a previous proposal to build at a site near Oakland’s Laney College stalled late last year. Still, there will be several hurdles to clear before this proposal can move forward. Along with an environmental review of the Howard Terminal site, the A’s will also need to gain control of that land and bring a successful conclusion to negotiations for the Coliseum property. While it is anticipated that the new ballpark itself will be privately financed, the project is expected to call for public funding for infrastructure upgrades at both Howard Terminal and Coliseum sites, but the exact public contribution is unknown at this point.ballparkdigest.com/2018/11/28/as-propose-howard-terminal-ballpark-coliseum-redevelopment/
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