Oakland A's/Tampa Rays stadium news

[mikecubs]

A new thread for A's/Rays ballpark news.

[mikecubs]

On September 13th the A's announced Laney College as their preference for a new ballpark site

A’s want to build new ballpark next to Laney College in Oakland


The Oakland A’s have settled on land near Laney College as their preferred spot for a 35,000-seat, privately financed ballpark to replace the Coliseum, team officials said Tuesday.
“Finally, we’ve got our site,” team President Dave Kaval said of the 13-acre location near downtown, which the A’s selected after also considering the Oakland Coliseum site and land on the waterfront northwest of Jack London Square. “It’s really the strongest location when it comes to private financing, and that’s really an important component to be successful.”
The A’s hope to play their first game at their $500 million-plus ballpark in 2023. But there’s a lot that has to happen first — starting with cutting a deal with the Peralta Community College District, which owns the site and has its headquarters there.
Kaval made the A’s intentions official in a letter he delivered Tuesday night to Peralta district Chancellor Jowel Laguerre, asking to begin negotiations to buy or lease the land.

“We firmly believe that the Peralta site represents the best opportunity to keep Oakland’s last professional sports team in Oakland for the long term,” Kaval wrote. He said that after nearly 50 years of playing at the Coliseum, “the A’s need a modern venue so that we can put the most competitive product on the field and provide the best experience for our fans.”
The site has several features the A’s made clear were a priority in their hunt for a new stadium location. It’s right off Interstate 880, although providing vehicle access will require millions of dollars worth of new freeway ramps. It’s also close to BART — the Lake Merritt Station is a nine-minute walk to the north — and it’s on the edge of downtown.

To try to win over the Peralta district’s Board of Trustees, the A’s are proposing to construct housing and commercial space on an 8-acre Laney parking lot just north of the site — a spot now known for its Sunday morning flea market — and funnel revenue from it to Laney. The A’s would also help build a garage there with the idea of boosting the college’s overall parking capacity.

“We believe there are opportunities for mixed-use development ... that could generate significant long-term revenue to support the college’s educational mission, and deliver a valuable and comprehensive community benefits package,” Kaval said in his letter.

As for the Coliseum, which would have no professional sports tenants with the expected departure of the Raiders for Las Vegas, the A’s plan to pitch Oakland and Alameda County on the idea of turning the site into a community sports park and urban youth baseball academy in partnership with Major League Baseball. Kaval said the sports park would be “an anchor project to entice additional redevelopment, including significant commercial and residential uses” on the property.
Any deal there would require the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum Authority’s approval.

As for the ballpark project, the A’s expect to spend the next nine months to a year negotiating with the college district — a deal that, among other things, requires finding 50,000 square feet of space for Peralta’s new headquarters. The A’s would be on the hook to find the space and pay for it.
If that agreement can be worked out, the A’s expect to spend another 18 months completing an environmental impact report, followed by several months securing all the necessary city permits. Under the most optimistic projections, construction would begin in 2021, and the ballpark would open two years later.

The Laney site wasn’t the favorite among some important constituencies. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf had pushed for the waterfront site, at a shipping facility known as Howard Terminal, and Peralta’s Laguerre had expressed reservations about building a ballpark so close to Laney. Both, however, are open to the A’s plan.

For Schaaf, who is facing the near-certain departure of both the Raiders to Nevada and the Warriors to San Francisco, keeping the A’s has become a major priority. She declined comment ahead of the A’s official announcement, but was expected to lend her support to the Peralta plan.

As for the community college district, Laguerre said in an interview that “this could be a possibility for us.” He cited the chance to collaborate with the A’s on job training and internships for Peralta students and raise money for Laney, which has several buildings in need of repair.

“We need a steady source of revenue to help us maintain, and the best place we can do that is through our real estate,” Laguerre told us.
The district’s nine-member elected board would need to approve the deal. Already, some Laney College faculty and activists in the nearby Chinatown and Eastlake neighborhoods are sounding the alarm over increased traffic and noise, as well as the possible gentrification of an area populated by many immigrant-run businesses.

More than a dozen speakers lined up Tuesday night at the board meeting, largely to oppose the plan.
“The biggest fear is that Chinatown and Eastlake are going to disappear,” said Alvina Wong of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, representing low-income residents.
Evelyn Lord, Laney’s head librarian, predicted a fight: “The big concern is the effect of a sports stadium on the educational environment — the noise, traffic, parking, lights, and people drinking and streaming through.”
There are other obstacles in front of the A’s. Although they plan to privately finance the ballpark’s construction, the A’s will need support from the Oakland City Council to come up with what outside experts say could be hundreds of millions of dollars in federal, state and local funding for new freeway ramps, improvements to the Oakland estuary shoreline and other infrastructure upgrades.

The A’s are also going to have to negotiate with BART, which owns maintenance facilities just south of the proposed ballpark site, for possible additional land to put parking.
The other proposed sites, however, had even bigger problems.
Schaaf had been joined by a group of Oakland boosters led by attorney Doug Boxer, the son of former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, in promoting Howard Terminal, hoping to transform the city’s northern waterfront and boost the struggling Jack London Square. But the site has no BART access and is separated from downtown by railroad tracks that serve as the main line for Amtrak and freight trains. There’s also a power plant next door that would have to be moved.

Building on the waterfront would also require approval from various state agencies — a regulatory gantlet that forced the Warriors to abandon their plan for an arena on San Francisco’s Piers 30-32 and build in Mission Bay instead.
The A’s also had studies done that showed the weather is considerably warmer near Laney than at Howard Terminal.
As for rebuilding at the Coliseum?
According to City Hall sources, the A’s concluded that they couldn’t generate enough ticket sales and corporate support to make a privately financed ballpark at the East Oakland location pencil out.
Kaval, the team president, would say only that the Peralta site was “the strongest candidate” from a financial standpoint, based on likely ticket sales, naming rights and other advertising opportunities.
He noted that he conducted a months-long “listening tour,” during which he heard from more than 800 residents, business owners, politicians, labor officials and community representatives, as well as Laney faculty and staff.

“The feedback we received was passionate and diverse,” Kaval said.
That passion is a big reason the team is moving cautiously to avoid any appearance of steamrolling the community. In his letter, Kaval urged the City Council to adopt “immediate interim land use controls and other policy measures ... to protect against displacement and speculation in the short term” in Chinatown and Eastlake.
City Council President Larry Reid told us he has reservations about parts of the plan. For example, he said, he isn’t ready to bless the team’s proposal for a sports park and urban youth baseball academy at the Coliseum site.

Reid, who is also a member of the Coliseum Authority and whose council district includes the A’s current home, said he’s not convinced it’s “the highest and best use” for the area, and that he would prefer something that really “benefits the community — that creates jobs.”
He said the Coliseum Authority should instead seek proposals for the 130 acres from competing bidders and pick the best offer.
But he said he supports the team “going wherever they want to go — as long as they stay in the city of Oakland.”

www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-s-want-to-build-new-ballpark-next-to-Laney-12193239.php

[mikecubs]

1.Pics of the A's proposed site





It will have a view of the city of Oakland skyline if left field, Lake Merrit in centerfield and the Oakland foothills in right field


2. The Rays ballpark site(I can't find any great aerial pics yet)





^^^ This is a great map showing how close to downtown Tampa it is

[mikecubs]

A’s score an F at Laney College with ballpark plan

The governing board of the community college that owns land on which the Oakland A’s want to build a new ballpark ordered the chancellor to stop plans with the team.
The move caught the A’s by surprise. For the last year, team leaders have been talking to neighborhood, business and religious groups in the area, hoping to begin a community-benefits plan on their way to building a ballpark that could open by 2023.

“We are shocked by Peralta’s decision to not move forward,” the A’s said in a statement Wednesday morning. “All we wanted to do was enter into a conversation about how to make this work for all of Oakland, Laney, and the Peralta Community College District. We are disappointed that we will not have that opportunity.”
At a closed-session meeting Tuesday, the board of trustees of the Peralta Community College District — whose offices stand where the ballpark would go — directed Chancellor Jowel Laguerre to discontinue “community engagement” talks with the team and to instead focus on what’s best for the college and its students and faculty.

A short agenda posted Monday night about the meeting said its purpose was to follow up on a letter sent from the team and to evaluate the terms and price of a possible land sale.
The A’s announced a 15-acre property near Laney College as their preferred site for a new ballpark in September and recently named a design team.
But the plan has faced steep opposition from some community groups and Laney College students and teachers. Counsel for the Peralta Federation of Teachers Local 1603 and members of the Associated Students of Laney College both voted against the ballpark.

A’s President Dave Kaval had promised to work with students, teachers and residents on a community-benefits plan that would include workforce training, affordable housing and other deals. The team said the ballpark will be privately financed by its owners.

In a statement released Wednesday morning, Laguerre said: “The District will work with its students, faculty, staff, administrators and community to reimagine the District’s needs and assess the resources to meet them. We will develop a robust and inclusive engagement process to assess our needs and partnerships aligned with our mission. The Board of Trustees will continue due diligence in determining the costs and benefits of potential development.”

Chris Weidenbach, co-chair of the Laney College English Department, said if ballpark plans are indeed canceled, “We’re elated.”
“A ballpark would massively disrupt all of our lives and the educational mission of our college,” he said.
Near Lake Merritt and Interstate 880, the site on which the team wants to build a 35,000-seat ballpark is owned primarily by the Peralta Community College District. The city and Union Pacific Railroad own part of the land as well.

Oakland politicians gave only lukewarm support to the team’s preferred ballpark site. Mayor Libby Schaaf wanted it built at Howard Terminal along the Jack London Square waterfront. City Council President Larry Reid hoped it would stay at the Coliseum site in his East Oakland district — land that he and other advocates described as “shovel ready” because environmental-impact and other necessary plans were finalized several years ago.
On Wednesday, Schaaf reiterated her support for keeping the team in Oakland.

“Oakland remains fiercely determined to keep the A’s in Oakland,” Schaaf said in a statement. “It is unfortunate the discussion with Peralta ended so abruptly, yet we are committed, more than ever, to working with the A’s and our community to find the right spot in Oakland for a privately-financed ballpark.”

Kaval previously told The Chronicle there was no “plan B” if the ballpark site near Laney College didn’t work out.
Last week, at a meeting of the Coliseum Authority board, Reid said Kaval told him that privately financing a ballpark at the Coliseum site wouldn’t be feasible. The authority’s executive director, Scott McKibben, said Kaval told him that the team estimated $240 million in annual revenue if it stayed put, but $325 million if it moved downtown next to Laney College.

www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-s-score-an-F-at-Laney-College-with-ballpark-12382076.php?utm_campaign=sfgate&utm_source=article&utm_medium=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Fbayarea%2Farticle%2FCollege-board-orders-chancellor-to-halt-Laney-12409978.php

[mikecubs]

Stuart Sternberg: Tampa’s Ybor City is top choice for next Rays ballpark

The Tampa Bay Rays decided where its future lies, and it’s in Tampa.

Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg announced Friday that the team wants to build its next ballpark in Ybor City, the historic Latin neighborhood near downtown with baseball roots that go back a century.

If it comes to fruition — and it is still an "if" — within five years the Rays could leave St. Petersburg, the only home the team has known since its inaugural 1998 season.

"Ybor City is authentically Tampa Bay," Sternberg said at a news conference at the Tampa Baseball Museum. "It represents the finest opportunity for Major League Baseball to thrive in this region for generations to come.

"This," he said, "is where we want to be playing baseball."

The chosen site for a new ballpark is a plot of warehouses and parking lots just north of the Ybor Channel. The 14-acres there are close to the vibrant, if not unwieldy, nightlife along E Seventh Avenue as well as the city’s urban core and the burgeoning Water Street Tampa project.

The selection comes two years after St. Petersburg granted the team permission to look for a new home in the region. The Ybor location has been at the top of the team’s list for at least six months, Sternberg said.

In Ybor City, Rays chief development officer Melanie Lenz said she sees "the potential for one of the most incredible neighborhood ballparks in America."

• • •

The one-time cigar capital of the world was a beacon for Spanish, Cuban and Italian immigrants during the 20th century.

In recent years it has transformed into an eclectic community full of music, arts, bars, restaurants, coffee shops and a rush of new businesses and residents. Chickens roam the street by day; by night, it’s Tampa’s version of Bourbon Street.

It’s also the home of Al Lopez, Tampa’s first major league baseball player, and one of the only neighborhoods with architecture authentic to the city’s early days as a small port town.

A stadium there could also close the loop on the greater downtown area, connecting Ybor to the Channel District and the Riverwalk, which wraps around downtown, from Amalie Arena to Curtis Hixon Park to Ulele restaurant, back near the gates of Ybor.

"This is an urban fabric that doesn’t exist any other place," said Lenz, who is leading the team’s ballpark design efforts.

The area also has challenges.

Warehouses currently occupy that space. It is flanked to the west by an aging low-income housing complex called Tampa Park Apartments and the Selmon Expressway stands between the proposed site and views of the water. The nearby Ybor Channel is dotted with ship repair businesses. Blighted homes surround the neighborhood. Developments in downtown and Ybor have not yet stretched to that area. One of its closest neighbors is an Ikea. Another is a strip club.

But on Friday, as the Ybor roosters crowed and locals passed newly hung "Raybor City" signs, people could see the vision. After 30 years of failed attempts and balks, Tampa — the childhood home of Lou Pinella and Tony LaRussa, Wade Boggs and Fred McGriff — is the closet it has ever been to hosting a professional baseball team.

"Baseball is in our DNA," Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said.

• • •

So far, there have not been substantive negotiations on how to pay for a stadium that could cost more than $700 million. Sternberg said the team would contribute "a good amount of money" toward a financing agreement, but declined to offer specifics. He has floated $150 million in the past.

Buckhorn committed that "we’re not going to put the burden on the taxpayers." However, it could rely on growth in Ybor property tax collections spurred by the new ballpark.

Under the agreement with St. Petersburg, the Rays have until the end of the year to search for a new home. The Rays’ lease at Tropicana Field expires in 2027. If the Rays leave before the end of 2022, it owes the city $3 million a year for the remainder of the lease. After that, the fee drops to $2 million a year.

Local businessman Charles Sykes and lawyer Ron Christaldi unveiled another major piece of the financial equation Friday: A campaign to gin up corporate support for the team’s relocation. Dubbed "Tampa Bay Rays 2020," the goal is to guarantee sponsorships and ticket sales and convince MLB that a team can thrive here.

"St. Pete corporate support and ticket sales have lagged," said Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has spent years trying to orchestrate a Rays move to Tampa. "I’m confident that won’t happen here."

Columbia Restaurant owner Richard Gonzmart said he would back the Tampa Bay Rays 2020 effort with a commitment in the "seven digits." Another backer of the effort is Third Lake Capital, an investment fund and large Ybor City landowner run by the Wanek family, which owns Ashley Furniture, and Ken Jones, who served as president of the local host committee for the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Bringing the Rays to Ybor City, Jones said, would drive development throughout the historic district.

"We’re committed to this project in a very significant way," said Jones, the chairman and CEO of Third Lake Capital, though he declined to provide a figure.

• • •

The Rays also still have to figure out exactly what they are going to build. And one of the major questions will be whether it has a retractable or fixed roof — which also begets the question: real or artificial turf.

Given that they’ve been working on this project for more than 10 years, it’s safe to assume they have some good ideas in mind.

Sternberg said expect a ballpark that "likely will be on the smaller side of stadiums.’’

The roof (and thus turf) question may be part of the financial puzzle, as it costs around $150-million more to make it retractable.

"We’re going to need a roof,’’ he said. "Retractable or fixed, we’ll see as the process goes along. No decision has been made.’’

Sternberg reiterated what the team has long said, that it envisions the stadium as being a "porous" community asset, allowing residents access on days when the team is not playing. That could include making the field, training and even food service areas available for use year-round.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Hillsborough: New Rays ballpark should go in Ybor City

While the team wants the stadium to fuse together with the historic neighborhood, it won’t have a dated feel.

"We look at this as a modern facility that is built for the next 30, 40, 50 years as opposed to the last 30 years,’’ Sternberg said.

With the Ybor Channel just south of the proposed site, Sternberg also sees an opportunity for water travel to and from games. It will take creativity, though, with the expressway overpass in the way.

"We’ve got ideas" to incorporate the water, Sternberg said, "A lot of really cool stuff. It wont necessarily all pan out, but we’re going to try everything we can."

VIDEO: Kriseman on Rays decision to focus on Tampa for new ballpark

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman held out hope that the Rays decision is not final. He pointed to the financial hurdles still ahead for a Tampa ballpark — ones that don’t exist for his plan to build a new stadium at the Tropicana Field site.

But Sternberg said the team was not considering any other locations.

"This is our sole focus," he said, but he added: "Right now."

www.tampabay.com/news/business/Stuart-Sternberg-Tampa-s-Ybor-City-is-top-choice-for-next-Rays-ballpark_165326111

[mikecubs]

Hillsborough County considering $500 million in tax hikes to fund new Rays stadium
Posted on March 14, 2018 by Neil deMause
The indefatigable Noah Pransky of WTSP-TV has unearthed some documents from law firms working with Hillsborough County that show how the county is considering raising public funds to help pay for a new $600 million–ish Tampa Bay Rays stadium. And the options are:

Raising the county bed tax from 5% to 6%, which could provide another $6 million a year, enough to pay off close to $100 million in stadium costs.
A $2 a day hike in car rental taxes would generate $15 million a year (enough to pay off around $250 million total), though with ridesharing on the rise it would risk driving people out of the car rental market and thus providing significantly less than that.
Extending the Community Investment Tax sales tax surcharge that currently funds payments on the Buccaneers stadium beyond 2026. This could provide $10 million a year (enough to pay off about $160 million worth of stadium), but the Bucs could also want some of that money when their lease expires the same year as the Rays’.
Put it all together, and you’re certainly in the ballpark (sorry) of the $450 million in public funds that would be needed if the stadium comes in at $600 million and Rays owner Stuart Sternberg sticks to his guns about only chipping in $150 million from his own pocket. Of course, the fact that Hillsborough County can come up with $450 million it can raise by taxing its own residents (and visitors) doesn’t mean that it should — that’s a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a sports franchise just so that it doesn’t move to a city that probably doesn’t exist, not to mention for a franchise that is actually profitable right now under baseball’s revenue-sharing system. The documents Pransky uncovered don’t talk about what the effect on the local economy would be of raising multiple taxes by this much, or how a Rays stadium compares to other projects that could be funded by similar tax hikes, but I’m sure Pransky will be examining those questions in coming weeks and months.

Anyway, this is far more information than Pransky got by following local politicians around and asking repeatedly, so kudos, Noah! Sometimes journalism is mostly about finding the right people to pester.

www.fieldofschemes.com/2018/03/14/13556/hillsborough-county-considering-500-million-in-tax-hikes-to-fund-new-rays-stadium/#comments

[mikecubs]

BART tells A’s to forget about a new station at a waterfront ballpark

BART General Manager Grace Crunican has all but slammed the door on the idea of building a station near Oakland’s Howard Terminal — the waterfront location that Mayor Libby Schaaf has been promoting for a new A’s ballpark.

It’s not a “viable alternative,” Crunican told the team, for two main reasons.

For starters, it would be located between the West Oakland Station — gateway to the Transbay Tube — and the Oakland Wye underground connector downtown that’s used by four separate lines. It’s the most heavily trafficked section of BART in the East Bay.

Putting a station at the site northwest of Jack London Square, Crunican told A’s President Dave Kaval in a letter last week, would “permanently reduce speeds and introduce uncertainty ... where we can least afford it.”

To say nothing of the problem of building a station in the middle of a vital BART artery while still running trains there. Crunican said service would have to be shut down for a time, a prospect that she said was not realistic.

“By the time we would be able to design and build such a project, I’m sure the A’s would have had at least 10 winning seasons and a World Series win in the new stadium,” she wrote. (ouch!!!)

She didn’t even mention the cost — or who would pay it.

BART’s assessment hardly comes as a shock to the A’s. For years, the team has maintained that the Howard Terminal location is unworkable for a variety of reasons, including the lack of easy access to BART.

Still, Crunican’s “forget about it” letter is the second blow in three months to the A’s efforts to find a new home in Oakland.

In December, Peralta Community College District trustees shot down the team’s proposal for building a ballpark on school property next to Laney College, after faculty and students objected.


That site was within walking distance of Lake Merritt BART Station, which was one of the reasons the A’s liked it. When the Peralta trustees turned their thumbs down, the team agreed to take another look at Schaaf’s favorite spot — including asking BART to weigh in on the possibility of building a Howard Terminal station.

The A’s had no immediate response to BART’s stance. But we’re told the team hasn’t ruled out other transportation options, such as increased bus service or even a light rail line, to make the site work.

In fact, Crunican wrote that BART would be happy to work with the A’s in figuring out how to “connect fans to the 12th St/Oakland City Center and West Oakland BART stations” if the team pursues Howard Terminal.

As for Schaaf: “It’s a disappointment, but it needn’t derail the project,” she said of Crunican’s letter. “I know the A’s are working hard and pursuing all options to stay and build a site in Oakland.”

Meaning, as she sees it, the A’s still might want to consider rebuilding at the Coliseum — a location the team has said doesn’t pencil out.

www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/BART-tells-A-s-to-forget-about-a-new-station-at-12621038.php

[mikecubs]

Rob Manfred the MLB commissioner still likes the site

Commissioner Rob Manfred on A’s Howard Terminal option: ‘a big positive’

www.sfgate.com/athletics/article/Commissioner-Manfred-on-A-s-Howard-Terminal-12628227.php

[mikecubs]

Shut out at Peralta College ballpark location, A’s now interested in buying Coliseum site


The Oakland A’s have apparently gotten over the disappointment of losing a potential ballpark site near Laney College. On Sunday A’s president Dave Kaval sent a letter to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors indicating the team’s interest to purchase the Coliseum site lock, stock and Mt. Davis.

“This letter serves as an indication of the A’s desire to assume and control and purchase the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex,” Kaval wrote, “in exchange for paying all remaining debt service on the more than $135 million of debt ultimately owed by the City and County against the Coliseum complex.”

The A’s in September announced their intention to build a downtown ballpark on a 13-acre site abutting Laney College and near Lake Merritt. The proposal faced immediate push-back from residents and activists which a Laney College instructor characterized as “landslide opposition.”

Schaaf supported a waterfront site at Howard Terminal which Kaval believed was too cold and presented too many transit hurdles. In December the Peralta Community College Board severed talks with the team, killing the downtown project.

“I’m excited to work with the A’s in their commitment to stay in Oakland and build a privately financed ballpark,” Schaaf said in a statement issued Monday morning. “We look forward to reviewing, analyzing, and considering the offer.”

Kaval still seems to view Howard Terminal as a dubious site.

“2018 — our 50th anniversary in Oakland — brought a renewed focus on the viability of the Howard Terminal site as the last downtown location for an A’s ballpark,” he wrote. “The evaluation … remains ongoing and we have had favorable preliminary conversations with various representatives of the Port.”

However:

“Significant uncertainty remains on how the various challenges for Howard Terminal can be satisfied,” Kaval wrote. “Given our previous experience at Peralta, it has become clear that the A’s need to solidify control of the one site in Oakland that offers an assured path for the development of a new privately financed baseball venue — the existing Coliseum complex.”

Currently the Coliseum site is home to three professional teams — the A’s, Raiders and Warriors. But the latter two franchises are short-term tenants in the process of building new facilities. The Warriors plan to open the Chase Center in San Francisco for the 2019-20 NBA season, while the Raiders intend to relocate to a $1.8 billion domed stadium in Las Vegas in 2020 or 2021.

Former sports executive Andy Dolich said “now the real wheeling and dealing starts to take place because of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are at stake to the constituents represented by the city and the county.”

“This is just an ante, there’s a lot more money that’s going to pile up on the table,” Dolich.

www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/26/report-shut-out-at-peralta-college-ballpark-location-as-now-interested-in-buying-coliseum-site/

[mikecubs]

[mikecubs]

So there it is. They will still try for Howard Terminal but they aren't confident it's likely. At least economically it's feasible to build at the Coliseum site and it was a lie that Dave Kaval told when he said it wouldn't pencil out to build privately there back when the were after the Perelta site.

The Coliseum site reminds me of the Mets in Queens. It's accessible/works with the mass transit/highway but the site isn't sexy since it's surround by an industrial wasteland(the Mets site is surrounded by chop shops). The A's will build a little bit better version of the Mets park(a middle of the league park) at the Coliseum site. At least they will have a view of the Oakland foothills at the Coliseum site.

Perelta site would have been like Pittsburgh's park with the views of downtown/the water and foothills. A top of the league park. Howard Terminal would have had views of downtown and the Oakland foothills plus some water views though the park couldn't face the water like San Francisco's because of the sun(though a Howard Terminal park would be freezing like Candlestick Park use to be when the Giants played there)

[mikecubs]

A’s, Oakland mayor agree to exclusive negotiating agreement for Coliseum, Howard Terminal

Mayor Libby Schaaf is asking local leaders to approve an agreement to give the Oakland A’s exclusive rights to negotiate stadium deals at the Coliseum and Howard Terminal, seemingly the team’s last site options in town.

Schaaf said Wednesday she supports agreements to at least temporarily give the team first dibs to pitch stadium proposals at either site, while keeping the A’s in the city they’ve called home for 50 years.

“It doubles our chances of getting a great ballpark that keeps the A’s ‘rooted in Oakland’ while still being responsible to our taxpayers,” the mayor said.

Schaaf made the announcement alongside team President Dave Kaval while hoisting an A’s flag above Oakland City Hall, a day ahead of the team’s home opener. It signaled the mayor and Kaval are on the same page, a departure from last year when Kaval announced the team wanted to build near Laney College and the two held separate news conferences.

On Sunday, Kaval sent Schaaf a letter with a proposal to purchase the city and county-owned Coliseum land for $135 million, which would cover the debt from renovations in the 1990s at the stadium and Oracle Arena.

Kaval wants to secure the 120-acre East Oakland property while analyzing Howard Terminal. To build on the estuary west of Jack London Square, the A’s need to study environmental issues and pedestrian access across railroad tracks.

“It’s parallel paths,” Kaval said inside City Hall on Wednesday. “What you’ve seen here, especially with the letter and the offer, is the community coming together with the A’s to solve this ballpark development question that’s been going on too long. I think everyone recognizes that, and it’s good to see the traction we are getting.”



Oakland Athletics 🌳🐘⚾️
✔
@athletics
Mayor @libbyschaaf announces exclusive negotiation agreements for the Coliseum complex and Howard Terminal to keep the A's #RootedInOakland.

2:53 PM - Mar 28, 2018 · Frank H Ogawa Plaza
446
160 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

The “exclusive negotiating agreement” for the Coliseum needs Oakland City Council approval; Port of Oakland commissioners must sign off on the Howard Terminal agreement. Schaaf is urging each board to do so, and is requesting Alameda County to join as a co-signer.

Exclusive negotiating agreements are nothing new for Oakland. They have been used at the former Oakland Army Base and in previous attempts to build stadiums. For example, one such deal occurred in 2015 during developer Floyd Kephart’s failed “Coliseum City” plan to buy 90 acres of the Coliseum complex for $116 million and build a new stadium, homes, a shopping center, office buildings and a hotel.

NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and his investment group entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city and county in 2016 in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Raiders from moving to Las Vegas, and set aside acres for a new baseball stadium as well. Schaaf initially resisted the agreement, because she did not want to dissuade other proposals, but eventually saw it as key to keeping the team.

“By definition they haven’t worked for stadiums because there are no new stadiums,” said Dan Lindheim, an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Policy. But the former Oakland city administrator who once negotiated stadium deals said the no-cost option will allow deeper negotiations. “It gives the holder of the ENA time to try and cut a deal. Worse comes to worst, they walk away.”

Since becoming mayor in 2015, Schaaf has said the city would not contribute a dime to building a stadium. In negotiations with the A’s, she said the city will “demand fair value for our land.” In 2016, the Coliseum property was appraised at $150 million, according to the city. The A’s are self-financing the ballpark.

“Every deal is different,” Schaaf said, before referencing the 1995 agreement to bring the Raiders back to Oakland that saddled the city and county with debt. “What my values are were pretty clear from the Raiders negotiations — I’m very committed to not repeat the mistakes of the past and enter into a deal that was so harmful for our community.”

www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/28/as-city-of-oakland-agree-to-exclusive-negotiating-agreement-for-coliseum-howard-terminal/

[mikecubs]

Take me out to the ballgame, take me out … wait, what? A’s have unique idea how to get fans to new ballpark

The A’s are getting creative in their endeavor to not only build a new ballpark, but to get passengers from downtown Oakland to the stadium’s front doors.

Who’s up for a gondola ride?

Per the San Francisco Chronicle, one idea the A’s have for moving fans from downtown Oakland to a stadium at Howard Terminal would be to ferry them via an elevated gondola similar to what you might see at a ski resort.

“You have to be creative in how you approach these problems in the modern era, where you have transportation gridlock,” A’s president Dave Kaval told the Chronicle.

The concept is in the preliminary thinking-out-loud stage, for good reason. For one thing, Howard Terminal is but one of two sites the A’s are considering for a new baseball palace, the Coliseum site — which would have no need for gondolas — being the other. For another, a tram from downtown to Howard Terminal would necessitate acquiring right-of-way approval from Union Pacific and Caltrans, according to the Chron.

A similar system, which takes Oakland Zoo patrons to the elevated Landing Cafe, opened last summer.

It is estimated the tram could carry 4,000 to 6,000 fans per hour. But one wonders if that would be enough after a game, when tens of thousands of fans head for the exits en masse.

But kudos for originality on the A’s part. Howard Terminal is beset with transit issues. BART has declared it will not build a prohibitively expensive new station near the site. Downtown BART stations are about a mile away and wind through industrial areas and homeless encampments. Driving to and parking at a Howard Terminal ballpark would be its own bit of misery.

“If you can make it more of a journey, it’s going to be a draw,” Kaval said.

www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/11/if-as-creative-concept-comes-to-fruition-gondolas-wont-just-be-for-ski-resorts-anymore/

[mikecubs]

They desperately want to avoid the Coliseum site if at all possible.

[wolfmannick]

^ if the gondola is lined up massively that luxury will wear thin very quickly. How long will baseball last in Oakland if transit is a major issue, that was one of the big factors in Montreal and Tampa.