Tuesday, November 16, 2010
BREAKING NEWS: Oakland Picks Site for New A’s Ballpark
Politics / People / Sports Robert Gammon — Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 2:44 PM
The City of Oakland has selected a waterfront site in the Jack London Square area for a new A’s ballpark. The so-called Victory Court site is near the Lake Merritt Channel, along the Oakland Estuary. It’s also the favored site of Mayor-elect Jean Quan. “I think it’s the best site,” Quan said. “It could really kick start the area.”
The city has decided to conduct an environmental impact report for the Victory Court site and has informed Major League Baseball of its decision. Quan said she called MLB the day after she won the election. “I wanted to let them know that I won, and that I would be fighting to keep the A’s,” Quan said. “And I wanted to make sure they knew that I would be doing everything possible to keep the negotiations going.”
The city has been negotiating with a blue ribbon committee appointed by Major League Baseball to determine whether the A’s should stay in Oakland or move to San Jose. The team’s owners, Lew Wolff and John Fisher, have been determined to move the team to San Jose. Last month, they donated $25,000 to a group that was backing Don Perata’s bid for mayor after the ex-state senator said he would not attempt to block the A’s planned move.
City Administrator Dan Lindheim, who has been leading the city’s negotiations with Major League Baseball, said the city decided to go ahead with the environmental impact report process, because the league wants to have a new stadium for the A’s in place by Opening Day 2015. Lindheim also said that the league clearly would prefer that the city pick a downtown-waterfront site like the San Francisco Giants did with their ballpark. “Baseball has this vision of downtown-waterfront ballpark, and this site is downtown and it’s on the waterfront,” he said, referring to the Victory Court site.
The Victory Court site was one of four that the city had been considering, and was one of two new sites that Oakland unveiled as possibilities earlier this year. There were two more sites in Jack London Square, plus the colisuem parking lot. The city will begin accepting public comment on the ballpark EIR at the December 1 Planning Commission meeting.
Update 2:57 p.m.: Quan said she believes a ballpark at the Victory Court site will jumpstart both Jack London Square and the planned Oak-to-Ninth housing development. The ballpark would be built between the two. Ironically, the newly built Jack London Square development and the Oak-to-Ninth project are owned by two of Perata's best donors, Jim Falaschi and Michael Ghielmetti. Both have expressed support for a new A's ballpark next to their developments.
Update 3:02 p.m.: The city will pay for the environmental impact report with redevelopment funds. Both Quan and outgoing Mayor Ron Dellums have said they would use redevelopment funds to try to keep the A's in Oakland — but not general fund money. City general funds are typically earmarked for police, fire, libraries, parks, and other basic city services. Redevelopment funds are used to revitalize blighted areas. San Jose plans to use redevelopment funds to attract the A's. San Francisco used redevelopment funds to help the Giants build AT&T Park.
Update 3:13 p.m.: Quan said she also believes a new ballpark at Victory Court will help businesses in closeby Chinatown and could provide the impetus for a new hotel/convention center.
Update 3:17 p.m.: Lindheim said he thinks a ballpark at the Victory Court site, coupled with the reworking of 12th Street and the renovation of the lakefront, could revitalize the city's waterfront.
Update 3:22 p.m.: Quan believes that the only way Major League Baseball would turn down Wolff and Fisher's request to move the team to San Jose is if the City of Oakland shows that it has a viable plan for a new A's ballpark and that city leadership is committed to making it happen.
Comments (7)
Showing 1-7 of 7
Having lived in Washington, DC, for the past three years, I have seen what stadiums can do for a downtown revitalization. The Verizon Center (nee MCI Center) turned DC's crack-infested downtown and Chinatown and turned it into a thriving city center. And building the new Nationals Park has brought new attention and money to what were essentially slums and Projects.
I believe bringing the Stadium downtown would be a great solution if it is the only way to keep the A's in Oakland. However, I also like Rebecca Kaplan's idea to revitalize the current ballpark and its neighborhood. Also, any growth needs to be accountable to the current residents as well as the wildlife in the area.
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golly gee,
Major League Baseball prefers a waterfront site, according to Lindheim. And the Victory Court site is surrounded by the Lake Merritt Channel and the Oakland Estuary:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=oak+street,+oakland&wrapid=tlif12900147287471&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Oak+St,+Oakland,+CA&gl=us&ei=FRDkTMi-LJH0tgPB1bhm&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ8gEwAA
The only other true waterfront locale under consideration was the Howard Terminal at the Port of Oakland. But Lew Wolff previously dismissed that site as too difficult to develop -- and city and port staff apparently agree.
The last Jack London Square site -- West of Broadway -- isn't really on the water, although it is closer to downtown.
As for Ghielmetti and Falaschi's developments, a ballpark at Victory Court would help them, but that in turn, would help the city. Like it or not, the city approved those deals and is now stuck with them. It can either let them founder or work to make them prosper.
am i the only one who likes the other jls sites? vc is barely in jack london and the other sites are close to existing buildings / restaurants / bart / ac transit not to mention more central to downtown and a future cable car down broadway. the only reason to go w the vc site really is to appease those developers who tried to fund perata's ethically challenged campaign funding. pfft.
I love the A's and I want them to stay but what is the cost to the city? Search for articles on stadium costs vs economic impact and it's always a net loser for the state. One example: http://www.dcfpi.org/would-a-publicly-fina… There is a model for stadium construction using private funds working just across the bay. I want the A's in Oakland but after the sting of giving Al Davis a ton of cash to come back and helping to cause this mess I'm wary of investing public money to finance a private business. Also, shouldn't we expect major buildings like stadiums to out live the average person? Are we going to do this again in 45 years?
I think a ballpark will be great in JLS! Especially with redevelopment of the walk from the Lake Merritt Bart to Victory Court.
Last time I went to SD, downtown is hopping...in a good way. If the condos downtown have vacancies, maybe other factors are at play. The economic downturn. The fact that SD doesn't have good public transit, which makes it difficult to manage about a crowded downtown with a car. Do they have any grocery stores or farmers markets for the downtown core?
I agree with raphtze...I have misgivings about Quan, but if she pulls this off, she's A+ in my book.
Putting aside the basic issue of whether a stadium is a worthwhile investment for a city, and especially for a city with serious budget problems, I think putting a ballpark in the middle of a downtown area is short-sighted, asinine city planning. No doubt, Jack London Square looks pretty anemic as it is now, but there will be development there whether or not a stadium is built. I lived in San Diego for some time. The Padres built a new, ugly-as-sin downtown ballpark and the downtown gentrified, and the city council reveled, because to them, correlation is causation. It certainly improved traffic, to the point that on game days you can't find a parking spot unless you're prepared to part with a Jackson. While this was great shakes for the owners of parking lots, most businesses stood to lose, because for every person who goes to a ballgame and has some expensive dinner they would not otherwise have had, there are two dozen who are just there for the game. Meanwhile, this huge influx of people was an unmitigated hassle for the people who actually lived downtown. Never mind that -- there was a housing boom on (which, coincidentally, along with the nationwide movement of the rich back to urban areas they had fled in the fifties, may have something more to do with development than the arrival of Petco Park). Developers filled the downtown with skyscraping apartment buildings, which are now halfway occupied. The city planners had managed to gentrify the downtown under the assumption that, if you build it, the yuppies will come. And it's just not true. I'm not saying I believe that development can ever be merely organic, but when I think about Jack London Square with a ballpark, it sounds to me like more of the same garbage that we were sold in San Diego, a waste of valuable civic space designed to attract yuppies who may or may not be interested and who probably not be more interested when you include a ballpark in the package. Now, the young and aspiring in San Diego live in North Park, adjacent to the downtown and a fraction of the price, while the apartments that were built with them in mind stand vacant a few miles away. Most of the restaurants and boutiques that all popped up simultaneously five years ago have gone out of business. Does a ballpark attract development? Some, I guess, but it mostly just attracts crowds and makes life more difficult for residents.
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