The Oakland Athletics have formally announced their intention to develop a new Major League ballpark upon the 13-acre parcel of land that’s currently owned by the Peralta Community College District at 333 East 8th Street, a little south of Lake Merritt in central Oakland.
The letter from the President of the A’s to the Chancellor of the college which was hand delivered yesterday, a few hours before the college district’s board meeting last night:
Assuming the A’s can reach a deal with the college, secure environmental approvals and overcome expected opposition from residents of nearby Chinatown and Eastlake (as well as faculty and students of the adjacent Laney College campus whose athletic fields are across the street), the team hopes to break ground in 2021 and open the ballpark in 2023, a year before the A’s lease at the Coliseum is slated to end.
In terms of paying for the new ballpark, it’s expected to be “100% privately financed” (but that doesn’t include the budget for required infrastructure improvements to accommodate a new ballpark).
And in order to sweeten the deal and help pave the way for approvals, the A’s are pitching the possibility of developing the surface area parking lot across the Channel from the Peralta Site as well.
No Ballpark on Peralta Land!!! Save Laney College! Save Chinatown! NO Ballpark ON PERALTA LAND!!!
I mean, I’m not a sports fan and completely understand that a stadium could be disruptive to any neighborhood it’s located (at least in terms of noise and traffic), but how is this directly threatening Chinatown?
With all of the exclamation points present, I’m hoping you can translate a few of them into perspective.
I think, perhaps the wrong punctuation was used: $$$ “mitigation payment” opportunities (for things completely unrelated) perhaps.
Will this kill Chinatown?
Not at all. Self appointed Chinatown leaders claim jurisdiction all the way to Lake Merritt BART, although the commercial part of Chinatown peters out several blocks north of there , but this land officially outside even that area. Of course construction and operation of a stadium will have impacts, and I think the major fear is that it will be a gentrifying force, increasing the value of property on the edges of Chinatown and increasing evictions. This is also simply a shakedown, as these same self appointed leaders have shown in other recent actions.
It would be a win/win for Laney College as an institution, but Laney College students and staff have a lot of self-interest in opposing because it would use their sports fields and also presumably develop their enormous free parking lot. Laney College has a huge amount of land, and no conceivable way to use it all.
Overall, if the A’s can do a deal with Peralta, this is a great location and a huge benefit for Oakland as a whole. Easy walking distance from BART and downtown, lot of opportunity for related economic development (Lake Merritt BART area currently has virtually no retail/services, but easily could). Great freeway adjacency for drivers and good potential to share parking resources. Lots of things happening nearby, including Brooklyn Basin, proposed Kaiser Auditorium rehab, continued redo of Lake Merritt, etc. Oh, and perhaps the greatest advantage is that it will FINALLY put the Coliseum out of its misery and hasten the day when economic development rather than sports stadiums fill that huge area. WIN/WIN/WIN/Win.
But…opposition is going to be noisy and I despair that this will never happen.
The area the A’s are looking at won’t affect the Laney sports fields. The area is south of 7th street and west of 5th Avenue. Only the Peralta District headquarters will have to be relocated.
I stand corrected…I initially thought the sports fields were in play. Even better. Duplicated the district HQ on the mixed use development of the parking lot and everything is good.
Yes, very exciting. I meant to say south of 8th street. It seems that 8th street turns into 7th as you head west. Strange set up. Also exciting to hear about the views of Lake Merritt, Downtown Oakland, and the Oakland hills. This should be a gorgeous setting when all is finished. Keep in mind that the Oakland skyline will be drastically changed in 5 years as should will the immediate area near the proposed site. The A’s are going into an area which will be booming with new residential highrises in five years.
Laney College will not be lost! Chinatown will not be lost! PCD can buy or sell any land it wants – and especially sell when near the top of the market!!!
If you want to save Chinatown you should be for a ballpark. Increased foot traffic and business for all those restaurants and markets. Chinatown isn’t going anywhere. We might see less blight on International Blvd between 1st Avenue and 14th Avenue with a new ballpark at the Peralta site. I’m all for less litter, less illegal dumping and less graffiti in the area. Let’s improve the neighborhoods instead of complaining about new investments which will make things nicer.
Said the community activist shakedown artist.
This location is superior to the current Coliseum site as far as creating a vibrant ballpark village. Look forward to seeing the renderings.
What’s their issue with the Coliseum?
Is that some kind of a rhetorical question? What was the Raiders’s issue with the Coliseum?
What was the Rams’ issue with Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis?
What was the Chargers issue with Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego?
Complete, legitimate and valid question. My response as a baseball fan and who has attended a lot of ballparks is by far the best experience and have stood the test of time if you like the teams themselves or not is the likes of Fenway, Wrigley Field, to Old Yankee even new Yankee stadium or even Cleveland, Baltimore or Cardinal stadiums is open air field in the heart of downtown or established neighborhoods is just better overall. Just to bring a local flavor to it. ATT Park is head and shoulders above watching Giants at old Candlestick and current Colesium stadim
Agree 1000%.
Hey, anything is better than the Brooklyn Basin location that was being considered recently, which was nowhere near public transit. Hunter has a valid point. What’s the issue with the Coliseum? No reason why there can’t be a Coliseum village of mixed use buildings.
There could be a new ballpark at Coliseum. There’s tons of room. I think one of the major issues is that the existing multi-purpose stadium is simply no good for baseball. I personally think the Laney location is better for follow on benefits of baseball (which DO exist, unlike football). But Coliseum certainly works.
The current site was one of the three considered, and it had its supporters. It will be interesting to see, should the plans for this go South, if the A’s will as well – i.e. fallback to the current site – or instead try to use it as a Get-Out-of-Oakland-Free Card.
exactly what I’m wondering too.
Since the Raiders are leaving, there’s no need to maintain a multi-purpose stadium, now is there? Maybe I’m missing something. Everyone involved could save time, money and effort by remodeling the existing stadium as a dedicated baseball park. I suspect that wouldn’t offer as much in the way of “ancilliary new development” compared to a new undeveloped site.
it’s interesting that a similar stadium (Dodgers) is now a mid-century icon that everyone likes. The Coliseum was once much nicer before Mt Davis. Not sure if it would have been loved more if still orginal
Perhaps, but it always had deficiencies having to do with it being a multi-use facility – the seating is far from the baselines – that are more glaring now that everyone else has moved into (baseball) exclusive parks.
Dodger Stadium is really not like the Coliseum at all. The closest approximation to it is probably Kauffman Stadium in KC. The closest to the Coliseum in Oakland might be the one in Los Angeles.
A village hasn’t happened in how many years? Maybe because it is too easy to keep it for parking and every other proposal becomes a paper money grab involving local government and sports owners.
Time to pigeon a smaller intimate ball park into a great downtown location that has transit access and A’s willing to finance themselves. At same time level and free up a big swath of developable land that is under one ownership and doesn’t involved the Feds (think how slow redevelopment happens at a former military bases in the Bay Area) for housing with existing transit access, great access to airport and will have access to even more jobs when the next round of Oakland office space is added & BART is extended into downtown San Jose & new Google campus.
As a newer(ish) resident and owner in Oakland, I will definitely attend A’s games at the Laney/Peralta site, but would probably never attend them at a new stadium built at Coliseum site.
Perlata = upmarket, close to the lake, close to DTO, would hopefully turn out like the Giants downtown SF park: a big success. Coliseum location likely to remain terribly gritty and unpleasant surrounding, far from everything (except dangerous deep east Oakland.)
The current location has excellent freeway and BART access (and Amtrak, too, for the 3-5 people who ride it to the games, as well as the airport for the slightly smaller number who might fly in ) so if the goal is to get people in/out as quickly and easily as possible, it has much to recommend.
This site, obviously – though not lacking in access – will have to be more…for want of a better word…”interactive”.
It turns out that getting people to drive down our freeways to buy a $17 beer and then drive back home again is not a way to make a vibrant city. Whereas building an real urban village with an accessory ballpark, where people walk out of the stadium to various other restaurants/bars/their homes/whatever is much better.
What has happened in its environs around San Diego’s Petco Park since opening in 2004 is nothing short of remarkable.
FWIW, Amtrak is packed on game days, at least when the team isn’t dead last.
Good to hear; I was being facetious – at least I assumed I was – but I don’t think the few hundred people that even a several trains would carry is going to make a material difference in attendance…like water taxis, and such, it’s fine if you can work them in , but I don’t see them as deal maker/breakers.
I made the mistake of taking the Capitol Corridor to Sacramento on a Sunday evening when the Raiders were playing a home game. You never saw so many loud, obnoxious drunks. Fortunately, they all passed out by the time we got to Benecia.
I agree with their decision. Let’s get this project going!
shovels in the ground already, this is definitley the best location of all considered, and will massivley boost downtown development. Oakland would be so foolish to possibly let the A’s slip away, and it would then open up the huge parking lot wasteland at the current site for redevelopment into “staduim city” or whatever the watered down version ends up being.
This will massively improve DTO and keep its moementum and pull from SF on the increase!
Imagine, splash hits could be crash hits on the Nimitz, but hey, sports!
In all seriousness, it does look like a good candidate. I’d just be nervous if I lived in Clinton. Then again, I’d be nervous already if I lived in Clinton.
The orientation of the park – I would think – would be N/NW facing downtown, so they wouldn’t head toward the Nimitz but rather the Channel (b/w Lake Merritt and the Estuary)…..tho they could hit E 8th St., I guess.
Dave Kaval has confirmed the ballpark will be oriented to Lake Merritt, Downtown skyline and Oakland hills. Ballpark will not be oriented west toward SF. This will be a spectacular setting with great views and possible splash hits towards left field into Lake Merritt Channel.
seems like a great location. Would be a big boost for Oakland, and probably spur lots of housing and other commercial development in the area. Of course, protections need to be put in place in adjacent neighborhoods to protect vulnerable populations and buildings, but that should be be a given. However this will only be successful if it is truly urban and integrated with the surrounding neighborhoods, like AT&T Park. That means very limited parking, for one.
According to The Google, the new site is .5 miles from the Lake Merritt BART station, which is not to bad. Is 8th Street pedestrian friendly?
In a word, yes. It has wide sidewalks (that could easily be made even wider), and buffered bike lanes as well. That stretch of 7th/8th is one of those odd wide arterials developed post war redevelopment era…has never had a lot of congestion because it connected smaller urban streets, but it gives a lot of options for re-engineering due to its substantial width.
So I guess, in keeping with their current style, BART will rename the stop to Lake Merritt/Peralta/Oakland Athletics Stadium
abandoning the Coliseum site seems terribly shortsighted given its access to transit and the potential for improving the area with further development. IF we need a new stadium (a big if—i don’t care about sports and am opposed to replacing serviceable facilities with a more “competitive product”), there will be both negative and positive impacts, and the Coliseum site seems to offer greater net gains for the entire city, and more to lose if the site is abandoned. but i say this as a resident of Oakland Chinatown going on seven years: maybe Coliseum neighbors feel that their neighborhood is doing just fine, and would rather see the disruptive development happen elsewhere.
The close proximity to the Airport + BART + Amtrak would make the coliseum site a good candidate for very high density mixed use development. Kinda akin to Tyson Center in DC which is like a second downtown.
There’s no if. There’s no need. The first nails that went into the coffin of the Coliseum site as sports venue were the fundraising dollars for the renovation of Cal Memorial stadium. In my thinking that killed the possibility of a football-specific venue that would garner enough usage to be worth building at all. So the Raiders planned to go. And the Warriors as well, but for lots of other reasons too of course.
The Coliseum site is too big to build around a single sports venue, and I’m hopeful a lot of good ideas can be devised for the site now that the multi-team sports village dream has been put to bed. It deserves a fresh start, and a BART stop will give it lots of flexibility in finding it.
Except the site isn’t really the “Coliseum site” it’s the “Coliseum/Arena” site: i.e. it’s an “entertainment” site more than (just) a “sports” site, and AFAIK the current plan – or non-plan, perhaps – is to keep the arena. Whether that proves viable in the long run is open to question, but it’s an issue to be dealt with…not just an automatic-demo.
that city spends an inordinate amount of time on sports, given all the other problems that need fixing, but which are not as politically convenient to point out, so it’s more fun to talk about stadiums.
Wrong. No. Nice spin. Council is mostly a bunch of demagogues who spend an inordinate amount of time and resources pandering to opaque non-profits while conveniently ignoring their primary duty of overseeing city functions and facilitating economic development.
Where’s the like button? By and large, your council sounds quite similar to our supes…
“Alvina Wong — representing a coalition of nonprofits, churches and other community groups in Chinatown —said her group is ‘disappointed that the A’s have fast tracked this process and displacement in our communities.'”
DOA…
DOA? No. We’re all used to the opposition’s script… queue attempts to misinform, to gaslight and foster a David v Goliath polemic. We know the script this 100th time. Right on queue Lailan Huen has started her misinformation campaign with “A’s outreach efforts have been insufficient and overstated by the team”. We know where she’s going with this. Thing is this time development plans are coming from a beloved town organization. This isn’t going to be a big bad developer vs the poor and defenseless. So I things are far from decided no matter how “disappointed” (creepy sense of entitlement) Alvina is or how blindsided Lailan claims to be.
Let’s propose Amazon HQ2 build on the Coliseum site.
probably the best idea in the comments
This is an incredible site. The A’s chose wisely. This location is right next to the Lake Merritt Channel which is being opened up and will eventually go from Lake Merritt to the Oakland Estuary. This channel will allow for water taxis from the neighborhoods surrounding Lake Merritt and for small watercraft heading up from Jack London Square. The Lake Merritt Channel could be turned into a tourist attraction similar to the San Antonio Riverwalk. A ballpark in this location will increase development, bring more hotels, more restaurants, and more jobs. This will be great for the Eastlake neighborhood and for Chinatown.
The usual anti-gentrification naysayers really have no leg to stand on considering that the 3200 unit Brooklyn Basin is under construction just around the corner from the A’s proposed site. There is currently a 40 story residential tower about to break ground in Chinatown at 13th & Franklin.
A ballpark on the Peralta site will link the neighborhoods surrounding Lake Merritt, Jack London Square, Chinatown and Brooklyn Basin. This will be tremendous for Oakland. This will finally show the world the beauty of Oakland instead of the warehouses along 880.
keep dreaming. You think they’re going to change the elevation of the railroad tracks across the channel just to accommodate water taxis? As for the 13th & Franlkin construction, this will just galvanize the Chinatown community against further development even more.
Are there railroad tracks from Lake Merritt down the channel to the ballpark? The idea is to eventually to be able to get watercraft from the Oakland Estuary to Lake Merritt. LM to ballpark will easily be doable.
Take an aerial view on google maps. Lake Merritt is probably never going to be navigable from the estuary to the bay. there are rail road tracks, gas mains, and several bridges. The railroad tracks are a particular issue, because they are less than a foot above Mean High Water, and so are only currently navigable at low tide by something like a kayak. But also, Lake Merritt is not fully tidal; there is a dam to regulate flow. Any water transportation would essentially need a lock system.
In short…ain’t gonna happen.
They are getting rid of the culverts. They have already opened up 12th Street and 10th street. You can take a boat all the way down to 7th street down the Lake Merritt Channel right now. The next culvert to be opened up will be 7th street which will be designed with a small craft bypass around the pumping station. The embarcadero bridge is currently being raised.
I believe the bridge that is being raised is the vehicular bridge on the Embarcadero, not the UP bridge. It would be difficult to raise the latter much, and still maintain the grades necessary to either cross Oak St. or reach the JLS station.
Here is some information on the Lake Merritt Channel improvement project.
As the several of us noted, per your document, the current work does NOT appear to include the UP bridge, so riparian travel to/fro JLS is off the table for now. However, from Lake Merrit itself will be possible, so perhaps the OWRC can make an appearance…
Yes, kayaks and the Oakland Woman’s Rowing Club. Still an impressive green & gold flotilla. The first paragraph does state that the goal of the Channel improvements is access boat and pedestrian access between Lake Merritt and the Estuary. The Embarcadero bridge is in the process of being raised and there are plans for a bike bridge from the Embarcadero to Lake Merritt Channel. The UP tracks will eventually be dealt with in order to access the Estuary.
Eventually.
Of course some might argue that a grade separation project raising the rails from 5th Ave to West Oakland is the kind of modest, sensible way to improve transportation in the the state, as opposed to ..oh, I don’t know but maybe throwing ten$(hundred$?)of billions at HSR.
But we’ll get to that argument…eventually.
That is a spectacular idea, especially if they get a new bart tube with stations in alameda.
Of course people will always point of why it can’t happen based on the reality they see today, but they don’t see a long term vision.
This is a good one you should keep voicing this idea. The alameda channel is a huge opportunity.
This site would be a boon for the A’s but a net loss for the City of Oakland. It will effectively kill or severely delay the city’s ‘Coliseum City’ plan which the A’s could have anchored and around which an entirely new neighborhood with at least 5,000 (if not 10,000) units of housing – already connected to BART, 880 and the airport with easy South Bay access – could have quickly bloomed.
the coliseum city plan is bust — no developer wants to build high-rise housing or commercial in that area. it just doesn’t pencil. it was a good plan, yes, but the money just isn’t there. better to demolish both the coliseum and oracle, and give it up to mid-rise mixed-use development. it’s far more likely to occur than any “coliseum city”.
The plans don’t pencil without the A’s but they would with a new ballpark as the anchor while eliminating the football stadium, arena and associated parking to make room for more housing and commercial space.
The Coliseum City plan is ridiculously “visionary”. It has no sense of the market, at all. It was a waste of money (thankfully not THAT much), and it was a bargaining chip with the Raiders to convince them that the City was “serious”. Start over.
I would agree – in fact I would phrase it as “it was a bad plan, no…” since it “didn’t pencil” and I’m not sure how a plan that doesn’t even do this is “good”; it’s easy, but ultimately an empty exercise, to have renderings fully of colorful geometric shapes…and no tenants for them.
How about a huge corporate campus with housing on the Coliseum site? The A’s are a much greater resource for Oakland near Lake Merritt than they are at the Coliseum.
In that case…don’t forget stables for all the unicorns and ponies. A new ballpark to anchor the redevelopment of the coliseum area is a much greater resource for the City of Oakland than a new ballpark near Lake Merritt. A new ballpark near Lake Merritt is a much greater resource for the A’s.
The Coliseum is near the airport and has its own BART station. The Coliseum doesn’t need a sports team in order to be developed.
I, remarkably, find myself agreeing with E. Gonsalves here. What have the sports teams done to “anchor” the Coliseum. Damn little. At Lake Merritt the A’s could have all the positive impacts that a baseball stadium CAN have (e.g. PacBell Park), putting large numbers of people on the street 100 times a year, ready to drop bucks at restaurants and bars, etc. At Coliseum as it is, there are big parking lots….people don’t spend a penny. Even if redeveloped as a ballpark village, it would be very slow to gel, and would require lots of housing and businesses to fill in before it had any real substance. At Lake Merritt, the whole process can be much more organic as it is already part of an urban fabric.
I’m in agreement with E. Gonsalves and Curmudgeon as well. I think the point that Curmudgeon nails is the concept of the ballpark being “organic”. The Peralta site should see a gradual rise in local businesses that will make money off of fans who will take public transit and linger before and after games. I just don’t see that happening at the Coliseum site. Quite honestly, as a baseball fan, the thought of going to a “Coliseum City” just sounds faux and not really something I’d be interested in doing.
LM is better for fans like me as well. The Coliseum site with or without an ESPN sports zone and some chain restaurants wouldn’t attract me like a downtown adjacent stadium would
I think it’s a great idea and potentially a great site (and boon to downtown OAK), but … I’m having trouble picturing how a ballpark fits there. Given the size of the baseball field north of 8th Street – superimposing that on the Peralta site south of 8th – it’s hard to picture how a stadium with that size field *plus* tiers of seats can squeeze between the Nimitz Freeway and 8th Street.
Here.
They should add a Bart station at 8th Street and 5th Avenue.
It will be an easy walk from the Lake Merritt BART station. The increased foot traffic will bring further vitality to the area.
That would be a great BART station for the ballpark and the 3200 future homes at Brooklyn Basin. The more BART stops in Oakland the better.
MLB Rule 1.04 expresses a preference that ballparks be oriented in an east-northeast direction.
Variances are allowed. Pacific Bell Park was initially designed in that fashion but was allowed to re-orient due to the results of wind studies indicating a perspective including the City skyline over the left field fence was not feasible.
It was also exempted from the 325 feet minimum distance down the right field foul line because of space restrictions resulting in 309 ft.
As you can see the variances are the rule (some of these, of course, are enclosed and orientation is irrelevant, but even disregarding those, they’re all over the place…literally)
The ballpark will be oriented to the Lake Merritt skyline. There will be splash hits into Lake Merritt Channel. The Giants must be hating this.
OK I agreed with you above (perhaps first time), but you’ve descended into silly hyperbole again. Why would the Giants be “hating” this? Even if the A’s can shoehorn a stadium into this site (an even smaller footprint than AT&T Park), and get a variance from siting requirements (see above) to orient the stadium *north* to Lake Merritt and downtown OAK … then even at best it’s at par with AT&T Park… and AT&T Park isn’t cheek-by-jowl with a very busy, fume-spewing and noisy freeway.
I mean, I think this is a great proposal for Oakland – but it can be judged and admired on its merits without extending to far-fetched hyperbole, and/or resorting to reflexive S.F. bashing.
The theory is the G’s want the A’s out of the area altogether, so they can have a monopoly….even more than the (near) de-facto monopoly they currently have.
Not bashing SF. I’m just saying that the Giants can’t be happy about a beautiful new Oakland ballpark that much closer to them. In 5 years the A’s may have a new ballpark while the Giants have an older ballpark. Not good to have the competition have a brand new beautiful yard a 15 minute BART ride away
The proximity of the freeway is worrisome but a very similar situation exists in St. Louis and Busch is one of the finest parks in America.
Fenway Park is right next to a freeway. Not a huge issue. Actually, the freeway is the reason that the ballpark will be oriented to the north west. The freeway will run behind the main grandstand behind home plate.
Are you sure the Laney site footprint is smaller than even China Basin? It was the smallest in the majors since Detroit’s old ballpark which opened in 1912.
AT&T is listed as 12.5 acres, essentially the same as this. So people will have to stick w/ a fuming freeway and orientation challenges as a reason to offer tepid support.
@ Notcom – I didn’t say tepid support; I was just saying no reason to resort to hyperbole and S.F. bashing.
@ E. Gonsalves – there’s a street and a row of buildings between Fenway and the Mass Pike – big difference than having 8 busy lanes a stone’s throw from the upper decks.
@ Orland – I was going off a Google maps comparison on my screen – zooming into AT&T Park, then scrolling over to this OAK site. The OAK site looks slightly smaller – but it’s a slightly different shape (more square, versus AT&T Park’s slightly kite-shaped footprint), so admittedly hard to compare directly.
Yes, the Lake Merritt “Channel” vs. the San Francisco Bay – my god, the Giants are probably holding an emergency board meeting right now!
They’re probably having an emergency meeting about having lost 90 games so far this season, though.
Well no, they’re not “all over the place”. *All* of the stadiums at that link are sited somewhere between due north and east-southeast. None of those depicted are west of due north; and at least 2 of the ones that are due north are domed stadiums. (And there’s a very legitimate reason for that; you don’t want the batter staring into the NW sun during late afternoon / early evening summer games.)
Long story short, I could see a stadium at this OAK site that’s oriented along the long axis, east-northeast … but an orientation along the shorter north-northwest axis would not only radically shrink the outfield, but also be at odds with any depicted stadium to date and would expose batters (and umps) to sun issues for summertime late afternoon and evening games.
I meant there are large variations (you are technically right, or course, that the whole 360′ field of possibilities is not seen). I believe Houston comes very close to what would seem to be optimal here – view wise – but that park is also encloseable so somewhat of an apples-to-crabapples comparison.
One of the most extreme variations from the prescribed “optimal” is Pittsburgh’s PNC Park which was obviously done to showcase the dramatic view of the skyline beyond right field across the river
i’m excited about a proposal here — but it needs to be honest about sea level rise and storm surge. it needs to be a resilient project. i encourage the A’s to extend their scope to include proposals to rebuild sections of the embarcadero and clinton basin into buffer zones to rehabilitate the area using resilient and sustainable strategies, potentially kickstarting a larger movement to prepare this area for the future.
all these neighborhoods — laney, merritt, peralta, clinton, san antonio, chinatown — are on the front lines of sea level rise. a huge community benefit would be to help the area respond to the realities of a changing climate.
i get really depressed when i see people opposed to projects that have enormous potential — as if preserving culture and affordable housing necessitates building nothing. that’s just not true. if we really want to preserve/save these neighborhoods, we need to think of complex, large-scale, integrated projects that will help our cities cope with climate change — we need envision the future, not long for the past.
go a’s.
not hugely concerned about storm surge in San Francisco Bay, but sea level rise is a very real thing.
If you want to preserve existing neighborhoods you build up to give the newcomers somewhere to go instead of displacing existing residents.
I wish all sports stadiums and arenas would relocate to another planet.
How about we put some of that private money into schools in Oakland. Much more needed and better use of the money. There is enough (fake fiat) money out there that no child should be without prober education, this is absurd! And what will become of the TWO other stadiums in Oakland!? Even if they are to be redeveloped, there is so much money being thrown around give some to the kids of Oakland. We need to give our future generations a chance. Ps I don’t live in Oakland and I don’t have kids. I am logical inhabitant of this floating rock called Earth.
The A’s are proposing working with Laney to give students experience in ballpark operations, management, computer graphics, video graphics, marketing, etc.
1. Sell Laney College, College of Alameda, and maybe even other community college lands
2. Move Laney and the College of Alameda to a new, state-of-the-art community college campus at the old Coliseum site. Bart accessible. Paid for (at least in part) by the sale of the land, real estate developer’s and the A’s.
3. Build a new A’s ballpark at the Laney College site. Re-vitalize the surrounding areas.
4. Develop the unused land around what was once Laney College and the College of Alameda. Residential, commercial, whatever.
Everybody wins.
Especially contractors!!
Please, I think the district has enough financial challenges w/o going all Sarah Winchester on everybody and replacing 2/3 of their campuses (campi?).
If Oakland screws this up, the A’s are gone for sure.
It’s important that the City of Oakland get behind this project 100%. A new ballpark on this site will benefit the entire city. Oakland needs to do what’s good for the bottom line. We need to focus on generating revenue in order to provide the best basic services and to maintain roads, parks, infrastructure, etc. It’s time to refuse to be governed by the tantrums of the few and do what’s best for the city over all.
There was a plan in the 1960’s to put a baseball stadium in pretty much the same spot as proposed here (grainy picture of rendering).
I also like the history of the current coliseum site being ‘former pg&e swamp land’ with mammoth tusks discovered during construction.
This location is actually pretty terrible. Also just gut and renovate the existing stadium. Maybe delete Mount Davis. You’ll save a ton of money. Use the area around the stadium for some mixed use development. The existing site is much better for transit than this Peralta site.
In related news: Plans to Deter Speculation around the Oakland A’s Ballpark Site