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Santa Clara gets plan to build ballpark for A's
April 24, 2001

By Robert Gammon
STAFF WRITER

A South Bay booster club has presented to Santa Clara officials a preliminary plan to build a new ballpark for the Oakland A's in Silicon Valley, including a request of $67.5 million in public bond funds and loans.

The draft proposal, disclosed last week in a private meeting that included A's officials, outlines a plan for a $274.5 million, 45,000-seat stadium near Great America amusement park.

A's co-owner Steve Schott has expressed strong interest in moving the baseball team to Santa Clara, in part because he does not believe the A's can compete financially at Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland.

The plan, to be presented to the Santa Clara City Council in the coming weeks, calls for Santa Clara's Redevelopment Agency to float $55 million in bonds. The proposal -- developed by the booster club, the Santa Clara Stadium Association -- also includes $12.5 million in loans from city-owned utilities.

About $110 million in stadium financing would come from corporate naming rights and sponsorships, along with the sale of charter/personal seat licenses -- the fees fans pay for the right to buy season tickets.

The A's would contribute about $82 million in rent payments. The plan also calls for the city of Santa Clara to provide free to the A's a section of a 40-acre parcel next to Great America that had been set aside for a parking garage.

Still, some of the finer points of the plan have yet to be revealed. For example, the Santa Clara City Manager's Office said Monday it is not sure whether the financing, as proposed, adds up.

"It's not clear how they get up to $275 million needed to build the stadium," Santa Clara Assistant City Manager Ron Garratt said of the booster club and its plans. "That's the 800-pound gorilla."

Garratt also said the ballpark, which is to be modeled after the intimately charming new stadiums going up around the country, could end up costing more than $300 million. The privately financed Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco came to about $360 million, and construction costs in the Bay Area have increased significantly in the last few years.

Moreover, it remains to be seen how the $55 million in bonds would be paid off. In Oakland, taxpayers were left holding the bag when personal seat license sales and other stadium financing schemes failed to generate enough money to pay for the expansion of Network Associates Coliseum for the Oakland Raiders.

Booster club officials would not comment on details of the proposal, saying they are unhappy the draft plans were made public by city staffers. Nevertheless, they reiterated their pledge to not use the city's general funds or to place them at risk.

"We're not backing away from our commitment that we will put together a proposal for a ballpark without using the city's general funds," said Larry Stone, Santa Clara County Assessor and vice chairman of the Stadium Association. "That still stands."

A's President Mike Crowley also would not comment on the financing details, saying "there's a lot of work to be done." Crowley also declined comment on whether the A's fully endorse the booster club's plans.

"We have to keep our options open," he said. "One of those options is Santa Clara ... and one is Oakland."

Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb has been advocating for a new A's ballpark near downtown Oakland, either on the Laney College campus or at the Ninth Avenue Terminal owned by the Port of Oakland.

Santa Clara city staffers, meanwhile, plan to huddle again with the booster club and the A's in the next few weeks to hammer out more details before presenting the proposal to the Santa Clara City Council.

However, the stadium financing issues likely will not be the biggest hurdle facing the A's. The most significant barrier to moving promises to be the San Francisco Giants territorial rights claim on Santa Clara County which, under current Major League Baseball rules, prohibits any team from moving to the South Bay.

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