A’s moving to Fremont, California
Two papers, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, reported yesterday (while I was at the polls) that the A’s will be moving to Fremont, California into a new 36,000-seat stadium they’ll build with private money for about $300m.
This gets them out of the Al Davis Reconfigurable Hole, for one thing, and it’s also a fairly amusing way to move without going to San Jose, which the Giants claim as their territory, which
a) is a dumb claim in the first place and
b) is an excellent example of how stupid and counter-productive MLB’s territorial rights system is
Fremont, if you don’t have a map handy, is southeast of Oakland, a little more than half way between Oakland and San Jose. It’s across from Redwood City/Palo Alto. ESPN’s article includes a comparison table between Oakland and Fremont that includes a racial breakdown (no, really)
What’s this mean for the Mariners?
It’s bad. This is, in the long term, possibly the worst news of the off-season. Now, Billy Beane’s record with straight free agent signings is kind of ugly. Okay, it is ugly. And there’s an argument to be made that part of the A’s success has come from the restraints on their budget (which is like the Robert Frost argument that you had to write poetry using meter).
The people in charge of the A’s are smart. They’re not moving to Fremont unless they think it’ll substantially improve their financial situation from small, profitable operation into large, more profitable operation. Some of that money is going to go to the baseball side. And the team that beats the M’s like a drum over and over is going to be far better financed.
I’ve tried to think about what the A’s would do if they didn’t have to make signability picks. Would they look at the draft and still see players of essentially the same value, and pour money into international signings? Would they drop the pretense that drafting cheap guys in the first round is a good idea and go nuts, armed with more money and better slotting? Spend even more money dumpster-diving every year?
None of these possibilities are good news.
And at the major league level, are they going to open their pocketbooks to try and field a more-expensive team as they move in? Would the A’s even spend on free agents unless the market cools a little, or are they going to sign their guys to long-term deals to buy out free agent years?
The Mariners would be playing in a division without a poor kid, where every competitor they face in unbalanced play is well-funded. Things are going to get tougher. Hopefully the M’s will get smarter and be able to compete.
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I don’t see how it’s bad for the M’s to have to compete with the A’s on an even playing field. Frankly, having the A’s financially vaible is probably in the long term interests of both MLB and the Mariners. If both the M’s and A’s have a World Series champ once every twenty years, I think most of us would be pretty happy. As you say, the M’s will just have to be smarter. Billy Beane, anyone?
Ooops, that was “viable”.
That ESPN comparison table is very interesting. It starkly shows that the A’s are moving to a richer and more upscale town, which presumably will offer a greater revenue stream in terms of tickets, concessions, etc.
Maybe the Mariners should petition/beg to be moved to the NL West, where they did well against NL teams.
you combine the current ownership with a stadium situation where they will make money and it is not good for the folks up North.
Billy Beane, anyone?
Beane has an ownership stake in the A’s. We’ve talked about this before.
Most AL teams do well against NL teams, no? Move them all to the NL…
Do we know if they will now be the Fremont Athletics?
#6
I vote to call rename the Athletics to the Fremont Trolls.
Any takers?
They will be the California Athletics of Freemont, Los Angeles, and Oakland.
Being from SF all I have to say is Fremont sucks. I am, however, going to miss BART Double Play Games where view reserved tickets are $2 and hot dogs are $1 (maximum 10 per customer per order). Nothing says Oakland Coliseum like a brown tray stacked with cheap hot dogs and at least one person in your section being escorted out for being drunk and disorderly.
Fremont is also as far south as you can go on BART, so they’re still within easy reach of the entire East Bay on transit, which actually makes a pretty big difference. And San Joseans can drive there in no time. This is a formidable move. Though I’m shocked that there will only be 36,000 seats; when’s the last time a new stadium that small was built? 1904?
I say the Mariners need to sell to an owner that will be willing to go the extra mile and compete financially with the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, etc. or just have them move to the NL West.
ok, you go find that owner.
[stop!]
It’s not just MLB’s asinine territorial system: the lease extension the A’s signed (just last month) runs through 2010 (with extensions through 2013), but can be canceled without penalty if the team moves to another site in Alameda county. Fremont is in Alameda; San Jose is not. Of course, the Giant’s territory claim was hanging over those negotiations, so that undoubtedly influenced them, but clearly the county wanted the team to remain in Alameda and was probably willing to make other concessions to make it happen. They are really the Alameda A’s. Of Fremont.
For the A’s, it’s not so much being in Fremont as being out of Oakland, and Fremont is an easier (or at least shorter) drive up from San Jose and the rest of the valley.
BTW, the BizOfBaseball has some (very) preliminary renderings of the proposed park (swimming pools! movie stars!) Does everybody have to have a quirky pseudo-warehouse in the outfield now? That’s one nouveau-retro feature I’m glad SafeCo doesn’t have.
I’m actually happy for the A’s, despite the fact it will make it tougher on the M’s. I hate seeing stars leave their original team because they can’t afford them, not because they don’t want them. I guess that is a product of being an M’s fan in the 80′s and early/mid 90′s. I was happy to see the Twins sign Santana to the 4 year deal a couple years ago instead of having him hit the market and get that $800 million contract with the Yank’s.
Who knows if the A’s would have resigned any of their premier FA’s, but it would have been nice if they had the chance. Who knows if they’ll put their extra $$ to FA’s, draft picks, etc., but it will be interesting to see what Beane will do in a few years.
I’m more surprised that they’re staying in the Bay Area. I thought they’d be heading to Sacramento or Las Vegas in 2010.
Fremont isn’t so bad, really. It’s like Arlington, without Six Flags and the airport. Which is to say that it’s a big suburb.
I’d be more afraid if they’d moved to Portland. More money AND taking away 1/3rd of the M’s market.
Now that the A’s are moving again (for some strange reason) Are they now the team that has been moved the most in the 20th century besides the Braves and Angels?
The stadium concept will not fly as is – not sure what that thing is in center field (hotel? condo? auto plant?) but it lacks the plain, dark, non-reflective background that MLB requires behind pitchers. I also can’t envision awnings protruding onto the field of play (“OK, here’s the deal – lower awning is a double, upper awning is a triple, above that’s a home run…”). But I could never envision a hill in center field, and yet there it is, down in Houston.
Interesting to note, in the lower-right of the site rendering (in black/white) there appears to be a football stadium? Future home of the Fremont Raiders?
when’s the last time a new stadium that small was built? 1904?
2001. Not quite that small, but still small.
What’s the over/under on the number of comments deleted next season for spelling Fremont with an extra ‘e’?
[that's not an over-under]
Interesting discussion going on over at ESPN.com about the fact that revenue sharing has meant that most teams can afford to buy out the arbitration years of their star players now.
The Brewers did it with Sheets, Twins with Santana, there are a few more examples listed. Most of the teams are pretty flush with cash these days. Most of the free agents are going to be stars on the downside, the years of building a team by spending a lot in the free agent market may be waning. You’re going to start seeing lots more off season trades as the smart teams start looking for under valued players in other organizations.
The ebb and flow on how to construct a good roster will continue.
I have lots of family in the Bay Area. Fremont is very nice compared to Oakland, and the aunt that lives there lives in a lush, upscale, Bellevuean neighborhood with a grand 3 bedroom two story house.
This is like the old Mariners moving out of the Kingdome and into Redmond.
I wonder how the new park will play. McAfee Coliseum just kills offense. They’ll be farther from the murky, foggy parts of the Bay, and having been there many times, it can be foggy and dank in Oakland… and perfectly sunny and balmy in Fremont at the same time. Their offense may take off, and the offesive numbers for the other AL West teams could see a bit of uptick playing 9-10 games a year there.
I believe the cutoff for inclusion in the 20th century has passed, Coach Owens.
Okay, I’m including the 21st century. I think you know what I meant though.
I’m not sure that this is the smartest thing for the A’s. Are they really that scared to fight the Giants for the rights to San Jose? Downtown SJ makes more sense; downtown stadiums are the trend, not suburban ones. Maybe the A’s feel that the Giants could just outspend and out wait them in a court fight over SJ that could last years beyond the A’s coliseum lease. You could say that the Orioles lost their rights to DC when a team moved there, but that team was owned by baseball, and baseball were gonna make that happen to get the Expos out of Montreal and out of their hands. Maybe the A’s just don’t have the support inside baseball for a move to SJ, even thought downtown SJ would be better than next to an old racetrack in Fremont.
Assuming Billy’s shit still works when he has a chequebook, rather than 4 evenly matched teams this division now has one dominant team and 3 teams playing catch-up.
Oh, and now that they have future revenue, any chance they placed a bid on Matsuzaka?
That would definitely make this the worst news of the offseason.
Should we hope that the Ms get smarter (much like hoping the great pumpkin visits the pumpkin patch) or should we hope that Oakland will eventually get dumber through an act of God or retirement (which is probably more like choosing to go trick or treating)?
oh and by the way, isn’t time virginia was called already? geeeshhhhh…
36,000-seat stadium they’ll build with private money for about $300m.
What? Private money? All privately funded stadium? In this day and age? Wow.
IIRC, if a stadium is privately funded you can take a dollar for dollar deduction from the monies your org. would contribute to the revenue sharing pool. I remember reading something about this in regards to the Yankees and the stadium that they are building.
It’d breakdown by year, So if it takes 3 years to build it’d be assumed that they are spending $100million/year. It works out like a tax break of sorts.
It might not be dollar for dollar though. I’ll see if I can find the article.
I am surprised that they are even trying to fight the Giants by staying in the Bay Area. I have been saying for years that the best thing for the A’s would be to move out to Sacramento where there is more money and they are far enough from the Giants that they would not be competing with them for fans. If people in the Bay Area really cared about the A’s then they would be able to fill (or close to fill) the stadium in it current configuration (they closed the top deck this season). Oakland is surrounded by towns with money, Bart makes it easy to get to games, and the traffic to Oakland is not too bad compared to getting to SF. Yet people travel into SF for the Giants games, but not A’s games.
And Fremont A’s, come on, that is just lame.
The Angels have only moved once, from Dodger Stadium in LA to their current stadium in Anaheim, which is barely a move (new stadium but same greater metropolitan area). The team’s been renamed three times, but that’s not a move. The Braves have legitimately moved twice, from Boston to Milwaukee and Milwaukee to Atlanta. The A’s have moved twice, from Philly to KC and KC to Oakland, so this would make three.
A little-known two-mover is the Orioles, who played one year in Milwaukee before moving to St. Louis as the Browns, then moving to Baltimore in 1954.
Skisulli: Two reasons fans go to Giants games instead of A’s games — Barry Bonds and the new stadium. “PacBell, SBC, ATT, Insert Dime Here” Park is a fantastic place to watch a ballgame. I’d even watch, well, the Giants there!
Cisco Park (it’s official, Cisco has given up their lease agreement and will have the naming rights) will be a huge benefit to the A’s and A’s fans. They are fighting the Giants the old fashioned way — providing a better product.
If you count moves to new cities there are only 2 move franchises, but what if you count moves to new ballparks? Cincinnati is in its 4th, Detroit is in its 4th, the Giants have been in at least 4. Can anyone come up with a franchise that has played in more than 4 different ballparks (meaning different locations — I don’t count Anaheim and old/new Yankee Stadium as 2 stadiums).
I fully admit to cheating on this one, but how about the Braves? According to baseball-reference, they’ve played at:
South End Grounds I
South End Grounds II
South End Grounds III
Fenway Park I
Braves Field
County Stadium
Atlanta Fulton County Stadium
Turner Field
Even if you count the South Ends Grounds entries as one (as ballparks.com does) and throw out their time at Fenway, that’s still a legitimate five. Check it out.
The Braves have been playing since 1871, I’d imagine they’ve played just about everywhere.
This is a great, great move for the As, and it makes so much sense. As an ex-East Bayer, here’s the breakdown: Fremont started out pretty much like Renton, but with the unrelenting upswing in property values, and the Silicon Valley flow over it’s become pretty much like Bothell. A significant minority of the population is of (India) Indian extraction now, too. Now, imagine if the Ms were to move from a butt-ugly, offense-destroying, concrete toilet bowel squeezed in between SeaTac Airport and Riverton Heights to a mega-spiff, new, guaranteeded-sellout, pavilion in Bothell. Uh-huh. As Gomez sez in #30, Fremont is also very significantly more sunny and warm in a ‘golden, rolling hills of California’ way than Oakland; one of those micro-climate things. Folks can be freezin’ their collective tokhus in SF, in limbo in the Oakland mudflats, and smilin’ in the sun in Fremont at exactly the same time.
Now, to make the financials work in the Bay Area, the As have to draw from the East Bay: fine, the stadium will still be on the BART line, which is crucial. However, the As absolutely must draw from Contra Costa County just east of the ridgeline back of the East Bay, though, which is an end-to-end suburb from Concord down to Livermore with many hundreds of thousands of folks with the dough to pay for box seats. The As need to draw something from Stockton-Sacto further out, too. But it’s just those latter folks who have stayed away from the concrete ruin on the edge of one of the least desirable slums in California that is East Oakland. You can’t park your car on the street most of the time, so you have to pay for parking west of the freeway near the stadium. Oh, and to get their from Contra Costa you have to traverse the worst of the nasty traffic down through the center of Oakland. But Fremont has access to Contra Costa via Castro Valley which is as fast as driving from, well, Kent to Bothell; easy does it. If the As went to Sacto, very, very few folks from San Jose or even the East Bay would drive out that far to see them; in essence, the team would kiss the major population center of the region goodbye. Now, they can still draw something from Sacto while locking in their share of the Bay Area’s fanbase, with a good bet to boost their share from Contra Costa at last.
The stadium design was a bit cheesy when put out for public review awhile back, but it can be tweaked. The key is to keep the size down to a realistic figure for what they can draw, while the low number increases the push for the sell out. Really, this is as good a package for that organization as they could put together without moving to an entirely different state. And I like the fundamentals of staying in the Bay Area a lot more than I like betting on Vegas.
Good move at last by the movers and shakers behind the As. . . . I think I’ll become an As fan again. I mean, they’re turning out a team worth rooting for at least.
I too agree that this is a great move. While I loved the atmosphere in the bleachers (seat-yourself is pretty darn cool), and the bratwurst was cheap and extremely good, the actual stadium was a dump, and was just one eyesore among many in the area. Building them a real stadium in a nice area can only help them (and hurt us). However, as a closet semi-A’s fan, I can’t help but be cheered by this.
Fremont is way nicer than effing Bothell….
Exodus
I know it’s been five years since I moved from the Northwest and the hills of View Ridge above Sandpoint Way over looking Lake Washington, but when did Bothell become a desirable area?
This really isn’t off topic because its about franchises moving: Is there any truth to the rumor of Sexson and Clement to the Tigers for Bondermann??
Is there any truth to the rumor of Sexson and Clement to the Tigers for Bondermann??
Aaaaaand that’s about franchises moving how again?
#42–but when did Bothell become a desirable area?
since no one can afford to live in Seattle proper?
#44: Bonderman is a francise
since no one can afford to live in Seattle proper?
Some of us choose small houses and high property taxes in Seattle because our commute is under 30 minutes.
I could get twice as much house in the suburbs for what we’re about to pay for this house we’re buying, but the commute makes it worth it. More family time. Games are an easy bus ride away.
I think that may bite the A’s on the butt pretty hard, honestly. They’re putting 20 miles between them and the old center of their fanbase. Fremont isn’t a town that’s going to give them walk-up sales, something that PacSBCAT&TYourNameHere Park will always have in the heart of San Fran or the stadiums here do. And that means the A’s are going to have to build a “destination” complex with monster parking lots and all sorts of crap. It’s going to look like Arlington, only without Six Flags right next door.
In the long term, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Seattle will do pretty well by having teams in CBDs and bordering residential areas. Teams with suburban parks, though, will hurt without a mass transit system easily and conveniently linking them to residential areas and the CBD.
The proposed stadium site is 5 1/2 miles from the last BART station. Using transit to get there is not an option unless significant public investment in extending the BART line or an efficient shuttle is created. That is not going to happen just for less than 1/2 million riders per year (guessing 7k riders per game x 82). The key to long term viability of this location is the associated residential development adjacent to the stadium. Several 1,000′s of units could be built on the 143 acre site and the adjacent land is also very underdeveloped. Envision all this built out and extending BART begins to make sense.
But for a long time this will be a VERY suburban stadium and the only convenient way to get there will be by car.
For you double-e watchers, the P-I used “FREEMONT” in a subhead this morning. Unbelievable; we have a Fremont here, too, you know.
This is a bad move for the A’s, and I beleive it was made out of desparation to get out of their terrible stadium. What would have made the most sense (and something they gave up on too easily) would be building a stadium in downtown Oakland.
Let me correct a few things:
-The new stadium will not be on the BART line. The current stadium is an easy walk over a bridge from BART. The new stadium would require a shuttle ride of a couple of miles from the nearest BART station.
-Traffic to Fremont is terrible. The 880 between Oakland and San Jose is clogged with traffic on most days, at most times of day. The whole stretch is an industrial mess.
-Fremont is not nicer than Oakland. It has a lot of suburban mid-century style homes, but as a whole, they are not as nice as the homes in the Oakland hills, Rockridge area, or North Oakland. It is true that Fremont is sunnier than Oakland and San Franciso, but so are most places in the world.
-Oakland is a much more centralized location for a baseball stadium than Fremont. It is much easier to get to Oakland than Fremont. People from all parts of the Bay Area can drive in on the Bay Bridge, the 80, the 24, the 580, or the 880 freeways. Or they can take BART from the Fremont line, the Dublin line, the Pittsburg/Bay Point line, or the various San Francisco lines. The only reasonable option for traveling to this new stadium location is driving on the 880 (or the 680 and transfering over.
-Parking in Fremont will be harder than the current location. The Stadium parking lot is not that expensive, and it rarely fills up. It is like the only parking lot in the world that has enough room to support all the tailgating of the Raider Nation. The part of Fremont where the stadium is planned is filled with long boulevards with few outlets and tilt-up office complexes. The only reasonable way to handle the multitudes of cars that will need to come in (because the BART shuttle will be such a pain) will be to build a parking structure (and it ain’t going to be cheaper than the current situation.
I think the comparison to Bothell is not bad. Lynnwood would be better.It is far from Seattle, sort of near Everett but not really. Is not really that nice. And there is really no reason to go there unless you are driving through or if you live there. Federal way isn’t a bad comparison either.
Ask yourself this, Would you go to more Mariners Games in Safeco field where it is (or better yet, in the north parking lot site) or if it were in Lynwood?
I think the comparison to Bothell is not bad. Lynnwood would be better. It is far from Seattle, sort of near Everett but not really.
I think Lynnwood is a poor comparison. Right now, the Coliseum is about 6 miles from downtown Oakland, which is about the distance from downtown Seattle to Northgate Mall. The stadium site is 28 miles from downtown Oakland. Everett Memorial Stadium is 27 miles from downtown Seattle.
So, imagine living in Seattle or Bellevue and driving to Everett for games. Or the T-Dome. That’s a looong trip each way.
#33 Steve T. – I know this doesn’t count as a move really, but the Angels also played in Wrigley Field for a year. No, not THE Wrigley Field (but it was built by the Cubs). So that’s three stadiums. Ok, so it was only for one year and they were in a different league, but it was the same team.
Jason – counting the South End Grounds as one location the Braves have six.
The Cubs have six:
Wrigley Field
Comiskey Park
South Side Park (parts of three years)
West Side Park
Lakefront Park
23rd Street Grounds
Counting the Dodgers brief but historic appearances in Roosevelt Stadium they have six:
Dodger Stadium
LA Memorial Coliseum
Ebbets Field
Roosevelt Stadium (15 games in ’56 and ’57 including Jackie Robinson’s debut)
Washington Park
Eastern Park
I think the Giants (also as the Gothams) have six if you don’t count their two games in Oakland Park in 1889:
Pac Bell Park
Candlestick Park
Seals Stadium
Polo Grounds
Hilltop Park (two months in ’11)
St. George Grounds, Staten Island (April and June 1889)
I thought the Phillies had more different parks, but I think National League Park, Huntington Grounds, Philadelphia Baseball Grounds and Baker Bowl were all on the same location or the same park:
Citizens Bank Park
Veterans Stadium
Shibe Park/Connie Mack
Columbia Park (16 games 1903)
National League Park/Huntington Grounds/Baker Bowl
Recreation Park
But I think the Reds have seven legitimately different parks and I think they played in all of them for significant amounts of time:
Union Grounds
Avenue Grounds
Bank Street Grounds
American Park/League Park/Palace of the Fans
Crosley/Redland Field
Riverfront Stadium
Great American Ballpark
The Yankees, Pirates and Reds have five and a bunch of teams have four.
Obviously I found more parks for the Reds and didn’t revise my last sentence.
dw said,
Everett Memorial stadium is 27 miles from downtown Seattle.
This is my point exactly. This stadium is going to be a long way from pretty much everywhere, and there is not boing to be an easy way to get there. Sure it’s closer to San Jose, but it is significantly farther and harder to get to from most of the bay area than the current site is (which is not that well-located in the first place) or a site in downtown Oakland.
The move closer to San Jose is significant. San Jose is over twice the size of Oakland (900,000 to 400,000 — Seattle, by comparison, is just under 600,000). San Jose is also significantly more affluent.
The plan is not perfect. But given the territorial restrictions, the area’s population sprawl, and the fact that traffic will be a problem no matter where the A’s put the stadium, targeting the South Bay market is a smart move. For South Bay baseball fans, it will be a much shorter drive to see the A’s than the Giants. The Angels have shown that a team can thrive in essentially a suburban location.
-Traffic to Fremont is terrible. The 880 between Oakland and San Jose is clogged with traffic on most days, at most times of day. The whole stretch is an industrial mess.
So it’s worse for people driving from San Jose and Silicon Valley to drive 27 miles less in that traffic?
I’m sorry, but if you think there’s more money in Oakland than in all of San Jose / Santa Clara county / the valley, you’ve been spending a little too much time inhaling Marin’s finest. Right now if you live down there and you want to skip out of work early to go to a ballgame, you’re far more likely to go see the Giants. This shifts things much more in the A’s favor. It’s a shame, really, because the A’s have always been kind of the blue collar team in the area and there aren’t many of those left. But I’m sure the owners would much rather look out and see a parking lot full of BMWs rather than worry about folks arriving on mass transit or walkups.
The As don’t draw at a viable long-term level where they are now. There _is_ no walk-up draw per se, the team’s playing to 12-15K a game, and the luxury box crowd which all sports franchises have their hearts set on see nothing to like where the team is located now. Moving them to Downtown Oakland does nothing to change their demographics; a nice new stadium would help, but only in the near term. From the standpoint of ‘centrality,’ Emeryville, where the old Pacific League teams used to play, is ideal, or the Berkely waterfront. Land in either place is likely just impossible to get, and prohibitively expensive if available.
But the real issue is that the As must find a way to boost their draw from outside the East Bay corridor; they must draw _significantly_ more from Contra Costa, ideally draw more from out the Livermore corridor to Stockton and Sacto, and really need to draw much more from San Jose. Building in and around Oakland only condemns the As to perpetual attendance inferiority. If they build in Contra Costa, they can forget drawing from San Jose and the West Bay. If they build in San Jose, even if they could, they can forget drawing from much of the East Bay, and northern Contra Costa. Building in the Fremont area is really the only choice for boosting draw from all regions. Also, Fremont is directly accessible by bridge from the Peninsula, and while that region is Giants country, the As can hope to accrue some gains to at least offset attendance losses from up Richmond way. 880 sucks, sure: like the freeways in Downtown Oakland _aren’t_ a bumper to bumper crawl midday through rush hour, hey? If the stadium isn’t on BART now . . . that’s not good. That said, BART has been extended before, and the team can at least work toward this in the future. Fremont to San Jose is the most likely of all BART extensions to get any action, and on grounds quite independent of the team.
The site’s not a certain bet, but it’s better than the alternatives, to me, and could really pay off. Personally, I’d rather have a stadium in Emeryville, but it just makes no sense because it won’t make any money.
A few responses:
-A BART extension to San Jose is already being worked on. It has been planned and accepted. The nearest stop to the planned stadium site will be two miles away. They are not going to make a detour fromt he route that has already been selected.
-Emeryville is about 2 miles from the sites that were considered for downtown Oakland. It is not more central. BART does not go there, but all BART lines go through downtown Oakland.
-the Cities of Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon, and Livermore (i.e., the Livermore Valley) are in Alameda County, not Contra Costa. Downtown Oakland is more accessible to all of these cities than Fremont is. Contra Costa County is located north of Alameda County, making downtown Oakland much more accessible to its residents.
-Downtown Oakland is also more accessible to the growing Central Valley communities of Tracy, Brentwoon, Stockton, and Sacramento (home of the River Cats). Oakland currently draws from all of these areas, and a new stadium more suited to baseball and in a more central location would definitely increase this draw.
-I never tried to argue that there is more money in Oakland than in the entire south bay… only that there are plenty of nice places in Oakland.. and that it is certainly more interesting and a better place to visit than Fremont. My main point, however, is that the central location of downtown Oakland is accessible to many more people than a Fremont location.
For the A’s, it appears that a central location took a backseat to a closer proximity to the highest concentration of people with the most disposable income. There is a reason that San Jose has a Gap and a Cheesecake Factory, but downtown Oakland does not.