High Stakes in Stadium Maneuvers
Several Bay Area sports teams may move – costing both money and fans
By: Zusha Elinson
Jed York, the 29-year-old president of the 49ers, made his way to the American Legion hall in Santa Clara on Tuesday night.
The lodge was draped in streamers, and filled with hundreds of fans enjoying beer and barbecued pork sandwiches while awaiting a different kind of final score.
The Niners, who have not made the playoffs since 2002, would win big on this election night, which may ultimately be remembered as the moment when 11,368 people — well shy of the turnout for an average pre-season game — reshaped the Bay Area sports scene.
“You know, I think I’m one of the luckiest people in the world,” York told the raucous crowd after the votes were tallied.
Santa Clara’s passage of Measure J, a $937 million stadium proposal, by 11,368 to 7,713 (as of Thursday), was the first significant move in a stadium chess game that involves a number of major sports franchises in the area. Those involved include local sports legends and Internet entrepreneurs, and the outcome will affect not only the teams and their fans but also local economies.
In many respects, the Niners’ proposed move to Santa Clara reflects the continuing shift in economic power from San Francisco to Silicon Valley. The A’s are also pursuing a move to San Jose, alienating some fans in strapped Oakland.
Even before Tuesday’s vote, the 49ers were informally shopping naming rights to the new South Bay stadium for $200 million, according to an industry source familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
“It’s a natural migration,” Jamie Matthews, an ebullient Santa Clara councilman, said Tuesday at the party after the vote. “It’s the wealth, it’s the infrastructure, and it can’t hurt that we have 300 days of sunshine a year.”
Roger G. Noll, a sports economist at Stanford, agreed. “Why San Jose? Follow the money,” Noll said. “Silicon Valley is the place to be if you want rich companies throwing money at luxury boxes and corporate sponsorships.”
The Santa Clara vote may have a direct impact on the fortunes of other Bay Area teams. The Raiders also want a new home badly, and few observers believe there is money for two football stadiums. Meanwhile, the Warriors are for sale, and the Giants are considering buying a piece of the team as part of a larger plan to build an arena near AT& amp;T Park.
The wrangling has led to an inordinate amount of intrigue in the Bay Area sports world. The Niners spent $4.1 million in support of the Santa Clara measure — more dollars per vote than Meg Whitman spent in the Republican primary for governor. And yet some officials, chief among them Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, remain unconvinced that the team will actually leave Candlestick Park, its home since 1971.
“When the Santa Clara plan falls apart, San Francisco stands ready to welcome its 49ers home,” Newsom said Wednesday.
San Francisco’s relationship with the 49ers broke down long ago with John York, Jed’s father and the team’s co-owner, at odds with Newsom over plans for a new stadium for the city.
Carmen Policy, 67, the renowned former 49ers president, whose teams won four Super Bowls in the 1980s and ’90s, is working with San Francisco to keep the team in the city.
“What happened was a personal breakdown between the City of San Francisco and John York,” Policy said in an interview. “Once Jed York, the son, took over, he decided to follow through with his father’s plans.”
The proposed 68,500-seat Santa Clara stadium, which would be built on the parking lot at Great America, would open for the 2014 season. With Measure J successfully out of the way, the team is turning to the difficult task of raising the nearly $1 billion needed to build it.
The Niners are relying on a potentially risky financing scheme, according to local government officials and sports economists. Of the anticipated financing, $493 million would come from the 49ers and the N.F.L., and $114 million from the city and a new hotel tax. The team hopes to raise most of the remaining $330 million by selling the naming rights as well as personal seat licenses, that is, paying for the right to buy a choice seat.
In an interview, York said that “one way or another” the 49ers would get the money. He denied that the team had tried to put a $200 million price tag on the stadium naming rights.
Noll, the Stanford economist, predicted that financing hurdles still might sink the deal in Santa Clara, saying, “There’s only a 50 percent chance that it gets built.” With the economy still in recovery and the N.F.L.’s fund for new stadiums currently empty, the league has encouraged the 49ers and the Raiders to build a stadium together.
But that does not seem likely to happen soon. For their part, the Raiders say they will continue to pursue a new stadium on their own.
“We wish them well with their stadium-related efforts as we know they wish us well with ours,” Amy Trask, the Raiders’ chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message.
As for the 49ers, Policy said a joint project would be impossible as long as Al Davis, 80, owned the Raiders.
“Let me say this,” Policy said. “Al Davis is a Hall of Famer, but he’s not the kind of guy you want to be a partner. He’s just not capable of making the kind of deal that becomes palatable to the 49ers.”
Where that leaves the Raiders is anybody’s guess.
“You don’t have to be Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke or Tim Geithner to figure out that there aren’t going be two billion-dollar stadiums built in the Bay Area in our lifetime,” said Andy Dolich, who served as chief operating officer of the 49ers until earlier this year.
For many fans, the teams’ search for new homes has become intensely personal.
On May 9, Lew Wolff , the 74-year-old A’s owner who also owns the San Jose Earthquakes, invited Jorge Leon, a fan, and his friends to watch an A’s game in a luxury box at the Coliseum. Wolff wanted to explain to them why he was trying to move the team to San Jose. Leon had been ejected from a game three weeks earlier for holding up a sign that read “Lew Wolff lied, he never tried,” a dig at the owner’s public statements that he had exhausted all efforts to get a stadium deal in Oakland.
That night, the owner told Leon, a San Leandro lab technician who had “Oakland A’s” tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, that he had wanted to build a stadium in Oakland, but that the city could not come up with the land.
Leon and his friends talked with the A’s owner from the third inning on, at first hardly noticing that Dallas Braden was on his way to pitching a perfect game. Wolff left in the seventh inning, pulling on an Earthquakes jacket as he walked out of the suite.
Leon said he came away from the evening unconvinced by Wolff.
“I want the A’s to stay in Oakland,” he said. “They bring so much pride to the city.”