Here we go again – out of the pan and into the fire.
The opportunists who thought nothing of driving struggling Sacramento into financial ruin with their downtown arena scheme are laying the groundwork for an even more grandiose scheme.
Instead of a new $391 million arena for the Kings at the old railyard site, Sacramento’s ever-ambitious mayor, Kevin Johnson, is floating a plan for a $500 million baseball stadium at the site. This is hardly surprising because the railyard site and nearby city land parcels act like catnip upon the mayor’s developer buddies.
The mayor thought nothing of trying to gamble $255 million in public money to keep the Kings in town, so it would be unsurprising to see him try to toss far more into the pot to lure a major league team to the capital and build a stadium for the boys of summer. The mayor and his task force, Think Big Sacramento, are wedded to the concept of “public-private partnerships,” also known as corporate subsidies, corporate welfare and taxpayer ripoffs.
What is surprising is that the mayor, who touted the need for regional cooperation during the arena fiasco and depicted himself as a staunch ally of local business, is willing to hurt West Sacramento’s impressive riverfront revival, especially the privately funded Raley Field and its popular and successful tenants, the Sacramento River Cats Triple A baseball team.
“Sacramento must seize control of its own future,” the mayor declared in this morning’s Sacramento Bee. “We cannot rely on others, or wait for something to come along.”
If a major league team did come to Sacramento, the Bee story said, it would almost certainly undermine the River Cats because a major league team would have the authority to send the River cats packing.
The story, headlined “City swings for the fences,” highlights the mayor’s penchant for grandiose solutions to complicated economic problems that took years to develop and will take years to unravel. As is also the mayor’s style, he didn’t bother to shore up support for his grandiose vision from those who would be most affected.
“We have no knowledge of anything that is going on,” said River Cats spokesman Zak Basch.
Yolo County Supervisor Mike McGowan said he’d like to see Sacramento work with the city of West Sacramento on redeveloping the waterfront rather than looking for the economic home run.
“West Sacramento has the most successful professional sports team in the region,” McGowan said. “Why you want to muck around with that doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t say much for an understanding of regional cooperation.”
What does make sense is an ambitious mayor and his developer buddies see the downtown railyard site as a tempting opportunity to advance their own agendas if only they can get their hands on an ever-increasing bundle of public money.
Lot’s to say on this one but the more I think about it, the baseball at the railyard concept laps the Kings at the Arena Railyard concept several times in the pie in the sky department. The city is scouring its couch for enough change to keep a 41 game per year, 20,000 fan a game team in town but we’re going to up the ante to an 81 games, 35,000 fans per game. Let’s not forget space. In conceptual drawings, the arena was shoe-horned into the railyard- with the rail station becoming an afterthought. Now, it’s hundreds of feet of Kentucky Bluegrass between homeplate and centerfield. Is the train going through center field like in that movie, “Brewster’s Millions” and will they have to stop the game when that happens? And the typical Sacramento baseball fan has no place for the A’s- they prefer the SF Giants and the Rivercats.
But we’ll hear about Sacramento’s storied baseball history. About how Ted Williams, Joe Dimaggio, and Billy Martin once played ball in Sacramento as visitors from other Pacific Coast League teams. The Bee will consist of columns on how Sacramento youth would be able to tell stories to their grandkids of Josh Hamilton and Justin Verlander coming town or catching the Yankees at the railyards or Woodland’s Dustin Pedoia coming home with the Red Sox. And some columnists will tell their own baseball stories. And how a new ballpark will honor that history, those dreams, and bring them to Sacramento’s future.
And if the ballpark campaign takes off, sadly, the namecalling will continue. The uninformed, anti-business, hating, and naysaying yahoos who hate Sacramento and have it out for Mayor KJ will be asking silly questions about cost, environmental impact, and the effect on the city’s budget. We will be told there is no other choice for the railyard- because the last take or leave it plan vaporized during a long, detailed and fascinating Power Point presentation by the Maloofs lawyer and economist in New York. While this dialogue is going on, the City of Sacramento will still live under reduced services and increased fees.
And finally, there’s the Oakland A’s ownership. The A’s are the team that Think Big is gunning for (will Think Big’s logo go from purple and black to green and gold?). Will their ownership who has pushed for San Jose and Silicon Valley ticket buyers ever since they signed the check to buy the team change gears to moving to a city with a much weaker economy? And one of their owners, Lew Wolff, is also a developer. Why would he move here to help developers not named Lew Wolff cash in on the railyards- unless if those other developers find Lew an acceptably sized piece of the action?
But then again, Ron Burkle could buy the A’s and move them to Sacramento.
Yes, Jason, the “visionaries” will be reduced to name-calling again.
I don’t understand people who use the Rivercats (a triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s) and the development of West Sacramento as an excuse to keep a professional team out of the area/the development of the Railyard. That would be like the Crocker turning down the opportunity to exhibit the Michelangelo because it would have a negative impact on their Wayne Thibeaux exhibit. (Don’t get me wrong–I’m a huge Wayne Thiebaud fan and have his poster in my house.) Foolish argument.
What’s foolish is destroying viable businesses in pursuit of a stadium that would suck the life out of the local economy.