At least one city leader has not given up on the hope to bring the A's to Fremont, according to media reports.
The Fremont Argus reported that Fremont Vice Mayor Anu Natarajan mentioned the A's while discussing the significance of creating a unique anchor for the city's proposed downtown area at the Fremont City Council's Feb. 12 meeting.
According to the Argus, A's co-owner Lew Wolff was vocal about moving the Athletics into Fremont between 2006 and 2009, but started working on moving the A's to San Jose after the housing market crashed and residents expressed opposition, The Argus reported.
While The Argus reported that city officials have not discussed the possibility with A's personnel, Natarajan said the A's plans to move to the South Bay seemed to have been stalled and that "she would like to revisit the idea.
"If nothing is happening in San Jose, I believe Fremont needs to be at the table, even if the chance is remote," Natarajan told the Argus.
Wolff told The Argus on Friday that his focus is still on the South Bay.
Click here to read the full report from The Argus.
Would you want the A's to move to the Tri-Cities? Share your thoughts in our comments section below.
Note that none of those cities are famous or considered major-league cities. What do they get - periodic traffic jams that interfere with their citizens' lives, episodic low-paying jobs, leftover trash from game days, more drunken drivers, and some overtime for their police force. Why in the world would anyone want to be a major league city's whipping boy?
I would never imply that NYC is not a major-league city. The point is that all the little suburbs that took on major league teams (Meadowlands, Foxboro, Irving, Arlington) don't become major league cities. They just become places that major league cities drop their problems on. Just what tax revenues would the stadium bring in that rational development of the land wouldn't bring in? The land is owned by ProLogis, a private real estate company. They propose a Santana Row-like development to help finance the stadium. Like shops and residents want to be next to a place that makes it impossible to come and go 1/3 of the time? The local city gets about 17% (average) of property taxes. They get 3/4 of cent of the sales tax on each dollar. I haven't done the math, but a high-end shopping center like Santana Row and over 3000 homes have to come pretty close to matching, or exceeding, the revenue from a stadium. And it increases the value of the surrounding property rather than decreasing it.
It's true in the case of the Patriots that Gillette is secluded without and major development nearby. Part of that is that a football stadium hosts 8 games a season whereas baseball 81. The other part is that it's just a rural-suburban spot it was built. I would argue that an appropriate spot in Fremont would do for it what AT&T did to China Basin. Obviously if the A's got a home south of Automall near the bay on a large undeveloped area, it wouldn't have the same effect. More and more, we see new baseball stadiums being built in downtown areas. The new Nationals ballpark in Washington is another great success story.
And I could point out that Candlestick Park has not exactly revitalized the area. It's not as simple as building a stadium and things get good. If I were a business on Automall Parkway I wouldn't want a stadium to make it hard for my customers to shop on game days. If I were a bar or restaurant I might have a different perspective though.