Oakland A's Attendance Woes Featured in Chronicle Today (Alameda, London: crime, construction)

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

Denial is the longest, saddest river, for those lost in their own ignorance.

Talk about Ironic.

[Mr. Fantastic]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

Talk about Ironic.

So you know how to use the word next time:

Irony | Define Irony at Dictionary.com

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

So you know how to use the word next time:

Irony | Define Irony at Dictionary.com

LOL...blame yourself. You walked right into that one.

Hilarious.

[Mr. Fantastic]

Signs you have lost:

1) Crying when someone criticizes your town
2) Laughing at your own jokes.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

Signs you have lost:

1) Crying when someone criticizes your town
2) Laughing at your own jokes.

Actually Im laughing at the pathetic people who have no stake or claim to anything in my town whatsoever yet they act like they know more than we do.

That doesnt sound strange to you? That you would spend so much of your time on C-D bashing a city you have never lived in, and have very limited experience in and its a place you don't really understand-yet post so authoritatively? That's absurd-but here you are anyway, spewing.

And then once we shred their trollish posts to bits, they repeat the same old tired statements over and over again. Usually the same blanket generalizations.

Its funny-and bizarre at the same time.

[Mr. Fantastic]

1) Crying when someone criticizes your town

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

1) Crying when someone criticizes your town

See what I mean folks?

bizarre.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by Oakland Uptown

What makes you think any of that that will change if the team leaves? Did you not read this ?

New A̢۪s ballpark in Oakland could reap $2.6B, study says - San Francisco Business Times:

I read it -- and no where -- not one place -- does it state how much money the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda will have to give back in tax incentives and subsidies to keep that team.

Does no one remember the Oakland Raider debacle? That cost the taxpayers dearly. FOR YEARS....

And they are estimating they'll generate 87 million dollars a year? What are they smoking, I want some. The A's total profit last year was 22 million.

And who's gonna come up with the 400 million to pay for building a new stadium? At only 22 million dollars in profit it sure isn't gonna be the A's. It's gonna be me. The TAXPAYER.

And I'm done. I don't wanna. No more. The line in the sand is drawn, it's time for them to GO.

[llowllevellowll]

Originally Posted by Tallysmom

I read it -- and no where -- not one place -- does it state how much money the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda will have to give back in tax incentives and subsidies to keep that team.

Does no one remember the Oakland Raider debacle? That cost the taxpayers dearly. FOR YEARS....

And they are estimating they'll generate 87 million dollars a year? What are they smoking, I want some. The A's total profit last year was 22 million.

And who's gonna come up with the 400 million to pay for building a new stadium? At only 22 million dollars in profit it sure isn't gonna be the A's. It's gonna be me. The TAXPAYER.

And I'm done. I don't wanna. No more. The line in the sand is drawn, it's time for them to GO.

I don't disagree with your sentiment about taxpayers having to fund a private endeavor, and I'm in agreement, it's sickening.

BUT

If I could, I'd take you to Cleveland, Ohio in 1989 where Cleveland shared a stadium near the loading docks just off of industrial Lake Erie - an area few traveled near, and area of rusty industrial mess, and the city as a whole was completely dead.

Just five years later, the city had helped to successfully fund and plan for the Gateway District's Jacob's Field (Indians) and Gund Arena (Cavaliers) in the heart of downtown. The impact was immediate, and just 15 years later, E. 9th and Carnegie north to E. 9th and Prospect and E. 4th and Euclid south to Huron is now burgeoning night life of restaurants, bars, the House of Blues, etc. During big games and weekends of events, the sidewalks are packed with people tailgating both before and after the game.

Some of my greatest memories growing up involved the Indians during the mid-to-late 90's when they went to the playoffs or the world series on a yearly basis.

Cleveland has its issues - boy does it ever - but it's no longer downtown. It has done a complete-180 downtown.

It's so hard to quantify how much it will do for the city - forget the A's - but the city of Oakland. If we had to do it all over again, we'd do it all over again. The city of Cleveland has been helped so, so, so much by what we did downtown. If you could have witnessed the changes as I did, you'd pay the small price for it, believe me.

A clean, quiet, but classy E. 4th Street non-game nights.



E. 4th Street during the day any given day. During a game day, it looks like this except with more folks walking through to get from Euclid to Huron to get to the Ballpark.


Jacob's Field opening in 1995. The Indians went from one of the worst ballparks in baseball with the lowest attendance in baseball to Jacob's Field, one of the classiest ballparks in baseball and IMMEDIATELY sold out a Major League Baseball RECORD 455 CONSECUTIVE baseball games. This record stretched from 1995 - 2001.
Indians sellout streak ends at 455


This is Tower City. It's a 3-story mall in downtown Cleveland's West side. It saw a rejuvination with Gateway and was remodeled with a full set of stores, an eatery, and a movie theatre, as well as an underground parking lot and an underground walkway so that fans don't have to be walking across busy downtown streets or in the snow (for basketball season). During games and especially during the good years, you'll see a PACKED Tower City without 1 table being open in the eatery, and mass fans walking to the stadium while indoors. Parking is just $6 and it's a good place to grab food so it's the favorite parking spot or fans before games.
http://community.nursingspectrum.com/MagazineArticles/Images/DestinationCleveland5_400x264.jpg (broken link)


I could go on and on. We have a new transit system, a new football, baseball, and basketball arena, an entire block of artsy theatres that we're renovated - called the Playhouse District, all-new bars and restaurants, House of Blues, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a brand-new Science Center, Voinovich Park, a brand-new Tower City, a newly-redone library, a lot of new greenspace, and now they're re-doing what's known as the Flats - where empty warehouses used to sit, now is becoming another center for nightlife...

Here's a photo I took at Voinovich Park. It used to be a disgusting wasteland of dirty industry. Now it's frequented often by people on their lunch breaks at the local offices, kids playing frisbee, people waited to go on the tour ship, and is packed during Browns games.
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs188.snc1/6295_608875172502_39105344_35161933_6000791_n.jpg (broken link)


I probably won't be able to convince you that this type of development is good for a city - your opinion is your opinion - but it has been nothing short of remarkable for my city.

The only way I'd move back to Cleveland now is if I were to live downtown, and you couldn't have caught anyone dead saying that 20 years ago.

[lovingthegreen]

As a former Bay Area resident (Giants fan fwiw) now living in Seattle (converted Mariners fan), we up here are going through our own attendance woes. The stadium is amazing, but over the past few weeks, the team has drawn something like 7 of their 8 smallest crowds in Safeco Field history. The one game I went to was on a Monday night against the Orioles (bad team) but with absolutely perfect weather, which for here in April is pretty rare. That ended up being the smallest crowd in stadium history (official attendance was somewhere between 14-15,000, but I estimated 5,000 actual people in the seats). Point being, I think the economy may have something to do with the attendance issues here and in Oakland.

However, the stadium issue has a lot to do with the A's drawing even smaller crowds. And yes, the Giants had horrible crowds at Candlestick for all of the same reasons detailed here (I remember watching games on TV with official attendances of fewer than 10,000 - then they moved to their current place and attendances skyrocketed and have stayed strong since). But, for whatever reason, the Giants have kept solid attendances, but the Mariners have not. Complicated issue.

Not sure where it should go, but the A's absolutely need a new stadium, and one that is not shared with football, as well as one near a downtown somewhere in the East Bay. Hopefully something happens, because - even though I was definitely a Giants fan at the time - I did enjoy games in Oakland. And getting there via BART was pretty convenient too. Doesn't seem to help their attendance issues though ...

As far as stadium locations go, it appears that the NFL is the only league that is immune from attendances being impacted by stadiums located out in the boondocks (i.e. New England's stadium), but for the other sports being located downtown really helps because of how much else there is to do in the area surrounding the ballpark so fans can easily make a night of it there. As mentioned in the post directly above mine, Cleveland is a perfect example.