It's Saturday-- Do You Know Where Your Sports Team Is?
The latest involving the Niners is that yesterday Aaron Peskin jumped into the fray. Peskin had dinner with the accidental John York Thursday night and on Friday, he, along with Sophie Maxwell, said they'd introduce a resolution to move forward with the development at Candlestick Point and the Hunters Point shipyard. The idea being, of course, that instead of waiting for the Niners to figure out what they're doing, the city should move ahead and just do it. There's two reasons for this. One is that everyone wants to build stuff there anyways so why not just get the ball rolling. The other is that if things fall apart in Santa Clara, things will be all ready to go here.
What's going on is that he whole development thing is sort of a chicken vs. the egg conundrum- do you develop first and bring the Niners with you or do you wait for the Niners and develop with them? Gavin is weighing in with the egg, Aaron with the chicken. Or should that be reversed?
Peskin couldn't do all of this, however, without getting a little jab in at Gavin, saying that development plans have "languished" because Gavin has been too busy waiting for the Niners to make a decision. In response, Gavin said Peskin's charges were "factually inaccurate" and that he's already moving ahead with redevelopment plans. And yes, that's our political discourse these days, with both sides issuing catty comments like a bunch of sixteen-year old girls except through press spokesmen instead of MySpace blogs.
Over in Fremont, Lew Wolff met with his new neighbors and gave his full "monorail" sales talk about how wonderful things will be with all of his new plans. New jobs! More tax revenue! Tastes great and is less filling! He said that at 32,000 seats, the ballpark will be the most intimate ballpark in baseball (he called it a "sculpture") and that the "ballpark village" he'll build around the stadium will be a mixture of town homes, offices, and restaurants. In fact, he's so giddy about the idea he just bought more land.
He also said that no matter what happens, the name of Fremont will somehow be in the name of the team. In what capacity, he did not say. One fan who attended the meeting, a die-hard from Oakland, proposed the team change it’s name completely, even the A's part, saying that if they move, they should leave the names Oakland and A's in Oakland. Kind of what happened to the Cleveland Browns. hich raises the question, what kind of name would represent Fremont the best? All we could come up with is the Fremont Car Dealerships.
Finally, in that little getting-to-know you meeting between Gavin and Ron Dellums, both commiserated about their stadium problems. While Gavin was optimistic, Dellums pretty much said there's nothing he could do about it.