San Jose Makes Power Play for A’s Baseball Stadium

On the eve of baseball season’s Opening Day—and more than two years since Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig formed a blue ribbon panel to study the relocation of the Oakland A’s—San Jose still sits by the phone like a lonely lover. The city waits, pines, hopes for a call, some news ... anything.

The future of professional sports in the nation’s 10th largest city is in limbo. In furious preparations for an opportunity that may never materialize—and to protect the land holdings that may one day house a ballpark—San Jose has taken extraordinary steps.

The San Francisco Giants hold rights to the San Jose market area, which they got when the club was considering a move to the area in 1990. And now the World Series champions are standing in the way of San Jose’s own bid for pro sports glory.

Pulling a page from the “if you build it, they will come” playbook of the late 1980s, when San Jose broke ground on an arena before a sports team signed up to play here, the City Council three weeks ago created a new quasi-public entity and transferred several large chunks of real estate to its control.

The new San Jose Diridon Development Authority now controls nine parcels that the city purchased over a 15-year period for more than $25 million. Seven of them lie directly adjacent to Diridon Station and south of HP Pavilion. Like a runner on third base when the pitcher’s back is turned, the city is charging forward to claim more pieces of land for the stadium grounds.

Slated to become Bay Area’s transit epicenter—including the region’s high-speed rail gateway to Southern California—Diridon Station’s surroundings almost certainly will grow well beyond their current value. That’s why the city and the Redevelopment Agency took the unprecedented—and, some believe, legally questionable—step. Gov. Jerry Brown’s threat to shutter the state’s 400-plus redevelopment agencies to shore up California’s broke state government prompted San Jose’s hardball play.

Viewed in a more cautious light, MLB’s foot-dragging and the state’s ambitions on local funds might have given city leaders pause to slow down. The outside pressure, however, only seems to have steeled the city’s resolve and increased its sense of urgency in recent weeks.

Technically, the new development authority has a non-specific charter and retains decision-making discretion on the land’s ultimate uses. And even though the resolution declares that “there are no specific projects proposed for the Authority,” San Jose officials believe that baseball and San Jose would be good together, if given a chance.

The planning process could begin as early as an April 28 City Council study session. The baseball commissioner’s unreleased report is presumed to be complete, believes Mayor Chuck Reed, who has not heard from MLB in nearly two months and is running out of patience.

“The pace the commissioner is working at makes government’s processes look good,” Reed says. “We were slow, but we’re nowhere near as slow as the pace the commissioner was working.” (The commissioner previously asked the city to delay a November 2010 referendum on the ballpark until spring, but then blew past that deadline.)

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