Think of the Port of Oakland — from Howard Terminal near Jack London Square, to the Bay Bridge — as a giant beehive. It is buzzing 24 hours a day with swarms of worker bees.
Now along comes someone with his own huge bag of bees — baseball-fan bees, condo-dwelling bees, bar-hopping and luxury-hotel-lounging bees.
“Mind if we move into your hive?” asks this cheerful bee man. “We can happily coexist.”
“Buzz off,” say the worker bees.
The bee man is Dave Kaval, Oakland A’s team president, representing team owner John Fisher. Fisher and Kaval are determined to move the A’s into the Port of Oakland with a $12 billion development. Opposition to that proposal is fierce.
At the heart of the battle is the question of whether it’s possible to shoehorn a giant new ballpark, condos, hotels and assorted residential and commercial goodies into the existing beehive without ruining it.
“It’s important to remember that we can have a thriving port and a successful, privately financed ballpark at the same time,” Kaval said in an interview with the Chronicle. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
But the project’s opponents say the A’s plan is the definition of mutual exclusivity, especially considering the proposal’s massive scale.
At least one independent expert thinks the fit could be awkward. Roger Noll, Stanford professor of economics emeritus and recognized authority on stadiums and sports economics, likens the A’s project to the vast complex being built in Los Angeles around SoFi Stadium by Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
“The difference between Kroenke’s operation and this,” Noll told the Chronicle, “is that Kroenke is essentially building an entire new city, whereas these guys (the A’s) are moving into an existing city. And there’s going to be resistance to that, because the people who have their businesses there or live there didn’t go there with the idea of being integrated with a baseball stadium.
“I would never want to underestimate Dave Kaval. All I can say is, I have seen these things before. Some work and some don’t, and this one seems to be more difficult than anything else I’ve ever seen.”
A baseball stadium by itself would be a headache for the industrial community of the Port. Throw in the other $11 billion of proposed new residential and commercial buildings, plus new infrastructure construction, and the A’s project gets upgraded, in the words of one opponent, from headache to “a cancer, a dagger through the heart.”
The A’s project, opponents say, would clog the existing workflow, scare off current and future Port business, and strangle hopes for future growth and expansion. Oakland is the 10th largest port in America, but its customers have other options, including Los Angeles and Seattle.
“We’re not going to be Chicken Little and say if you open the stadium, we’re going to close the next day,” said Mike Jacob, speaking for the East Oakland Stadium Alliance, a group of businesses and unions — many with stakes in the Port’s business — which opposes the A’s project and supports the team building its new ballpark at the Coliseum site.
“That’s not how this stuff works. It’s a war of attrition,” Jacob adds. “When it becomes more expensive and less convenient (to do business with us), and more congested and less reliable, then over time you do less business here. ... We already have customers and carriers that say, ‘I don’t want to sign any long-term deals with Oakland, I am not sure what’s going to happen.’”
Kaval exudes confidence and optimism. He points out that the Port Commission in 2019 voted its approval for the A’s to begin their planning, and that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf enthusiastically endorsed the A’s plans at the Port from the beginning (though she seems to be treading cautiously lately).
One thing is sure. If the A’s get a go-ahead vote from the Oakland City Council, that will be one busy beehive in Oakland.
If you think it’s tough to find parking in San Francisco, try finding an open dock for a 1,200-foot long container cargo ship lining up to be loaded or unloaded at the Port of Oakland.
“We have 18 ships in port today,” said Susan Ransom, a manager at Stevedoring Services of America during a recent guided tour of the Oakland International Container Terminal, which SSA operates on a new 30-year lease from the Port. SSA does 70% of the Port’s loading business, servicing ships with 10 massive cranes. Three new cranes, costing $10 million each, will swing into operation this month. “On average, three new ships come in daily and three leave,” Ransom said.
On any given day, a dozen container ships bob at anchor in San Francisco Bay, waiting for a dock to open at the Port. Outside the Golden Gate, more of the monster ships circle between San Francisco and Monterey, waiting to move into the queue. Import trade is surging, business is brisk.
At the OICT docks, cranes pluck shipping containers off ships and load them onto truck beds and train cars. Lots of trucks. The port has 1,500 gate moves per day, each gate move being one big truck coming and going.
The Port of Oakland is a great place to indulge your childlike fascination for the mighty muscle-flexing of outdoor industry. The ships and cranes are jaw-droppingly awesome. Freight and passenger trains shake the ground, stirring up clouds of soot. An endless procession of big-rig trucks makes you in your car feel like a mouse in a buffalo herd.
The companies leasing at the Port say they constantly strive to reduce air and noise pollution, but their work needs space. The key term is “buffer zone,” the space of at least 1,000 feet separating heavy industrial activity from residential, commercial and recreational areas.
The A’s say they have plans to make it all work smoothly. Their opponents fear losing their buffer zones. The dance of the big-rig trucks in and out of the Port might appear clunky, but it is carefully choreographed. But what happens when you introduce thousands of additional cars, bikes and pedestrians to the dance?
For a ballgame in the 34,000-seat stadium, the A’s will expect around 10,000 cars, which will roam for random parking spots within a mile or so of the stadium. Kaval says the team has commissioned studies showing that parking won’t be a problem. However, there are no plans for new freeway on-ramps or off-ramps.
That’s the end product. Before we get there, add to this traffic stew several years of heavy construction, of the ballpark and its surrounding village, and building the extensive infrastructure to support them.
“Once you put 3,000 people (living) on our doorstep,” Jacob said, “when we have to go get our next EIR from the Port for (expansion), we’ll have 3,000 angry neighbors. (The Port) will say, ‘We’ll indemnify you,’ and that’s fine, until there’s a public agency that has to make discretionary action, like give us a new lease. ... Some smart neighbors will figure, ‘Well, if the ships can’t come here, maybe that (annoying) terminal goes away.’ ... When you introduce these uses into industrial areas, the industrial areas lose. Industry doesn’t vote, but people do.”
The interplay between worker bees and fun bees will be most dramatic at the west end of the ballpark site, behind the stadium on the third-base side, where Schnitzer Steel’s metal recycling operation grinds and roars.
Schnitzer has a relatively small physical footprint compared to the Port’s terminals, but it could have a big impact on the fan experience. Schnitzer grinds old cars and washing machines into steel confetti, loading the mountains of scrap onto ships. Trucks loaded with cubed cars line the narrow, dusty road leading to Schnitzer, idling outside what might be the ballpark’s left-field wall. The operation is noisy and not always kind to the air. Fires occasionally break out.
This isn’t Schnitzer’s only location. It’s a multibillion dollar company headquartered in Portland, Ore. It sued the A’s to slow an attempted fast-tracking of environmental work, lost, and has appealed. The A’s say that legal fight set them back 10 months. The A’s sued the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to compel the agency to force Schnitzer into compliance with environmental standards, and won. Hatfields, meet McCoys.
“There is no plan for Schnitzer to leave Oakland, Oakland is our home, we’ve been rooted here for more than 50 years (since 1965), and those roots aren’t shallow,” said Tasion Kwamilele, government and public affairs manager for Schnitzer, perhaps mocking the A’s slogan “Rooted in Oakland.”
What will happen when folks moving into new offices and condos sniff the air with disgust?
“Sooner or later, the residents forget that they moved in next to a recycling facility, now the recycling facility is impacting their lifestyle,” Kwamilele said. “We have to think about that seriously and know that these two things do not mix.”
Kaval insists the A’s and Schnitzer can be fine neighbors.
“We feel, provided they operate in a way that the DTSC is now saying they will after this lawsuit, that coexistence should not be a problem, that both things can happen, they’re not mutually exclusive.” Kaval said.
Then there’s the issue of Howard Terminal itself, roughly 50 acres of blacktop where the new ballpark would be built. For the past seven years it has served as a staging and container-storage area for trucks servicing the Port — a beehive within a beehive.
Most of the truckers who work the Port are independent operators, paid by the load and not the hour, so in-and-out efficiency is vital. Howard Terminal helps with that, letting truckers and trucks streamline their operations and avoid the nearby freeways at peak traffic hours. Before Howard Terminal, truckers waiting for pickups would park in nearby neighborhoods, creating a nuisance.
If the stadium moves into Howard Terminal, the trucks move out, back into the neighborhoods and rush-hour traffic.
Kaval sounds as if this and all other challenges have been anticipated and will be successfully solved. The project’s foes aren’t buying what the A’s are selling.
Regardless of how it all shakes out, the A’s have created quite an angry buzz at the hive.
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler
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A’s stir up beehive at busy Port of Oakland with their plans to move in - San Francisco Chronicle
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