https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbXEyq6ZMk4
ONN – Downsizing Oakland Howard Terminal Ballpark Without Knowing About It Is Brainless – video by the YouTube channel in the video’s upper left hand corner.
Talk and media about “downsizing” The Howard Terminal Ballpark Project is the most ridiculous, stupid, and just plain brainless take on the whole development – let alone anything I’ve seen in my 33 years of experience in economic development from a government, political, and media perspective.
First, in truth, the Oakland Howard Terminal Ballpark Project can’t be downsized? Why? Because the $12 billion reported project cost, really isn’t that at all, it’s a wish list of buildings that the A’s would like to see fill the allowed zoning envelope. That’s it.
Second, as I have said to Oakland A’s President Dave Kaval both privately and publicly, it was a major error of messaging to mention the $12 billion final buildout to a media and public completely inexperienced at understanding what that really means.
What it means is that the only building the A’s, the City of Oakland, and The Public can count on to be built is the stadium AKA ballpark, itself. That giant combination of futuristic structures in the artist rendering exists as a kind of economic development IQ test – and the local media that claims its informing the public has scored in the single-digits.
Let me help raise that horribly poor media I.Q. The Oakland A’s have not and will not in the near future secure financing to build those structures, and by its own admission, does not have a clear idea what kind of specific use each one will serve. But the media has never bothered to ask Dave Kaval about the plans for those buildings – just left the matter alone. Not me.
There are no concrete plans or financing for those buildings. Not now. So, to talk of “downsizing” the project, when there’s nothing, in point of fact, to reduce, is just plain stupid. Moreover, to compare it to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group‘s (AASEG) proposal is even more brainless, and show that the people who make such comparisons do not understand or have read SB 293 Skinner, the financial legislation that governs the use of tax increment financing at Howard Terminal.
That SB 293 Skinner Bill signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom October 11th, 2019, calls for the new Oakland Development Agency that the City has not lifted a finger to create to identify other satellite TIF districts around Oakland that can be the focus of development projects. Guess what? That can include the Coliseum property AASEG wants to purchase.
That’s right. The Howard Terminal Ballpark District’s legislative design is such that it can give rise to the financing of the AASEG Coliseum City Development – the excess TIF revenue from Howard Terminal could be used at the Coliseum and for East Oakland. Moreover, it can cause the much needed East Oakland sea-level rise problem to be appropriately mitigated.
So, do the world a favor folks: know the Howard Terminal Ballpark Project before blasting off to be critical of it. Thanks.
Stay tuned.
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Note from Zennie62Media and OaklandNewsNow.com : this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a YouTube channel. When the video is “liked” by Zennie62 YouTube, then it is automatically uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective here, on top of our is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours – is the use of the existing YouTube social graph on any subject in the World. Now, news is reported with a smartphone and also by promoting current content on YouTube: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary, or having a camera crew to shoot what is already on YouTube. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.