The San Jose Mercury News, apparently bereft at the thought of not having the San Francisco 49ers referendum campaign to cover anymore, ran an article today on how backers of a San Jose stadium for the Oakland A's are "buoyed"...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 14, 2010 03:51 PM
Now that the San Francisco 49ers' $444 million in stadium subsidies from the city of Santa Clara has been approved, everybody is jumping to say that the private side of the deal looks increasingly uncertain, possibly enough to cause the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 11, 2010 09:08 AM
And so the 100-to-1 Rule stands untarnished: Voters in Santa Clara, where the San Francisco 49ers spent at least $4 million campaigning for a new $937 million stadium, as against about $20,000 by the opposition, have approved the plan, with...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 9, 2010 08:09 AM
The long-awaited Santa Clara vote on a 49ers stadium will finally be held tomorrow, but according to Sports Illustrated's Ann Killion, even a resounding yes vote might not put an end to the controversy. That's because, Killion speculates, the team's...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 7, 2010 10:36 AM
The Santa Clara vote on a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers is exactly one week away, and the papers are alread abuzz with talk about who'll win and ... okay, mostly who'll win, because that's all that papers...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 1, 2010 08:30 AM
The always thoughtful sports economist Roger Noll had an op-ed in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle analyzing the upcoming Santa Clara vote on a 49ers stadium. His conclusion: The promised taxpayer subsidy level is low by NFL standards, but risks rising...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 18, 2010 06:59 PM
The San Francisco Chronicle chimed in yesterday with a long report on the Santa Clara 49ers stadium battle; unfortunately, it largely left out the "news" part, instead opting for a he-said-she-said recounting of the two sides' arguments (opponents: "It'll cost...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 11, 2010 08:41 AM
The NFL did that thing the NFL does on Friday, promising a Super Bowl for Santa Clara if the city builds a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. Or rather, promising to "support and encourage a Super Bowl bid," which...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 3, 2010 07:57 AM
The first major polls are out in the runup to the June 8 vote in Santa Clara on a San Francisco 49ers stadium, and so far, the ayes have it: The stadium referendum leads 52% to 36%, with 11% undecided....
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 26, 2010 08:23 AM
One San Francisco 49ers stadium lawsuit leaves, one enters: Great America amusement park owners Cedar Fair, fresh off their sale to new investors falling through, have again sued the city of Santa Clara, charging that its environmental impact review for...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 13, 2010 08:15 AM
So much for that lawsuit to block a June vote on the San Francisco 49ers' planned stadium in Santa Clara: A county judge yesterday dismissed the suit, saying the plaintiff lacked "clear and convincing evidence" that the ballot language was...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 6, 2010 02:40 PM
The San Jose Mercury News has a nice profile today of the opposition to the San Francisco 49ers stadium plan in Santa Clara (including a photo of frequent FoS reader and commenter Chris Koltermann). The article compares the Santa Clara...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 2, 2010 08:42 AM
Much news from Santa Clara County: A former Santa Clara mayoral candidate has sued to block the June vote on building a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. Deborah Bress charges that the ballot language is misleading and hides the project's...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 23, 2010 11:53 PM
An independent poll of Santa Clara voters has found them evenly split, 45%-45%, on whether to build a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. Caveat: The poll was only of 200 Santa Clarans, and has a seven-percent margin of...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 1, 2010 07:31 AM
And we're back to this again: The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority Board is about to conduct a "feasibility study" of building a new NFL stadium either on or adjacent to the site of the Oakland Coliseum, for the Raiders and...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 15, 2010 09:38 AM
The Santa Clara city council voted 4-3 last night to approve modified language for the upcoming San Francisco 49ers stadium initiative to be voted on by residents in June. In particular, the council agreed to language requested by the 49ers...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 10, 2010 09:47 AM
The numbers are in for how much of the budget for Santa Clarans for Economic Progress, the group that's lobbying for a new 49ers stadium, is supplied by the team itself, and the answer is pretty damn near all of...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 4, 2010 08:26 AM
As expected, the Santa Clarans for Economic Progress petitions to hold a public vote on building a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers have been found to be valid. (Or a random sampling of them were, anyway. You know, this...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 22, 2010 08:43 AM
The Santa Clara 49ers stadium took another step closer to a public vote yesterday, as the team-backed group Santa Clarans for Economic Progress submitted 8,043 signatures towards putting an initiative on the ballot. If at least 4,640 of the signatures...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 13, 2010 08:49 AM
The San Francisco 49ers situation keeps getting weirder and weirder. In the latest twist, 49ers president Jed York said in an interview Friday (but published yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle) that if Santa Clara doesn't work out, Oakland would...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 21, 2009 07:17 PM
This just in: Cedar Fair, the owner of the Great America amusement park that's suing to stop the 49ers stadium slated for its parking lot in Santa Clara, has been sold to a private investment firm. Asked what this would...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 17, 2009 09:42 PM
It was another action-packed day yesterday in Northern California's South Bay, as the Santa Clara city council resolved its dueling stadium referenda quandary by putting on hold its own ballot measure for a $937 million 49ers stadium, and instead endorsing...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 16, 2009 01:51 PM
Speaking of Bay Area bidding wars, San Francisco responded to this week's activity in Santa Clara by issuing new renderings of its own planned 49ers stadium yesterday (coming on the heels of last month's new renderings). "These illustrations not only...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 11, 2009 09:34 AM
As expected, the Santa Clara city council approved its environmental report on a proposed San Francisco 49ers stadium last night, setting June 8 as the date for a public vote on the measure. As not expected: The owners of Great...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 9, 2009 02:59 PM
I don't know if it's something in the water or the holiday spirit or what, but the last couple of days has seen a rash of attempts to drum up support for NFL stadium deals on pretty flimsy pretexts: NFL...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 8, 2009 05:48 PM
There's still no date for a vote on the $937 million Santa Clara stadium project for the San Francisco 49ers, but that didn't stop Santa Clarans for Economic Progress from sending out a mailer to all of the city's 46,000...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 23, 2009 08:56 AM
California may be setting records for budget deficits, but that isn't stopping it from also setting records for most NFL stadium projects all at the same time. Some recent developments: The city of San Diego is about to hire a...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 18, 2009 12:16 PM
With Santa Clara set to hold two meetings on its $937 million San Francisco 49ers stadium proposal (most of which would be paid for by the team, though it's a matter of some dispute exactly how much) today and Wednesday,...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 16, 2009 09:08 AM
How a bill becomes a law, California version: First, a football team seeking an exemption from competitive bidding rules for its new stadium gives $1,000 in campaign money to a state senator, who then guts one of her own bills...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 28, 2009 11:58 AM
As if San Jose and Santa Clara County didn't have enough on their plate, now the San Jose city council is set to vote on a memorandum on understanding for bringing an NBA team to town, should an NBA team...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 12, 2009 04:52 PM
Majestic Realty stadium czar John Semcken has officially announced his hit list for NFL franchises to lure to Los Angeles, and it looks like the L.A. Times guessed right: Semcken said new talks would begin after the Super Bowl in...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 7, 2009 10:37 AM
It was a good news/bad news day for the San Francisco 49ers: The bill to allow them to evade public bidding rules in selecting a stadium contractor without going before a public referendum passed the state senate last night, but...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 11, 2009 02:33 PM
If you've been wondering what ever happened to that bill to get the San Francisco 49ers out of a Santa Clara stadium referendum, it passed the state assembly on Thursday. (No details that I can find on the vote tally.)...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 6, 2009 10:18 AM
Cedar Fair, owners of the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, yesterday renewed their on-again, off-again protests against the planned San Francisco 49ers stadium that would sit in one of their parking lots, sending a letter to the city...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 30, 2009 12:13 PM
The San Francisco 49ers have released some design details of their proposed $937 million Santa Clara stadium, and the news they want everyone to focus on is that it will sport solar panels and plants on the roof, making it...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 16, 2009 08:53 AM
The San Francisco Chronicle: While the new [49ers] field [in Santa Clara] promises intangibles such as a national profile and civic pride, observers say it includes hidden costs, lost opportunities and unanswered questions, making it unclear how good a bargain...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 14, 2009 07:37 PM
Either it was a really slow news weekend or somebody at Mayor Gavin Newsom's office has been lobbying the San Francisco Chronicle hard, because the paper has been packed the last 24 hours with stories bemoaning the possibility that the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 13, 2009 12:31 PM
More on that California state senate bill that would allow the San Francisco 49ers to duck competitive bidding for their planned Santa Clara stadium without a public referendum. Reports Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News: Alquist's press secretary,...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 8, 2009 03:29 PM
Chris Koltermann from Santa Clara emails that California state senator Elaine Alquist has introduced a bill that would allow the San Francisco 49ers to evade competitive bidding rules for their proposed Santa Clara stadium submitting to a public referendum, as...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 7, 2009 01:51 PM
The city of Santa Clara joined its neighbors in San Jose in punting on a decision on a stadium referendum Tuesday night, saying only that a vote on a San Francisco 49ers stadium would likely take place in March, April,...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 25, 2009 07:29 AM
Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle had an unusually perceptive editorial on the proposed 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, noting that there are still many unanswered questions about the deal: One team or two? The 49ers insist they can make a stadium...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 12, 2009 12:37 PM
At 1:30 this morning, the Santa Clara city council voted 5-2 to approve the city's deal with the San Francisco 49ers for a $937 million stadium, which would cost taxpayers $79 million — or $114 million, or $444 million, depending...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 3, 2009 09:24 AM
In a Newsday column mostly about the lagging naming-rights market — both the Dallas Cowboys stadium opening this year and the New York Giants and Jets stadium opening in 2010 still haven't found buyers for their stadium names — sports...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 2, 2009 08:30 AM
Stanford economist Roger Noll has analyzed Santa Clara's proposed deal with the San Francisco 49ers for the San Jose Mercury News and concluded that while some of the revenue projections may be overly optimistic, "you're still going to end up...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 2, 2009 07:23 AM
Late Friday night, the city of Santa Clara released its term sheet with the San Francisco 49ers for a new $937 million stadium, a 38-page tome with more moving parts than a Dubai skyscraper. Without going into too much detail...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 1, 2009 08:35 AM
The city of Santa Clara is expected to issue a "term sheet" tonight for its proposed San Francisco 49ers stadium — all of four days before the city council is scheduled to vote on it — and the San Jose...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 29, 2009 09:28 AM
The city of Santa Clara announced as promised yesterday that it agreed to a financing plan for a San Francisco 49ers stadium, and the long-awaited details are ... not going to be released until May 29, in advance of a...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 20, 2009 08:57 AM
The San Francisco Chronicle reports this morning that the San Francisco 49ers and city of Santa Clara are expected to announce today plans for a $916 million stadium deal to be presented to voters next March. The deal is said...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 19, 2009 08:10 AM
Looks like my conspiracy theory may be right: Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff anointed San Jose as the front-runner for the team's new home yesterday, telling reporters, "We are really saying that we'd love to stay in Northern California, and...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 27, 2009 08:55 AM
Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff has responded to San Jose's enthusiasm for being the team's new home by sending the city a letter telling them to knock it off. "[Though] I do not wish to seem disrespectful, and I always...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 28, 2009 09:50 AM
Depending on which Oakland A's official you believe, the team's plans for a baseball stadium in Fremont are either dead, not dead, or somewhere in between. On Friday, team spokesman Bob Rose announced: "At this time we have decided to...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 22, 2009 10:54 AM
Another one bites the dust? The San Francisco 49ers on Friday acknowledged that the battered economy likely will slow down their plans to build a new stadium in Santa Clara and now has them willing to discuss a once unthinkable...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 10, 2009 01:10 PM
The San Jose Mercury News reports this morning that new stadiums for the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Athletics, and San Jose Earthquakes could be delayed or scrapped (the word the Merc News uses is "undercut") thanks to the worldwide economic...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 18, 2008 10:48 AM
The Santa Clara city council voted this week to extend the negotiating period for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium until Feb. 1, meaning the earliest a public vote could be held on the plan would be next June. ("There...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 20, 2008 10:16 AM
The plot just thickened: San Francisco voters yesterday approved a proposition 61-39% to build a development at Hunters Point that would include a 49ers stadium. At the same time, voters rejected 62-38% an accompanying proposition to require that the project...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 4, 2008 12:23 PM
Today San Francisco voters go to the polls to vote on a proposition to build a new football stadium for the 49ers (along with an accompanying proposition to require that affordable housing be part of the surrounding development). With the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 3, 2008 11:35 AM
The San Francisco 49ers have confirmed that they're looking into the city of Brisbane as a fallback option if negotiations to build a new stadium in Santa Clara fall through. How serious an option is an open question, though, given...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 15, 2008 12:34 PM
A few items of note from the last couple of days: Voters in San Antonio approved by a 57%-43% margin Saturday an extension of hotel and car-rental taxes that will provide the Spurs with an estimated $75 million for upgrades...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 11, 2008 11:46 PM
As expected, the Santa Clara city council voted this week to enter into negotiations with the San Francisco 49ers to build a $916 million stadium, $136 million of which (or $171 million, depending on who's counting) would come from city...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 18, 2008 08:47 AM
A report delivered by Santa Clara city manager Jennifer Sparacino to the city council yesterday endorsed pursuing a $914 million stadium for the San Francisco 49ers ... kinda. "We think there could be an opportunity," said assistant city manager Ron...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 12, 2008 11:40 PM
The Santa Clara city council got its first detailed look at the finances of the $854 million San Francisco 49ers stadium proposal Tuesday night. The highlights: The city will be on the hook for $222 million in costs, including building...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 20, 2007 08:23 AM
The owners of Santa Clara's Great America theme park, who have been holding up plans for a San Francisco 49ers stadium in their parking lot, still say they don't like the stadium idea, but are now willing to sell their...
Posted in Field of Schemes on October 11, 2007 10:56 PM
Plans for that $850 million or so San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, which have been on the back burner for much of the year, aren't showing much signs of being front-burnered anytime soon: City officials now say a...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 5, 2007 11:16 AM
The owners of the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, who'd previously said they opposed a plan to build a San Francisco 49ers stadium on the parking lot they lease from the city, now say after meeting with the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on July 12, 2007 10:14 AM
Hold everything! Turns out that the owners of Great America, whose Santa Clara parking lot the San Francisco 49ers have targeted to be the site of their new $950 million stadium, aren't on board with the plan - in fact,...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 17, 2007 11:18 PM
I spoke too soon. Northern California's ink-stained wretches may have done a decent job analyzing the claims of the San Francisco 49ers' consultants that a new stadium would be an economic boon for Santa Clara, but now that local tourist...
Posted in Field of Schemes on June 2, 2007 02:52 PM
Sports economist Roger Noll points out a potential fly in the ointment of the San Francisco 49ers' proposed Santa Clara stadium finance plan: While $330 million in stadium bonds would be scheduled to be paid off by stadium revenues like...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 1, 2007 01:59 PM
While Santa Clara debates flinging $180 million at the San Francisco 49ers for an uncertain payoff, nearby San Jose's Mayor Chuck Reed has endorsed spending $8.25 million on upgrades to the San Jose Sharks' HP Pavilion. The money would be...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 25, 2007 09:53 PM
The San Francisco 49ers owners issued their financial plan for a stadium in Santa Clara yesterday, and the estimated price tag was down somewhat, to $854 million. Depending on how you count, that is. An additional $111 million is estimated...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 25, 2007 11:36 AM
Catching up on stadium news from the last few days: The San Francisco 49ers owners are set to announce today their financing plan for a now-$950 million stadium in Santa Clara, though "plan" might be a bit of a misnomer:...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 24, 2007 10:19 AM
I spend a fair bit of time bashing bad journalism on this site, so it's a nice change of pace to give credit to those who do their jobs well. Two teams, the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Sonics, came...
Posted in Field of Schemes on April 5, 2007 03:42 PM
It's official: The San Francisco 49ers are asking to tap a $242 million reserve fund for Santa Clara's electrical utilities to help pay for construction of their proposed $800 million stadium. A 49ers official told the San Jose Mercury News...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 23, 2007 04:36 PM
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross report that the 49ers are planning to ask the city of Santa Clara for as much as $200 million towards the team's planned $800 million stadium, with a ballot issue to...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 20, 2007 09:31 PM
I made a passing quip about the Hetch Hetchy reservoir the other day, the signature battle that flooded a valley reputed to be even more picturesque than Yosemite and in large part kicked off the environmental movement. It turns out...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 27, 2007 08:21 AM
The plan to move the San Francisco 49ers (and maybe the Oakland Raiders) to a new stadium in Santa Clara may have hit an obstacle - okay, actually three obstacles. Take it away, San Jose Mercury News: What's on the...
Posted in Field of Schemes on February 24, 2007 06:42 PM
I've been waiting for this whole San Francisco 49ers brouhaha to settle down before writing about it, but it looks like settling is the last thing it's going to do. So away we go: On Monday morning, San Francisco Chronicle...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 31, 2007 11:11 AM
Here's something you don't see every day: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to grant the NFL an antitrust exemption that would allow it to block franchise moves. "This legislation is designed to slow the movement of NFL teams...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 14, 2007 09:34 AM
Lots of football news (U.S. and Canadian-style) this week, plus new developments in Minnesota and Seattle: The inflated Teflon roof of Vancouver's B.C. Place - home of the B.C. Lions CFL team and centerpiece of the 2010 Winter Olympics -...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 6, 2007 11:02 AM
Apologies for the sporadicity - sporadiciousness? - of news items here of late, but I've been busy wrapping up work on the new edition of Field of Schemes. (That's University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books, due out in early 2008 -...
Posted in Field of Schemes on December 8, 2006 09:11 PM
The owners of the San Francisco 49ers are promising to proposed initial guidelines in January for a new stadium in Santa Clara, which could cost between $600 million and $800 million. According to the San Jose Mercury News, "the guidelines...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 30, 2006 11:00 AM
Apparently a personal appeal by Nancy Pelosi didn't do the trick: In the wake of Friday's announcement by the San Francisco 49ers that they plan to explore moving to Santa Clara, the city of San Francisco today withdrew its bid...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 13, 2006 03:25 PM
San Francisco 49ers owner John York has decided to abandon his quest for a new stadium within San Francisco, and instead work on moving the team to Santa Clara, a South Bay city just west of San Jose. According to...
Posted in Field of Schemes on November 9, 2006 11:59 AM
In which I see if writing a longer intro to one of these sum-up posts is less confusing to the bot that writes the Google News headlines: Jordan, Utah parents are not happy to learn that property taxes that normally...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 10, 2006 11:37 AM
The Sacramento Bee reports that city and county officials will soon present a new arena financing plan for the Kings, consisting of ... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? "It would be incorrect to assume it is just a...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 19, 2006 01:52 PM
Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News has the baseball team relocation conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories today. It goes like this: Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff declares his intention to move to Fremont, California, which is...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 12, 2006 08:23 PM
One of the basic principles of media analysis is "framing": How does an article lay out the basic parameters of a story, subtly steering readers toward seeing it in a certain way? With that in mind, let's take a look...
Posted in Field of Schemes on May 2, 2005 12:14 PM
With Oakland A's stadium consultant (and billionaire real estate tycoon) Lew Wolff on the verge of purchasing the team, speculation has been spreading like eucalyptus-fueled wildfire that this is the first step toward the team relocating to San Jose. One...
Posted in Field of Schemes on January 15, 2005 08:54 PM
The pending Expos-to-D.C. announcement has raised hopes of baseball boosters in San Jose that perhaps MLB will now look more kindly on a move of the Oakland A's to the South Bay. "You had an owner in Peter Angelos in...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 29, 2004 12:55 PM
The San Jose Earthquakes are quickly becoming the Expos of soccer, inspiring stadium talks in no less than four different prospective host cities. The latest rundown: The Mexican TV network Televiso, which owns the popular Mexican soccer team Club America,...
Posted in Field of Schemes on September 11, 2004 10:47 AM
Ah, the signs of spring: the crack of the bat, the chirp of the robin, the whinging of Steve Schott. The Oakland A's owner declared during his annual "State of the A's" address that "we need a new stadium to...
Posted in Field of Schemes on March 8, 2004 11:15 AM