Want a pro baseball team?

[Stumpy]

44 minutes ago, OldhamA said:

As an Oakland A's fan (hence the name): 

We don't care about baseball or the fans, we just want your team!

Edited May 12, 2021 by Stumpy

[NanuqoftheNorth]

56 minutes ago, OldhamA said:

As an Oakland A's fan (hence the name): 

Of course this is one of the oldest tricks in the book:  The "Threaten to move your sports team to another city if you don't get a new stadium." ploy.

Oakland has faced this situation on multiple occasions in the past.  Let's see if they handle it any better this time.

 

[OldhamA]

1 minute ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Of course this is one of the oldest tricks in the book:  The "Threaten to move your sports team to another city if you don't get a new stadium." ploy.

Oakland has faced this situation on multiple occasions in the past.  Let's see if they handle it any better this time.

 

They've already allowed two teams to leave.

The A's want to finance their own waterfront ballpark, but the City aren't allowing them to build it where they want to. It's almost like they don't want pro sports in the city.

[NanuqoftheNorth]

4 minutes ago, OldhamA said:

They've already allowed two teams to leave.

The A's want to finance their own waterfront ballpark, but the City aren't allowing them to build it where they want to. It's almost like they don't want pro sports in the city.

Wow, that's a bit different, a team that wants to pay for their own ballpark.

What is the city's reason for not supporting the A's chosen location?

Edited May 12, 2021 by NanuqoftheNorth

[OldhamA]

8 minutes ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Wow, that's a bit different, a team that wants to pay for their own ballpark.

What is the city's reason for not supporting the A's chosen location?

As I understand it - money. I don't know the area well (I've visited Oakland, but I'm not a city planner ) but I think the city are worried about the required transport links to the new stadium, which is like 6 miles away from the Coliseum (which has great transport links). 

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by OldhamA

[NanuqoftheNorth]

1 minute ago, OldhamA said:

As I understand it - money. I don't know the area well (I've visited Oakland, but I'm not a city planner ) but I think the city are worried about the required transport links to the new stadium, which is like 6 miles away from the Coliseum (which has great transport links). 

 

Did a quick search and it appears the city could be on the hook for about 855 million in land development costs.  It also appears that staying in Oakland is still the teams preferred outcome, but if they have to leave Las Vegas is likely their destination.

[OldhamA]

55 minutes ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Did a quick search and it appears the city could be on the hook for about 855 million in land development costs.  It also appears that staying in Oakland is still the teams preferred outcome, but if they have to leave Las Vegas is likely their destination.

As I said, it's money - there's always going to be a cost involved for the city when building a new stadium.

Unfortunately Oakland has always considered the A's a burden - but this is the same city council that let the Raiders and the Golden State Warriors walk, so I'm not entirely sure they want pro sports in their city.

Las Vegas seems like an awful option. Portland is a nothing-burger of a place. Who knows where they'll go - but I do think they'll leave now, this has been rolling on for two decades. 

[jfra78]

5 hours ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

How far afield from these two metro centers are we expected to go in order to justify our positions for MLB?  The larger the geographic area required, the weaker the case for a team becomes.  Population density is important.  Per capita the Charlotte MSA has gained more people during the last decade than the Raleigh MSA according to the folks at Chapel Hill (2020).  

Having said that, I believe either area could be attractive to a MLB team.  I might even favor RD due to the lack of professional competition beyond hockey.  On the other hand, there are a ton of collegiate sports in the area that they'd have to compete with for consumer dollars.   

  

Baseball makes more sense in a larger metro area.  Games are daily and usually in the afternoon after work, so if in a large metro area people can just go after or during work.  

Football can be more regional because its once a week on a day most don't work so people can come from all over

[L-TownCat]

5 hours ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Wow, that's a bit different, a team that wants to pay for their own ballpark.

What is the city's reason for not supporting the A's chosen location?

I would assume that if the team wants to pay, then the city doesn’t get to raise food and beverage taxes to justify the public funds used on a Baseball stadium.

Then again they could just be really bad at negotiating?

[theguy]

15 hours ago, joande said:

Your newspaper:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/databases/article251183669.html

For first time, Wake County tops Mecklenburg County in estimated NC population

North Carolina has a new population leader.

Mecklenburg County is no longer the state’s most populous county, new U.S. Census Bureau estimates show.

After years of creeping up on Mecklenburg, Wake County, which includes Raleigh, finally overtook it — 1.13 million to 1.12 million.

The change came after Wake grew by 1.75% from 2019-20 and Mecklenburg grew by 1.41%, according to annual population estimates released Tuesday. The census bureau has yet to release an official population count, which will be detailed in the 2020 Census.

Look up MSAs and then revisit this argument.

[Mr. Scot]

6 hours ago, NanuqoftheNorth said:

Of course this is one of the oldest tricks in the book:  The "Threaten to move your sports team to another city if you don't get a new stadium." ploy.

With the support of Major League Baseball in this case.

[RumHam]

17 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

I think it can be done as long as it's an AL team and not an NL team. 

this is a good point. but also the braves have a stronghold and im not sure if the eastern part of NC pulls for Nats. I'm a Phillies fan though. But this would be hard market to crack, and honestly Oakland will move to Nashville.

[AviationMX]

15 hours ago, Squirrel said:

They was trying to do that when the Twins was thinking of moving. They wanted to put a stadium in Kernersville at the time in between winston salem and Greensboro. 

I think it came down to a $0.02 increase in sales tax for a stadium in K Vegas, which of course was voted down. Greensboro actually has a history with baseball, the Yankees minor league team was here when Jeter was coming up. And our old stadium was in Bull Durham for the "rain out" scene...so we had that going for us. We also had the Hurricanes here until RAL stole them.

[54th man]

5 hours ago, AviationMX said:

I think it came down to a $0.02 increase in sales tax for a stadium in K Vegas, which of course was voted down. Greensboro actually has a history with baseball, the Yankees minor league team was here when Jeter was coming up. And our old stadium was in Bull Durham for the "rain out" scene...so we had that going for us. We also had the Hurricanes here until RAL stole them.

Raleigh did not steal the Hurricanes, they just played there in

 

22 hours ago, MikeD83 said:

The Charlotte metro area still has nearly 500,000 more people in it than the Raleigh metro. Raleigh area is growing faster though and will likely catch up in another decade or so. 

 Greensboro for the first two years until the arena was built and ready.