January 09, 2012

49ers, Santa Clara kick in more money for stadium land

After a years-long, often-contentious negotiation, the San Francisco 49ers finally agreed to a deal to rent land from the Great America amusement park for its new Santa Clara stadium — and it will end up costing both the team and the city millions of dollars.

For the 49ers, the price is straightforward: $12.5 million in cash for the right to build on the amusement park's overflow parking lot, and use the main lot on game days.

Santa Clara gives up something that's harder to quantify: Instead of getting a cut of Great America's profits when revenue passes $56 million (a figure that the park hasn't reached in recent years), the threshold gets raised to more then $64 million. Great America will also get guarantees of a reduced rent if it chooses to extend its lease beyond 2039.

Santa Clara officials say they'll make some of this money back from parking revenues, but given that the amusement park will also presumably have to be closed (or at least patrons will steer clear because of minimal parking) on game days, there's lost tax revenue there as well, making it even tougher to say the actual public cost of this deal. Regardless, it's likely going to provide a boost for those collecting signatures this week to get a re-vote on the ever-changing 49ers deal back on the ballot for this summer.

The 49ers, meanwhile, are taking the referendum campaign seriously enough to have asked a local electrical union to hire "interceptors" to disrupt the petition-gathering. The union has since toned down its web page seeking anti-referendum workers, but not before somebody did a screengrab of the original.