It must be great to own a sports team: All you have to do to make headlines is to hop a plane to another city, and then let everyone freak out that you’re planning to move your franchise. Or if you’re really lucky, you can just drive to the next town over:
Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis took a tour of the old Concord Naval Weapons Station the other day – with an eye toward whether it could be just the place for a new stadium for the team.
“He made no commitments, but my feeling, he liked the looks of the property,” said Concord Mayor Dan Helix.
Yeah, of course he made no commitments: Davis is in the middle of negotiations to get Oakland to build him a new stadium on his current site, and “Don’t make me take my ball and drive across the Oakland hills with it!” is exactly the kind of threat he needs to back up his demands. (Not that Davis would ever say it that way, not when spending 90 minutes in Concord and muttering “Mm-hm” thoughtfully will get the same headlines.) And as CSN Bay Area’s Ray Ratto notes:
This is a big deal as soon as Mark Davis says, "Hey, guess who just found $700 million in his sock drawer?" http://t.co/vd9EQQqHZk
— Ray Ratto (@RattoIndy) October 6, 2013
Good to see Ratto busy.
Aren’t those type of sites usually heavily contaminated?
The California legislature seems to look the other way when it comes to environmental impact reviews for sports facilities. There’s nothing that end of session legislation can’t fix.
Richard, the site is a toxic mess. I live in Concord and I can’t recall who, if anyone, is stepping to the plate on the clean up. You would think with the A’s in the playoffs and the Raiders winning last night that it wouldn’t be such a slow news day for filler like this.