First things first: If you’re one of FoS’s new Patreon subscribers and missed yesterday’s post about whether the Oakland A’s owners are seriously considering moving to Las Vegas because it didn’t show up in your email, go click there (or here) now to catch up on it. (The automatic email system skipping the day’s early post and only sending out the later one is a bug that I think I’ve developed a workaround for, but we’ll have to wait for the next two-post day to tell for sure.)
And now, on to more news items from this week that you need to catch up on, because I haven’t reported them yet:
- The Oakland Design Review Committee, which is part of the Oakland Planning Commission, which advises the Oakland city council on development issues, has raised concerns about the A’s proposed Howard Terminal stadium complex because it would include a 600-foot residential tower that would be the tallest building in the city, it would require fans to cross active train tracks to get to games, and it could interfere with the Port of Oakland’s future ability to expand its port operations to enable bigger cargo ships to dock. “I just don’t want anything bad to happen,” committee chair Clark Manus told KTVU regarding the train tracks, which is a reasonable worry, but isn’t this part of what the $855 million in public spending is supposed to go to fix? Did A’s owner John Fisher really request nearly a billion dollars in new roads and other infrastructure and neglect to guarantee that it would eliminate all grade crossings? The team’s proposed term sheet mentions “at-grade and grade-separated rail safety improvements,” but I guess that’s not super-specific, so yeah, let’s make sure if you spend a couple billion dollars on a new stadium district nobody dies in dumb ways.
- Here are some renderings of a proposed North Carolina F.C and North Carolina Courage soccer stadium in Raleigh that looks like somebody sat on it and bent the roof, I guess that’s how future Raleighites will be able to tell they’re living in the future. After the Raleigh planning commission rejected rezoning for the project — which could include up to $335 million in public money — last December, the city council went ahead and approved it, presumably because the area where it would be built is, according to The Architect’s Newspaper’s report, “sleepy” and “underutilized,” and we can’t have that.
- Images of the Somerset Patriots‘ stadium underwater after last week’s torrential rains in the Northeast set off a flurry of articles about how climate change will make flooded stadiums a more frequent sight, whether in cities prone to sea level rise (Miami, San Francisco, Washington, San Diego, New York, St. Petersburg) or those along flood-prone rivers (Cincinnati, maybe Pittsburgh?). There’s a big distinction between “occasionally flooded” and “permanently underwater,” obviously — something I tried to address in my Defector article earlier this year, which also raised the issue of cities like Phoenix becoming too hot to live in — but in the meantime let’s all just enjoy this image of two Cincinnati Reds pitchers crossing Crosley Field in a rowboat after a flood in 1937.
- Is it safe to go to a packed football stadium even if you are vaccinated? Six out of seven public health experts who spoke to Kaiser Health News say no, but says if you do, wear a mask, and also try to get the other 50,000 people to wear masks as well, because that’s what will keep you from catching Delta more than your own personal masking decision. (Also presumably whether you’re in a domed or outdoor stadium, whether you spend time in enclosed areas like restrooms and concessions areas unmasked with other unmasked people, whether vaccinations are required for entry to the game, and other variables, but KHN didn’t really get into all that.)
- Sports fans are increasingly dropping their cable subscriptions, and the sports industry needs to address this with what kind of plans they offer, says … okay, a guy whose column is called Cord-Cutter Confidential, so maybe not the most unbiased source. Anyway, I gotta go update my credit card for my ESPN+ subscription so I can watch Spanish soccer, I sure hope the sports leagues figure out a new system of charging people to watch sports without cable soon!