Angels tell Anaheim they're opting out of their lease on Angel Stadium

[crashcarson15]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

It's the inverse of Chicago, where the tollways and expressways comprise route numbers that change or get doubled up such that saying "94" is effectively meaningless. They're all 94!

I really appreciate Chicago’s naming conventions, because it’s easy to be clear and concise in traffic reports about which road you’re talking about. “[inbound or outbound] [name of expressway]” is pretty easy and unambiguous!

 

Contrast that to Indianapolis, where you regularly get traffic reports you have to pay strong attention to like “westbound 70 on the east side,” “southbound 465 on the west side,” or “northbound 65 heading out of the North Split.”

 

My favorite, though, is a report like “northbound 465 at 56th Street.”

 

Which 56th Street? There are two exits for northbound 465 at a 56th Street on opposite sides of the town! Which one is kinda important!

 

--

 

I am also in favor of adopting L.A.’s conventions, though, if for no other reason than my sophomoric sense of humor being able to tell people I grew up near, or might take, “The 69.”

[LMU]

Updates!

 

So, essentially:

 

*the arena can be blown up to expand the footprint

*the contract with the Grand Prix is up in 2023 and can have the course layout renegotiated

*the city sites numerous parking garages in the area that can accommodate fans

*the Angels will decide by the end of the year

[Digby]

Why are these stadium developments always packaged alongside the most garbage of retail/dining developments?

 

Does anyone need L.A. Live on steroids? It's a couple crappy restaurants and a Lucky Strike that just has an ESPN office attached, who cares?

[GDAWG]

Once the Angels solve their stadium situation, it will probably take 50 years before Tampa Bay and Oakland resolve their own stadium issues. 

[dfwabel]

On 4/4/2019 at 8:58 AM, Digby said:

Why are these stadium developments always packaged alongside the most garbage of retail/dining developments?

 

Does anyone need L.A. Live on steroids? It's a couple crappy restaurants and a Lucky Strike that just has an ESPN office attached, who cares?

Foot traffic = potential sales tax dollars.  81 baseball games aren't good enough as the cost of venues continues to grow faster than GDP.  Hell, colleges/universities are getting into the PPP (public/private partnership) real estate business in the last decade.

[Sec19Row53]

On 4/3/2019 at 8:06 PM, crashcarson15 said:

I really appreciate Chicago’s naming conventions, because it’s easy to be clear and concise in traffic reports about which road you’re talking about. “[inbound or outbound] [name of expressway]” is pretty easy and unambiguous!

 

Except that those of us (me) who don't live there can't keep track of which is the Eisenhower, the Dan Ryan, or the Tri-State.

[The_Admiral]

West side, south side, around the city

[Sec19Row53]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

West side, south side, around the city

Like I am going to remember that the next time I am driving there

 

But thanks!

[BroncoBuff]

It might be the 4th oldest ballpark, but it underwent MAJOR, and very SUCCESSFUL renovations in the mid-90s.

 

It's a nice park.

 

 

[Quillz]

I remember watching "Sonicsgate" and thinking Seattle was silly for letting the Sonics leave, and that I was upset their decision was largely influenced by a local group that was against using public funds for building stadiums. But more than a decade later, I realize now they made the right decision. People are realizing that billionaires can build their stadiums without public funds, and their promises of x and y almost never pan out. I wonder if the Rams would have gotten public funding for their stadium had Seattle done so to keep the Sonics there. I think a major precedent was set when that happened.

[The_Admiral]

No one let the Sonics leave and no public advocacy groups meaningfully influenced anything. Ownership's proposals were made in bad faith and were designed to be rejected so that Oklahoma City-based interests could move the team to Oklahoma City, following their rejected attempt to buy the Hornets, whose layover in OKC they had been subsidizing. It was all for show; the coffee idiot signed their death sentence the day he sold the team.

[GDAWG]

https://ballparkdigest.com/2019/05/14/angels-long-beach-ballpark-project-could-top-1-billion/

 

Quote

A potential new ballpark project for the Los Angeles Angels in Long Beach could top $1.1 billion, according to city documents uncovered in local news reports. 

The long-term facility situation for the Angels is in flux. Last fall, the team opted out of its Angel Stadium lease, as the club had to decide by October 16 whether to opt out or otherwise wait until the end of the 2028 season for another opportunity. A lease extension with the City of Anaheim that covers 2020 was later secured, providing more time for ballpark plans to be considered.

 

[LMU]

Pot stirring from the LA Times.

 

 

[SFGiants58]

Well, it was the Anaheim Angels who won it all in 2002. The LA Angels have either been a young expansion team or an occasional playoff contender.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

3 hours ago, LMU said:

Pot stirring from the LA Times.

 

And pot-covering from one of the commenters to that article: "The Rams played in that exact stadium for many many years and were called the LA Rams. No one complained. Now the Rams will play in Inglewood, NOT L.A. and will still be called LA Rams. Nothing to see here, move along."

The idea that a team needs to play within the city limits or within the same county (or any variation of that argument) needs to be categorically and permanently retired. Of course urban stadiums are preferable to suburban ones.  And occasionally a team will make being within the city limits a priority, as NYCFC have done. But the important general point is that a major city has a sphere of influence extending far in every direction. This sphere of influence covers many smaller cities, including smaller cities that do not think of themselves as suburbs of the major city, and even those that define themselves against the major city.  A team located anywhere within this zone may rightfully identify by the name of the major city. 

 

[McCall]

The Atlanta Braves play in Cobb County.

The San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara.

The New York Giants and Jets play in New Jersey, for crying out loud.

 

The Los Angeles Angels may be the least "disingeuous" of any team who plays outside the city/state limits of the region they're named for.

[LMU]

19 minutes ago, McCall said:

The Atlanta Braves play in Cobb County.

The San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara.

The New York Giants and Jets play in New Jersey, for crying out loud.

 

The Los Angeles Angels may be the least "disingeuous" of any team who plays outside the city/state limits of the region they're named for.

The issue is that they don’t own it. You go to their stadium and the words “Los Angeles” are nowhere to be found or heard. The box score just had the Å instead of LAA, there’s no merchandise with Los Angeles, etc. as far as the team’s concerned they only market as “Angels Baseball” without having any sort of connection to Los Angeles or even Anaheim at this stage other than having Ducks or college nights for UCI, LBSU, or CSUF.

[Red Wolf]

The outrage at the Angels using Los Angeles is because they previously used a more specific geographic identifier. If they had used Los Angeles the entire time, this never would have been an issue, similar to the previous examples listed.

[goalieboy82]

2 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

The outrage at the Angels using Los Angeles is because they previously used a more specific geographic identifier. If they had used Los Angeles the entire time, this never would have been an issue, similar to the previous examples listed.

should have stayed this:

[monkeypower]

3 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

The outrage at the Angels using Los Angeles is because they previously used a more specific geographic identifier. If they had used Los Angeles the entire time, this never would have been an issue, similar to the previous examples listed.

 

That and there's another team in the same city, with an arena located across the street from the baseball stadium, that uses the city name and has only ever used the city name.

 

It's not a perfect comparison between the Angels and the Jets/Giants, Braves and 49ers because those teams are playing in essentially suburbs of those cities and have only ever used the big city names. Plus I feel Anaheim has more clout and recognizability than say the Cobb County Braves or the Santa Clara 49ers (I do think New Jersey Jets/Giants could have worked if either went that way).

 

It's also a bit disingenuous to compare the Angels of today to the Rams of yesteryear. No team had used Anaheim yet at that time so there wasn't the precedent for it, with the California Angels and the Los Angeles Rams playing in the same stadium at the same time. I posted on the boards before about an old article the Ducks dug out of the archives for their 25th anniversary this past season discussing what the name of the team would be. The Anaheim mayor at the time was interviewed and said he preferred the hockey team to use Anaheim because neither the Angels nor the Rams did. An Angels spokesperson was interviewed in the same article saying Anaheim was too small of a place to use as the geographic identifier and other comments that really implied there had been discussions within the Angels organization at some point in the pre-1992 past about using Anaheim.

 

@LMU and the article are correct about the LA Angels being disingenuous because they don't own it, there is a concerted effort to only calling them "Angels" or "Angels Baseball". There is no reference to LA in the stadium at all, heck the PA annoucer only refers to them as "Angels" when introducing the starting lineup. You can buy merchandise that says Atlanta Braves, New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers. There is absolutely no Angels merchandise that says Los Angeles outside of retro original 1961-1965 Los Angeles Angels stuff. Other merchandise that have the city name and team name for 29 other teams will instead have "Angels Baseball". You aren't going to get a "Los Angeles Angels" shirt for dear old dad for Father's Day.

 

(I really mean this. Go take a look around the MLB shop and all the merchandise that say "[Geographic identifier] [Team name]" will say "Angels Baseball" instead)