Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[McCall]

3 hours ago, Brian in Boston said:

Major League Baseball's territorial rules state that the Angels and Dodgers share the same territory - Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties - equally. While either franchise can veto the move of a minor league team - including one another's affiliates - into said territory, they cannot limit the movement of the territory's other MLB club within the three counties.   

Even so, what is the likelihood that they draw that close to Dodger Stadium? Lifelong Dodger fans aren't gonna all of a sudden switch their fandom just because it's easier to get out of the parking lot. The Angels' best bet is to either stay in OC or try to get ahold of the outer region of Dodgers territory, i.e., Long Beach.

[gosioux76]

3 hours ago, McCall said:

Even so, what is the likelihood that they draw that close to Dodger Stadium? Lifelong Dodger fans aren't gonna all of a sudden switch their fandom just because it's easier to get out of the parking lot. The Angels' best bet is to either stay in OC or try to get ahold of the outer region of Dodgers territory, i.e., Long Beach.

 

It would certainly be a risk. But it's also important to remember that a move like that isn't just about the team, but the real estate opportunity. If such a move means it would allow Moreno or whomever to invest in a massive mixed-use project with year-round revenue streams, then that might offset some of that risk exposure. At that point, you might be willing to gamble that you can retain some of your core fanbase while also building a new, sustainable one drawn to that new location and its related entertainment options. 

Sometimes, it's just a bonehead move, like we've seen with the Chargers, which are a tenant in a venue they don't own, nor do they control the revenue streams. That might likely be the case with the Angels should the scenario @Brian in Boston suggested -- the Anschutz/Moreno partnership -- come to be. 

[FiddySicks]

It still makes no sense. I don’t really understand what they’re doing down there though, anyway. Southern California is absolutely enormous, and the southern half of the region (San Diego, Orange County, parts of the IE)  is larger than most other markets just on its own. Despite that, they seem to want to keep moving everything from down there and concentrate everything around Los Angeles directly. Like, why? Why in the world would they want to basically alienate the entire southern portion of their region to try and compete for dollars with already well established franchises in their own backyards? It seems so incredibly shortsighted, and frankly, a tad bit arrogant. Which, actually, kinda fits the attitude of the region perfectly. 

[Digby]

14 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Any plan that has the Angels actually leaving greater Orange County isn’t a good one imo. Especially if they move into Los Angeles proper. That’s a great way to set them up as the actual baseball Clippers. It’s like the Chargers moving from San Diego to LA. Yeah I guess it’s technically “more” fans, but, not really with any ounce of enthusiasm. That’s Dodgers territory, has always been, and it isn’t changing because the Angels move up there. 

 

It's worse than that. At least the current Clippers and Chargers fill dates where their venues would otherwise go empty. Building a brand-new ballpark in the shadow of Dodger Stadium that's not for the Dodgers is a great way to waste some of the most valuable land in the country.

[Brian in Boston]

4 hours ago, McCall said:

Even so, what is the likelihood that they draw that close to Dodger Stadium? Lifelong Dodger fans aren't gonna all of a sudden switch their fandom just because it's easier to get out of the parking lot. The Angels' best bet is to either stay in OC or try to get ahold of the outer region of Dodgers territory, i.e., Long Beach.

I'm not saying the scenario I've outlined is going to happen. In fact, I said the chance of such an eventuality occurring was "slim". That said, under Major League Baseball's current territorial rules for the Los Angeles market, the Dodgers could not unilaterally prevent the Angels from pursuing such a path.

As for the number of lifelong Dodgers fans that would "switch their fandom" if the Angels were to make such a move, all I can tell you is that - as mentioned up-thread - I have crossed paths with no shortage of baseball fans on LA's Westside who would enthusiastically leap at the chance to rid themselves of the mind-numbing, nerve-fraying, soul-sucking slog that is getting in and out of Chavez Ravine in order to consume the MLB product in this market. And that sample includes everyone from transplants to Greater Los Angeles with other primary MLB team allegiances to native Angelenos who have bled Dodger Blue their entire lives.

Now, granted, there are plenty of the latter fans who would tell you that they'd prefer it if the Dodgers were to make the move to the downtown Los Angeles ballpark I've described. Indeed, I know Dodger-loving seam-heads who can't understand why the franchise's current ownership group wouldn't want to rid itself of having to deal with former team owner Frank McCourt, who still holds a stake in the parking lots - and any profits that development opportunities on said landscape would generate - surrounding Dodger Stadium. Truth be told, the Dodgers likely wonder about that themselves from time to time. After all, the Dodgers current ownership group - Guggenheim Baseball Management - considered a deal that would have seen them build a replacement for Dodger Stadium on the downtown parcel that was being eyed for the Farmers Field development, with AEG building a stadium to house a National Football League team at the current Dodger Stadium site.

In any event, this much seems certain: Arte Moreno has gotten himself in a pickle... and Major League Baseball would seem to have another less-than-optimal ballpark situation on its hands. Certainly not as problematic as the state-of-affairs plaguing the Athletics at RingCentral Coliseum or the Rays at Tropicana Field, but troublesome nevertheless.                      

[FiddySicks]

Yeah but you say that with the assumption that whatever the Angels would set up wouldn’t be the mind-numbing, nerve-fraying, soul-sucking slog that is getting in and out of Chavez Ravine, and I’m pretty sure that’s the wrong assumption to make. It’s still Los Angeles, after all. If public transportation was set up better, I might buy into that line of thinking, but as it currently is, the very nature of the city is a mind-numbing, nerve-fraying, soul-sucking slog. 

[pmoehrin]

15 hours ago, LMU said:

I could see Long Beach working.  LB has always had an OC-adjacent vibe to it and is close enough to easily draw in fans from Seal Beach/Huntington Beach on a regular basis.

 

I have no doubt Long Beach would work. You're in a city with just under half a million people and within a half-hour drive of both LA and Anaheim. That's on top of all the pre-existing entertainment-based infrastructure already there. It doesn't get much better than that in terms of location.

 

The issue I see comes down to cost. There's a reason nobody has moved into that area. A stadium there would run well over $1 billion and easily be the most expensive MLB stadium ever built.

 

The Angels have no problem drawing right where they are, and it would be a lot cheaper for them to stay put than to move any way you cut it. Their current ballpark isn't great, but you can work with it, and the Angels have.

 

I don't see them moving outside the LA market because anywhere they moved to would be a downgrade. They're second in the league in attendance, playing in the second-largest media market in the country. Why mess that up?

 

I think they're going to wait for the smoke to clear with whatever is going with the Anaheim city government before doing anything. No mater what happens, they're not in any danger of getting kicked out of their stadium tomorrow.

[LMU]

39 minutes ago, pmoehrin said:

 

I have no doubt Long Beach would work. You're in a city with just under half a million people and within a half-hour drive of both LA and Anaheim. That's on top of all the pre-existing entertainment-based infrastructure already there. It doesn't get much better than that in terms of location.

 

The issue I see comes down to cost. There's a reason nobody has moved into that area. A stadium there would run well over $1 billion and easily be the most expensive MLB stadium ever built.

 

The Angels have no problem drawing right where they are, and it would be a lot cheaper for them to stay put than to move any way you cut it. Their current ballpark isn't great, but you can work with it, and the Angels have.

 

I don't see them moving outside the LA market because anywhere they moved to would be a downgrade. They're second in the league in attendance, playing in the second-largest media market in the country. Why mess that up?

 

I think they're going to wait for the smoke to clear with whatever is going with the Anaheim city government before doing anything. No mater what happens, they're not in any danger of getting kicked out of their stadium tomorrow.

The problem with that thinking is the Arte Moreno ego wildcard.  He's impulsive to the team's detriment.  When the Dodgers signed Zack Greinke away from him he made the executive decision to overpay for Josh Hamilton.  He personally intervened with the Albert Pujols deal just because it was flashy despite his stats already starting to crater.  This isn't about the ballpark to him.  He's already agreed to pay for a replacement stadium next door out of his own pocket if that's the better move.  This is all about him getting cheap real estate to get his Haloville development built and with Anaheim cancelling the whole thing it's going to be going back to square one with dealing with the State and the obligation to offer sale to housing development before the team gets a whiff which, knowing his ego, he's not going to stand for.  Plus, it would be the ultimate Arte Moreno move to jump at LB just to thumb his nose at Guggenheim that he has oceanfront property.

[Brian in Boston]

1 hour ago, FiddySicks said:

Yeah but you say that with the assumption that whatever the Angels would set up wouldn’t be the mind-numbing, nerve-fraying, soul-sucking slog that is getting in and out of Chavez Ravine, and I’m pretty sure that’s the wrong assumption to make. It’s still Los Angeles, after all. If public transportation was set up better, I might buy into that line of thinking, but as it currently is, the very nature of the city is a mind-numbing, nerve-fraying, soul-sucking slog. 

My statements are based upon my experience as the owner of a Los Angeles Kings full season ticket plan from 2003 to present, a  Dodgers partial season ticket plan from 2005 through 2016, and a Los Angeles Football Club full season ticket plan from 2018 to present.

If I want to make sure that I'm in my seat at Dodger Stadium in time for the 7:10 PM start of a weeknight game, there is no way I'm electing to leave Santa Monica by car any later than 5:30 PM... and that's not necessarily going to guarantee I get there on time. And don't even get me started about exiting the parking lots at Chavez Ravine after the contest.  

Meanwhile, a 5-minute drive from my home gets me to the Metro station in Santa Monica where I can grab the E Line train to the Pico station, a trip that has never taken me longer than 47 minutes on a Kings game night. From there I'm a 5-minute walk to Crypto.com Arena (which sits adjacent to the plot of land Farmers Field was to be built upon).

Similarly, the trip from my preferred Metro station in Santa Monica to the Expo Park/USC  station for an LAFC match has only once taken longer than 35 minutes. That was on the night a car accident blocked the track... and the total time from Expo Park/USC back to Santa Monica was 50 minutes, even with the need to clear the automobiles from the intersection.    

There is simply no comparing the slog of fighting my way through traffic in an automobile to and from Dodger Stadium for a baseball game  with  the ease and speed with which I can travel via the E Line of the Greater Los Angeles Metro Rail System from Santa Monica to either the Expo Park/USC  or Pico stations for - respectively - LAFC matches and Kings games.  None.

There is a reason that Dodgers fans have gained a reputation for arriving late to games and leaving early: it is a chore getting to and from their stadium in a timely manner.      

[FiddySicks]

Yeah you’re definitely right that Chavez Revine is particularly difficult to get to and from. It makes me wonder why the city didn’t do more to build public transportation to and from the area decades ago. The stadium is sort of located in a perfect area in some ways. It’s up above the city away from the crush, which isn’t a bad plan for a stadium, as long as you have the resources to get to and from the area. Dodgers Stadium absolutely does not have that in its current form. 
 

Southern California’s lack of a truly robust train system still baffles me. I get that it’s the very definition of a car city, but how that was ever overlooked is beyond me. I’m sure there are reasons, I’ve just never really heard any good ones. 

[pmoehrin]

4 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

I’m sure there are reasons, I’ve just never really heard any good ones. 

The same reason Detroit and most southern cities don’t have one. Car and gas companies lobby against them with a great amount of success.

 

I think the only reason we have trains at all in this country is because you can’t ship everything via truck.

[LMU]

9 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

Yeah you’re definitely right that Chavez Revine is particularly difficult to get to and from. It makes me wonder why the city didn’t do more to build public transportation to and from the area decades ago. The stadium is sort of located in a perfect area in some ways. It’s up above the city away from the crush, which isn’t a bad plan for a stadium, as long as you have the resources to get to and from the area. Dodgers Stadium absolutely does not have that in its current form. 
 

Southern California’s lack of a truly robust train system still baffles me. I get that it’s the very definition of a car city, but how that was ever overlooked is beyond me. I’m sure there are reasons, I’ve just never really heard any good ones. 

Alas, it once did back in the days of yesteryear.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric

[FiddySicks]

37 minutes ago, pmoehrin said:

The same reason Detroit and most southern cities don’t have one. Car and gas companies lobby against them with a great amount of success.

 

I think the only reason we have trains at all in this country is because you can’t ship everything via truck.

Sadly, that makes sense. I’m not sure why I ever inquire about things anymore when the answer is basically always that capitalism ruins everything. 

[Brian in Boston]

Yes, indeed. The tragedy of Southern California's public transit history is that Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties were once linked by an extensive system of electric streetcars and interurban cars. The Pacific Electric Railway Company was the largest electric railway system in the world at its peak. Over 2,100 daily trains traversed more than 1,000 miles of track while  serving  cities and towns throughout Southern California.

[Partycrasher]

this seems like a good time to bring up that Robert Moses was one of the most evil men to have ever lived.

[pmoehrin]

30 minutes ago, JerseyJimmy said:

this seems like a good time to bring up that Robert Moses was one of the most evil men to have ever lived.

 

I think that's a little bit of an oversimplification.

 

He had a romanticized view of what the automobile could do but was a major catalyst in getting a lot of New Deal projects off the ground.

 

He just didn't know when to quit and was bringing an uncompromising pre-WWII vision of the automobile to a city that neither wanted nor needed that vision to flourish.

 

Was he ruthless in going about getting what he wanted? Absolutely. But I can't say all of his ideas were necessarily bad or that ruthlessness wasn't necessary to see some of those projects through.

 

The only thing I can say for sure about Robert Moses is that, for better or worse, no other person did more to shape present-day New York than him.

[Digby]

4 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Southern California’s lack of a truly robust train system still baffles me. I get that it’s the very definition of a car city, but how that was ever overlooked is beyond me. I’m sure there are reasons, I’ve just never really heard any good ones. 

 

True, but, find a US city that has done more to build out its public transit system in the past 10 years than LA. Better late than never.

 

I'd place a bet on a Union Station-Dodger Stadium gondola waaaay before one on a downtown LA Angels stadium.

[sky1324]

For all the sabotage it endured, LA's public transit is actually pretty solid. I can get pretty much anywhere I need to within a couple hours from USC. Certainly better than the one straight line Charlotte offers. LA's issue is that it's been built off of the idea of everyone owning cars, making it a nightmare to drive in or walk in. The suburban single-family neighborhoods that dominate land outside of urban centers are nightmares for building public transit and connecting different parts of the metro.

[Digby]

Anyway, the Dodgers have led MLB in attendance for a decade. The traffic in Chavez Ravine is unpleasant, but not something I’d personally bet my billions against.

[DEAD!]

14 minutes ago, Digby said:

 

True, but, find a US city that has done more to build out its public transit system in the past 10 years than LA. Better late than never.

 

I'd place a bet on a Union Station-Dodger Stadium gondola waaaay before one on a downtown LA Angels stadium.

 

When I went to LA for a weekend about three years ago, I was actually surprised how extensive the Metro subway/light rail system is. I stayed downtown and I took the metro to Hollywood, Santa Monica and USC. 

What it lacks though, is a proper stop at the airport. Yes there is one nearby LAX, but I think you still have to take a shuttle there. Maybe that is asking too much.