While FCN made a respectable effort, in the end it was the economy and large local businesses that put the kibosh on the deal. Lou didn’t get what he has by making bad bets.

There’s another problem with the ‘FCN drove the A’s out of Fremont’ argument. It was Wolff himself who dropped out. He’s a smart businessman. If he’d have felt it was viable, he would’ve continued on. He’s probably taken on groups a lot stronger than FCN.

If the ballpark were now a go, Wolff would have had to come up with $400-500 million to start building the stadium. He would also have had to raise the capital to start building the retail space, and build at least a few hundred homes to get started. His return on his investment would be from filling the retail space and selling the homes. I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly glad I’m not in this position in this economy.

The City’s prospects would not have been any better. As you’ll recall, it was the sales tax from the project that was the main contributor to the City’s general fund (which pays for police and fire). Of course, sales taxes across the state are off across the board. Most likely, we would not have received enough to compensate for the cost of providing services to this area, increasing our budgetary problems.

Bob W says in the referenced article “I wouldn’t say that NUMMI has had a huge impact in terms of our local economy.” and in the sme article another Bob W is quoted as saying that the closing of NUMMI would be “…a disaster…”

I’m certain that someone much brighter than I will help the rest of us make sense of these two very disparate assessments of the same important matter.

Hey Marty whatdya think – maybe voters aren’t the only ones that dont study the economic impact reports (?)

“I wouldn’t say that NUMMI has had a huge impact in terms of our local economy”, Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman, from the front page of today’s Argus.

See, we thought NUMMI closing would be a BAD thing. We’ll all be fine. The article (authored by Matt) goes on to say that maybe even a major league baseball stadium could go in at the site.

Deja vu all over again.

Associating the loss of the stadium to a corresponding loss of economic benefit to Fremont flies in the face of all independant data. Economic advantages to stadium communities appears to be a figment of the imagination of those owning these developments.

You are correct, if NUMMI bails – Fremont will be in worse shape than if NUMMI stays. The A’s/NUMMI have no connection with one another.

The hypothetical narrative that you suggest would IMHO be very damaging to the reputations of city government if true since any attempt to boost the city economy with a stadium deal would fly in the face of all independant common sense and data. To believe that one could aid the local economy with a stadium, one would also have to disbelieve myriad publically available data. Which, if true, makes Vinnie a bit of a local hero. . .

I’m not saying I wholly agree with this story – it is, as you say, a bit more complex BUT – this IS politics.

mmmkay.

If that turns out to be the case, a narrative can be strung that the city government was trying diligently to boost the city economy with the A’s deal, but a “mob” of NIMBY’s facilitated by the FCN now represented by Vinnie Bacon chased Wolff out of town, and look at us now with a gazillion square foot ghost factory and no prospects for developing Auto Mall or the NUMMI lot.

I’m not saying I wholly agree with that story – it’s more complex than that – but this is politics. Perhaps I’m reading too much into Vinnie’s brush off of FCN involvement, but I’m getting the feeling he knows this risk.

[BTW, this is just my opinion, so make an attempt at not flipping out. I am ambivalent about the A's in Fremont and don't think Vinnie is a bad person, mmmkay?]

I actually think the timing of elections killed this thing as much as anything. If not for the “around the corner” elections – I’m guessing our leaders would have been much more aggressive at bringing the various stakeholders together early on to potentially work out and mitigate problems like parking . . . .which was painfully obvious – so why didn’t we work to solve these issues early on ?? why didn’t we bring Lowes and Costco and others to the table early on – - for me, the answer (speculatively) was because the elections were right around the corner. . . . we didn’t want the stadium to become a major rallying point that potentially wakes the relatively dead Fremont voters . . .. . . THAT certainly could have been a real disaster, right Vinnie ?

I think that Toyota was very concerned about the baseball stadium locating next to them, but where they were really suprised/upset was our politicians ignoring Toyota and pushing the ballpark. That is the facts.