Marty Lurie Talks San Francisco Giants Baseball
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Fremont is perfect for the Athletics


Recently when the Oakland Athletics played a long four game series at Safeco Field in Seattle I was telling A’S announcer Ken Korach why the City of Fremont would be perfect for the A’S.
As a 27 year-long resident of this City of Fremont,
please let me tell you why.

By Amaury Pi-GonzálezPacific Commons is a spacious area just West of the
Auto Mall Parkway exit in Fremont. Three years ago
there was literally nothing there, but a PG & E office and the Waste Management administrative
offices. Then they began construction of what it was
named Pacific Commons. Now there is a Cosco like the size of the McAfee Coliseum,there are fast food places and “not so fast” nice white table-cloth restaurants. A Lowe’s and many many more shops in an area that is still developing with gasoline stations and all kind of businesses.

The City of Fremont has the land to build a new
ballpark for the Oakland Athletics. A few months ago the City Council met to authorize a $50,000
feasability study in trying to bring the Athletics
from Oakland to Fremont, here in Southern Alameda County. A’S owner Mr Lewis Wolf
recently visited and said he was “very serious about Fremont”. I tend to believe him, specially since he is not running for any public office.

Fremont has 210,000 residents,according to the latest Census,but it is not our population but the location here that would be ideal for the A’S.
We are just 15 minutes from San José, 25 minutes
from Oakland and 50 from San Francisco. The
San Mateo Bridge and Dumbarton Bridge link us with the West side of the bay, we are in the middle of two of the three international airports in the
Bay Area, Oakland International and Minneta
International.

Mr Wolf might be able to get the best deal for land here in Fremont and the team would still could be
named the Oakland Athletics, unless the ‘powers to be’want to do an Artie Moreno and name it the
Oakland Athletics of Fremont. The A’S are running out of opportunities to stay here in the Bay Area and maybe we should not be picky as far as what is the name. We all agree anything
is better that Los Atléticos de Las Vegas.

There are some negatives. The BART Fremont station is next to Washington Hospital and not within walking distance to Pacific Commons. As a matter of fact, BART Fremont is way on the East side of the 880 Freway, Pacific Commons in on the West side of 880. Like a good 10 minutes car drive.
BART must provide shuttle buses to transport the
people that would go to the Fremont station. The Santa Clara trolleys must also provide some kind
of shuttle service from their stop at the “Great Mall”
in Milpitas, just south of Fremont to take people to the park, if it is built there.

BART has on their plans to eventually have a line
from Fremont to Irvington and then to Warm Springs(which would be the closest to that new
ballpark at Pacific Commons). However, that might take another 10 years. The plans have been laid
down for more BART stationswhich the final goal of linking San José with Fremont and years later,
San José with the San Francisco Airport. So sometime in a few decades you will be able to take BART completely around the Bay. Many of us won’t be around to see that, but hey, the Cubs or the Giants haven’t won a World Series since BART first opened ! So, let’s do it for our kids and our grandchildren.

There are many that were laughing at Fremont and still are in many of those “letters to the Sports”in our Bay Area newspapers, but it’s not a laughing matter anymore. Oakland has struck out, San José would be the perfect place for the Athletics,but
territorial rights are still in place and the Giants
own that. Unless there is a drastic change regarding territorial rights and the A’S can buy the “territory”from the Giants, something that
might be as huge as the Louisiana Purchase, Fremont offers the best alternative.

Even in the Bay Area people cannot leave their cars alone and take public transportation (by-the-way the ACE Train stops here in Fremont,so you in Sacramento and the Valley can come on that train
to the new A’S park at Fremont) but with the price of gas these days and reports that rail transportation in the Bay Area has shown a significant increase in ridership, why not Fremont ?

Fremont is the right place for the A’S.

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1 Anonymous { 06.08.06 at 4:36 am }

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