Three strikes for Think Big

Thinking big apparently doesn’t always entail thinking smart.

Consider: On Monday, Mayor Kevin Johnson and his all-things-downtown-development task force Think Big Sacramento announced its vision to bring Major League Baseball—possibly the Oakland Athletics—to Sacramento.

It is, of course, ironic that Sacramento now hopes to steal a pro-sports franchise from another city. But the MLB play itself also came as a surprise to many—including none other than West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon. He says his city would lose its successful minor-league franchise, the Sacramento River Cats, and have an empty stadium, Raley Field, if an MLB squad showed up across the river.

“The notion that they would cannibalize Raley Field to develop in the rail yards is offensive,” Cabaldon told SN&R a few hours after the Think Big announcement. “That’s not how we do business in this region.”

Cabaldon said he’d only received a phone call from Johnson the day before Monday’s presser, and said that the entire Think Big proposal was “reckless.”

That’s strike one against Think Big.

Strike two? Turns out the MLB team in K.J.’s crosshairs, the Athletics, has absolutely zero interest in moving to this River City.

Team spokesman Bob Rose told SN&R as much in April, when he stated that Sacramento “doesn’t have the corporate base” to support the Athletics (see “Bring on the major leagues” SN&R Frontlines, April 5).

The team’s majority owner, Lew Wolff, was more direct less than an hour after the mayor’s presser on Monday. He told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Susan Slusser, “We are not leaving the Bay Area, and that’s the end of it.”

Strike three against Johnson’s plan? It goes right to Sacramento’s perennial weak spot: its wallet.

As Cabaldon said, if an MLB team were (implausibly) to come to Sacramento, it would force the River Cats to leave town.

“There’s no city in America that’s home to both a major-league and minor-league team,” Zak Basch, spokesperson for the River Cats, told SN&R.

So, Cabaldon asked, if the River Cats leave, “What happens to the bond payments that have to be paid that last through 2030?”

That’s right: Residents of the city of Sacramento, Sacramento County and West Sacramento would still have to foot the bill on bonds that otherwise would be paid via healthy ticket sales at Raley Field.

Despite these three strikes, Think Big and Johnson still aim to move forward. At the press conference, Johnson announced that the MLB effort would be a 12-week “exploratory” look into viability of luring an MLB team from another city.

He may have gotten his answer in less than half a day.

It’s worth noting that press materials made available to the media before the conference made no mention of West Sacramento or Raley Field, but that Johnson and Think Big did state at the conference that bringing an MLB team to the region could involve landing a squad at Raley Field.

Mayor Cabaldon questioned the sincerity of this statement—why would Think Big, whose charged with revitalizing downtown Sacramento—work to the economic benefit of West Sac?

Plus, can you actually build a major-league-sized stadium at Raley Field?

Architect Joe Diesko, with HNTB architecture, helped construct Raley Field in 2000. He said you could put a MLB stadium in Raley Field’s footprint—but that it would likely cost hundreds of millions.

And—contrary to the urban legend—you can’t just make Raley Field taller. “Anybody that has some reasonable knowledge knows you can’t slap an upper deck on it,” Diesko told SN&R.

Since the press conference, Cabaldon said he’d spoken with Think Big head Kunal Merchant and has exchanged voice mails with Mayor Johnson.

But he remains frustrated: “This was definitely a foul ball.”