I’m sure all of you are sick of hearing about this topic, but I can’t help myself. I mean, put yourself in my shoes:

You’re walking out of Memorial stadium after a pleasant afternoon with a leisurely Cal win over an FCS opponent. You’re thinking to yourself, what a great day! I made the change over to getting a ridiculously expensive parking pass for a parking spot half a mile a way, but the leisurely walk down the hill will be nicer than fighting to get on the even more ridiculously expensive for a family of 5 shuttle run by Silverado. Look at all those people over there fighting to get on the Silv…

WHAT! Those are AC Transit buses!?!

See what I mean?

I know logistics can be a pain to get organized, but it really chaps my hide that they keep changing things on me long after the dates that I have to make my decisions on what to do. I guarantee you, even though I can’t confirm this factually, that the new game day information page wasn’t available in April when I had to make the decision to buy a parking pass.

If I had known in April that AC Transit and their cheaper prices (particularly for kids) were coming back, I would have most definitely NOT bought a parking pass, freeing an additional parking space for someone who wants it and saving me money (on the order of $90 for the season – parking pass: $140, AC Transit ~ $10 a game x 5 games I’m attending). But now it’s too late, I’ve already paid for the parking pass and will be stuck with it for the whole season.

Is it the worst thing ever? No, it’s not. $90 is a small figure compared to the 6 season tickets. Gas prices for the trip from Roseville, will affect my total cost almost as much as this change. In the end I think it’ll still be a good experience to try out the parking pass for a season to see what it’s like. So, this is not something to get any more worked up about than a single blog post rant.

But I would make this request to the Athletic Department: You need to get more of these sorts of things figured out and COMMUNICATED in March, particularly when they’re expected to change. People do make decisions based on little things like this and we don’t like the rug being pulled out from underneath us.

OK, that’s last you’ll hear about this from me… until I DON’T get a parking pass some year and they re-institute Silverado.

I know that very few people care about this because the odds of it being an issue is small, but there has been an appeal going on for the SAHPC for the last two years. I’ve been posting on it occasionally as news has come up.

Over the summer they had oral arguments and on Friday the ruling came down. After scanning the ruling, I can summarize it for everyone:

Tree-sitters: You stink! Stop wasting everyone’s time, reiterating the same tired arguments as in the original case and pay up the legal fees you owe to the University!

OK, that’s not an exact quote, but close enough.

So, with the City of Berkeley not participating in the orginal appeal, the homeowners (Panaramic Hill Association) settling this summer and the tree-sitters losing their appeal, this case is as done as an overcooked pig on a spit. Sure the tree-sitters could appeal to the state supreme court if they wanted, but I’m 98% sure the supreme’s wouldn’t take the case and I think they’ve run out of steam now that the financial backing for their smelly appeals (the city and homeowners) have run for the hills.

The other good news is that as of yet, there’s been no new lawsuits over the stadium renovation, i.e. phase 2. While the SAHPC, i.e. phase 1, suits were in many ways tangled with the renovation, there was definitely the risk that separate suits with a new trial could be started for phase 2. So far, knock on wood, it doesn’t appear that this is going to be an issue. It looks like they used up all their energy and financial backing on the first round. Now that the trees are down and construction is in progress, nobody can summon the will/money to do it again.

Woohoo! Another victory for the Bears!

Amenities… that’s what every stinking article about moving to AT&T park is all about. Amenities this, amenities that. Blaw, blaw, blaw, shortcomings this and that, but who cares, great Amenities!

At first I thought, OK, people like their nice amenities, I mean, it’s a big part of the reason for the renovation of Memorial, so I told myself to chill out and not worry about it.

But I’ve reached my breaking point. I read the word ‘amenities’ one to many times and now I’m going postal (or the blog equivalent thereof):

What the @($#@$#@!(R@!#$(@!#$P&(@!asld$!(@#$*@!#)$@!$#&(@!#$@!#$(* BS are you guys talking about!?!

We’ve played in amenity-less Memorial for 75+ years, with one more year to go. Why does it matter what kind of amenities our ONE YEAR replacement has? Why is this on the top of the priority list? Said another way, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE OPTIONS HAS S*I*G*N*I*F*I*C*A*N*T*L*Y BETTER AMENITIES THAN MEMORIAL!?!

So it’s not like we’d be taking a big step back to go play at Candlestick park. It’s not like they’ve been feverishly working to improve the amenities in Memorial in the EIGHT YEARS they’ve been working on this project. It’s not like this is a permanent move that if we didn’t have amenities, we’d be missing the point of a move. No, it’s ONE YEAR, and it’s one year that no matter where we go it’s going to be an amenity upgrade to Memorial.

To be clear, it’s not that there aren’t other upsides to AT&T, public transportation being the biggie. But that’s not what I’m reading over and over. What I’m reading over and over, just to belabor the point 3 times too many is:

Amenities

Amenities

Amenities

And a word for the wise: If you think you’re going to be getting beer at the games, think again. It’s still an NCAA and Pac-10 football game. This isn’t a bowl game where everyone looks the other way. It’s the regular season. I’ll make a bet with anyone who desires that I’ll buy them a domestic beer if they have it for the first game at AT&T if they’ll buy me a large soda if they don’t. Anyone game for that bet?

To be clear, I’m not against AT&T park, every option had their upsides and downsides (even, GASP!, without considering their amenities, GASP!).

But amenities should have been at the very bottom of the list of criteria. Talk to me about public transportation, gaining new fanbases, surrounding neighborhoods for pre/post-game stuff and a feeling of safety, financial considerations, quality of the field (oops! wrong choice!), seating capacity (oop! wrong choice!), scheduling issues (oop! wrong choice!), heck, even weather (oops! wrong choice!) but don’t talk to me about amenities.

So please, someone tell me why amenities are such a big deal?

Word is coming down from two sources (Rich Lieberman and Okanes) that the deal has been finalized on where the Bears will play in 2011:

AT&T Park

As we all know, this is where the Giants play in San Francisco and where the Emerald Bowl is held, and it has the upside of being the nicest facility of the candidates (Oakland Coliseum, Candlestick and AT&T), but has the downside of small capacity, playing with a dirt infield in September (and maybe October if the Giants make a playoff run) (which the Coliseum has the same downside via the A’s), plus the weird sideline/odd corners problems that squeezing a football field onto that baseball field has. (UPDATE: It appears Cal will re-work the field so that both teams will not be on the same sideline like in the Emerald Bowl.)

Personally, this was my last choice of the 3, and it wasn’t even close. I wanted the Coliseum and actually waffled with wanting Candlestick as my #1 because there would NEVER be any baseball conflict issues. Part of that is I travel from a long way away no matter what so where it is in the Bay Area doesn’t matter much to me. Part of it is that I don’t care about nice amenities (even the Stick is a HUGE improvement over Memorial, so what do we care?). Add in the low capacity crowd and AT&T just doesn’t speak to me.

But I’m just one guy and lots of guys feel differently. It’s not a horrible situation, in fact it’s anything but. The way I see it, the headline should read something like this:

“Bears confident enough that renovation of stadium will actually happen in 2011 to enter into contract with replacement stadium for that season!”

For me, the prospect of sitting in a renovated Memorial stadium in just 28 months from now is something that will keep me smiling all day, even if AT&T park wasn’t on the top of my list.

The Chronicle had an article on the settlement with the Panoramic Hill Association today:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/09/BA391CRRS7.DTL

Key quote:

The settlement with Panoramic Hill states that the university will pay $75,000 to cover the group’s attorney fees. It also allows the university to host only nine or fewer events that draw crowds of more than 10,000 people over a three-year period. Cal football games and graduations do not count.

So, basically, we had to pay them off, albeit it with a pretty small sum considering the hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here. The extra events limitation is not a big deal from where I sit. I always saw the University’s advancement of having more events there as a way for the University to keep its options open. The University never had any explicit plans to hold events there.

Everyone remembers the tree huggers, most remember the court case, but few remember the nuance of it all all, that the trees didn’t come down until the appellate court refused to put an injunction on construction while the appeal continued.

The most that most fans remember is that the appeal “failed”. But that’s not the truth at all. The appeal is still on-going because appeals apparently take FOREVER. All that the appellate court determined was that they wouldn’t stop construction while the appeal proceeded. The appeal would continue and the University risked having to pay larger damages and have to tear down the SAHPC if they lost. The University was willing to take that risk (thankfully) and down the trees came. Nevertheless the appeal still continues to this day.

As proof of what you likely don’t believe, I give you the case website:

http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/mainCaseScreen.cfm?dist=1&doc_id=1375717&doc_no=A122511

And for those incredulous enough to click on a link that ugly, they’ll see that the case hasn’t even made it to oral arguments despite being filed on 8/28/08.

In any case, I suspect you’re wondering why I’m bringing this up now. The reason is because there has been activity in the case in the last two weeks. The University and the Panoramic Hill Association have reached a “settlement” and thus the PHA has requested to be removed from the case. That leaves the California Oak Foundation as the lone plaintiff/appellant.

This is important for a number of reasons, the primary of which being that the “deep pockets” in the original case was the City of Berkeley followed by the PHA and coming in last with just their smelly clothes and patented ability to sit in trees (without any money) is the California Oak Foundation. Since the city decided to stay out of the appeal in the first place, PHA’s backing out makes it so there are ZERO deep pockets left. Since money is a key criteria to getting lawyers to work, it makes the likelihood this appeal will ever make it oral arguments all the less likely. I’d say it borders on a non-possibility if this weren’t Berkeley.

The other question is: What was the “settlement”?

I have absolutely no idea! All I do is read the website every once and a while to see if there’s been any activity. My guess is that it’s nothing of note, probably a “please don’t counter-sue use please” settlement. The reality is that the PHA got dragged into this and as time went on there was less and less support from the home owners to spend money on lawyers. Perhaps they got some minor concession from the University about lighting or something like that, but if they did, I’m sure it wasn’t much as the University was in the strong position at this point.

Finally, here’s the summary of the recent activity from the case website:

Check it out at ESPN:

http://sports.espn.go.com/travel/news/story?id=4647075

Jason and I both had our thoughts about the crowd issues at the USC game and it’s nice to see that the University not only listened, but made some changes. Specifically, they liked my idea (not that I was unique in thinking it) of closing the concessions in the hallway, although they only intend to do that for the pregame, admittedly the most important time.

See their new updated Football Gameday Access Plan for all the details.

The one thing they seem intent on doing that is likely a fools errand if they don’t actually turn people away at the entrance is trying to get people to enter through the south entrance when their seats are on the south side of the stadium. If people are coming from the fun center or have parking on the north side of the stadium, they’re not going to listen to the advice and walk a considerable amount out of their way down Piedmont and around the I-House when they can enter the stadium right there and fight their way through.

It’s a noble attempt on the University’s part and I guess every person who does listen will be one less person crowding the concourse tunnel, but I don’t know if they can actually pull that part of their plan off to the degree that it’ll make a dent.

Nevertheless, it’s nice to see them listening to our feedback and implementing at least one sensible change, closing those concession stands, that I personally think would make a HUGE difference.

I just received this e-mail, forwarded to me by Sandy Barbour, about the issues with the stadium at the USC game.

Dear Cal Football Fans:

During Saturday’s Cal football game against USC, we know that many of you who attended had an unfortunate and unexpected gameday experience due to the long lines and congestion throughout much of Memorial Stadium. I want to apologize and, at the same time, make sure we move quickly to understand exactly what went wrong and let you know about the steps being taken to address it.

We have almost three weeks before our next home game against Washington State on Oct. 24, and with the help of the UC Police Department and other experts, we will be working diligently to improve pedestrian flow and crowd control.

An immediate review after the game found that almost half the crowd entered the stadium through just two gates – Gates 1 and 2 – near the north side of the stadium. The resulting bottleneck caused lines to back up, especially on the concourse level. Similar problems occurred in other areas of the stadium, as well.

We take your safety seriously and many valuable lessons were learned at the game. We did have additional staff placed in the concourse to assist with crowd control, but obviously it wasn’t enough, and we need to do a better job of monitoring and directing traffic.

Entering this fall, we knew that the potential for increased congestion in and around Memorial Stadium existed, and we worked with campus and city safety and security personnel to develop an access plan to help fans navigate around the High Performance Center construction zone. Although we had few issues the first two contests, the USC game clearly showed that we need to evaluate the plan’s effectiveness. The full release can be found by clicking here (Stadium Access Plan).

With construction of the Student-Athlete High Performance Center and the planned renovation of the stadium, we are well on our way to creating a better gameday experience for all. However, I will continue to do everything possible to minimize the impact of construction on some of the best days we have together as a Cal community. We will distribute our revised plan as soon as we fully identify and make the necessary improvements in our operations.

Thank you for your passionate support of our campus and Cal Athletics.

Go Bears,

Sandy Barbour Director of Athletics

My take: everyone entering through the north end of the stadium might be an issue, but as long as the Fun Zone is over there, it’s hard to see the traffic flow working much differently. I don’t think the entry point is the root of the problem. I think the fact that you can’t access most of the center section of the west side of the stadium (due to the construction project) without going through incredibly narrow passageways is the root of the problem. And more to the point, the capacity of the venue is the root of the problem.

If this is a sincere attempt to improve crowd control, great. Fantastic. I hope that’s what it is. But I’m not enthused by the “we’ll get back to you” tone of some of the paragraphs, the blame being placed on what I believe to be a side issue (i.e., the entry point), and the suggestion that “additional staff” would be able to somehow control such a massive crowd.

You know when a game as disastrous as that game yet the first thing most people on the alumni side want to talk about is the crowds, something is drastically wrong. Jason and I didn’t plan to tag-team on this one and we don’t sit together or even near each other but we both had the same thought: Something has to be done about the crowd situation. You’ve read Jason’s letter, now here’s mine:

Dear Athletic Department,

I am writing to you about a matter that could be of grave, life threatening importance in the next couple years before the stadium renovation is complete. The crowds at Memorial Stadium at the football game on October 3rd were a major problem. Even though I got to my seats 90 minutes before the game and had no problems personally, it was very clear that there was a disaster brewing in the hallways and tunnels. People were swearing and crying and distraught when they came to their seats. Other people just needed to get out of the hallways and came flowing out of the tunnel just gasping for a minuscule amount of breathing room. So many did this that the stairwells between the sections were gridlock and tempers flared even once people were out of the hallways and tunnels.

When I took my children to the bathroom late in the 2nd quarter things had calmed down just enough that it wasn’t gridlock in the hallways, but it quickly became clear what one of the major bottlenecks was. There are 2 (or perhaps 3 or 4) concession stands that are directly in the concourse hallways. I’m not referring to the concession stands below G and GG that have a large area for lines and milling around. I’m talking about the ones underneath EE and I believe either HH or I. They are directly in the hallway and any line that forms completely for those concessions blocks the walkway.

This was a problem and an inconvenience even when the service road outside the stadium (but inside the fence) was open. It allowed people a second route to make their way around the stadium. However, with the Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC) under construction, the ONLY place to get around the stadium between E and HH is the concourse hallway. These two concession stands are a HUGE problem this year and caused panic, gridlock and lots of hurt emotions. I literally saw women and children crying, their evening completely ruined, as they came out of the concourse.

For safety reasons, it is imperative that you close these two concession stands until construction of the SAHPC is complete.

I’ve also heard from friends that they believe it would be wise to reduce the capacity of the stadium until the SAHPC is complete and I support that idea as well. I think putting back up the Toyota blue and gold zone banners and not selling those tickets for the remainder of the year would be wise.

I know that the University did their best with the raised walkways to try and mitigate the construction, but unfortunately it was not enough. Please consider closing the in hallway concession stands (and if necessary reduce capacity). It is a health and safety issue of the highest order.

Ken Crawford
Season Ticket holder since 1999

Dear Cal Athletic Department,

I know you know I’m disappointed in your football team. But this isn’t about that.

This is about public safety.

Last night, 71,799 packed into Memorial Stadium to see Cal play USC.

As you’re well aware, the stadium was built nearly a century ago, when people were smaller. The rows are too tightly packed and the seat numbers on the benches are too close together.

This isn’t a problem, generally, because people spread out to fill the space. But when the game is a sellout, it becomes extremely uncomfortable.

This has been true for a while now. But by closing a large number of entrances to the stadium, as a part of the construction of the training center on the stadium’s west side, you’ve taken the situation from uncomfortable to dangerous.

Too many people are being packed into too small a space. There were people trying to get to their seats for an entire quarter. Attendees were pouring out of the tunnel behind my section, FF, and gridlocking the entire aisle all the way from tunnel to field level, in an attempt to move over to their seats in a different section. I believe at some point, certain parts of the walkway were actually closed down for safety reasons.

Going up to the bathrooms or concessions seemed like an impossibility. Getting out of the stadium in the event of an emergency also seemed completely unlikely.

What I’m saying is, the construction has changed the dynamics of the stadium, but you haven’t changed the capacity. You need to rectify this. As soon as possible, you should place a cap on the number of tickets you sell. I know it’s fun to sell 72,000 tickets, but for safety reasons you should decrease the number to something smaller. 65,000, maybe? You know, I hear scarcity can be a good thing for ticket prices. And 65,000 is still a huge number of seats.

I’m serious, now. The situation Saturday night at Memorial Stadium wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was dangerous. That stadium is not capable of handling that many people, especially with half the stadium entrances closed off by construction.

Do the right thing. Reduce the number of tickets you sell until you can fix stadium access.

Over at calbears.com, they’ve got up a post about the UC regents preliminarily approving the stadium renovation. This allows them to move forward on specific construction plans and drawing and to work on the financing plan. I think this is a very good sign that they’re not getting gun-shy with all of the budget cutbacks. Of course there’s no actual financial relationship between the two, but it doesn’t change that the PR issues surrounding raising fees while at the same time reducing services makes managers nervous about approving a big project, even if they’re independently funded. It just looks bad to people who are ignorant to the distinctions and often by the time those financial distinctions are corrected, the horse is already out of the barn.

In any case, there are some notable details that are spelled out in black and white:

• The year we’ll be nomads is 2011. (Court delays aside)
• The project will cost $321 million. That’s worrisome to me because of the rules of Alto-Priolo. That means we’ve got to get a stadium evaluation at $642 million or higher. It sure would be nice if that number was under $500 million. I think that’ll be a lot easier to justify in front of a judge. I wonder if they’ve figured out ways to minimize how much of that $321 counts towards the official retrofit?
• There’s more data there on the number of ESP seats sold (at nearly 2000 of 3000).
• It also makes it pretty clear that the east side renovations are on the back-burner for quite a while, at least until “funds become available”.
• Not that this is new, but they’ll be lowering the field 3 feet.

In any case, good to see they’re moving forward.

I didn’t get a post in about this last week when I found out about it, but Cal swapped out AC Transit for a private bus company to do the shuttles from Rockridge BART and Berkeley Amtrak. When I found out, I was unhappy because of the added cost. Last year I spent $8.50 for my whole family round trip. My two youngest are free and the eldest is $1.50 round trip, with adults costing $3.50 each. Silverado, the company that Cal contracted with, is charging $5 a person, which isn’t too much more for us adults, but really hits us with the kids. In all, we went from $8.50 a game to $25 a game, basically triple the cost. “I might as well pay for the parking on campus!?!” I said at the time.

My other fear was that Sliverado wouldn’t be able to handle the load or would have massive inefficiency problems. The point of this post is to give them props for doing very well. They were efficient in their simplicity. No complicated setup with going from one station to another. They just had a lady standing in front of the bus who you handed a $5 bill to and she handed you a raffle ticket and told you to hold on to it to the end of the game for the round trip. When one adds in their taking Telegraph instead of College (a much more open road) and dropping us off at Piedmont and Bancroft instead of College and Bancroft (in other words, at the top of the hill) and they did a great job.

The one minor complication was after the game they lacked appropriate signage for which bus was going where. With buses going to Rockridge BART, Berkeley Amtrak and a longer route that went to Lafayette BART and beyond into Contra Costa County, they really needed signs. But all one had to do was ask the drivers and they could figure it out pretty quick. The fact that it was again on Piedmont Ave instead of down on College was a benefit as well. Hopefully they’ll put up some signage for the upcoming game to improve in that area.

The final point of this post is to go into the background of why AC Transit is no longer providing the shuttle.

Turns out that AC Transit was the one to initiate the change, although that’s not what they had intended. They’re in the middle of doing a bunch of cost cutting and it turns out it costs them $200k a year to do the shuttle. That’s above and beyond the revenue they collected for the shuttle. So, they went to the University and asked them to pick up the $200k tab. The University balked and called around to find out who’d give them a better deal and Silverado was.

When I found that out I was really ticked off, and not at the University.

$200k a year!?! Why wasn’t I being transported in the gold plated bus that apparently I, as a tax payer, was paying for? Let’s do the math on this one:

$200k a year means $33k a game. Assuming they have about 30 buses a game, which from what I’ve seen sounds about right, that means about $1000 a bus. With each bus holding about 50 people that means every one was, in addition to the fare they paid, costing AC Transit about $20 round trip.

TWENTY DOLLARS PER PERSON ROUND TRIP!?!

This is the perfect example of how government is wasteful and hides it. I had always been under the assumption that AC Transit was running a profitable affair on game day. I mean, it’s the perfect environment for it. Full buses on a short run getting a full fare. Plus, it’s gravy fares for when AC Transit is usually unable to get a lot of riders (on the weekends). But no, that $8.50 I was paying was only a tiny fractional percentage of the $100 or so it was costing us all as tax payers to take my family to the game. Yes, $100 round-trip for my family. For what it is worth, a taxi, a very cost inefficient model of transit, would only cost about $20 round-trip.

Then, you’ve got to love this quote from the AC Transit folks:

We’re a little bit ticked off, to be honest, because when presented with our dilemma, instead of using us, Cal chose to pay public money to a private service.

Yeah, how horrible of the University. Instead of being ripped off by AC Transit, they went with someone who was able to give us a better deal. Notice the subtle assumption that Silverado is charging a similar fee, that they’re just as ridiculously over priced. I would bet my $20 per person in saved taxes that Silverado isn’t charging the University a penny and is thankful to get the contract to do it for free (plus the $300 a bus (the Silverado buses hold more people, about 65) that it’s getting from the fares).

Completely unbelievable that AC Transit is still in business. They’re just as bad as BART. Way to go Cal for not putting up with their crud. I’ll gladly exchange paying $25 straight up for $8.50 straight up and $100 in taxes. I still might be changing to paying for parking next year, seeing as how it’ll be cheaper for me, but I still support the University’s actions in response to the ridiculous and amazingly inefficient AC Transit.

UPDATE on 9/9 at 8:30 AM: Looks like I got the good end of the stick based on statements from other people including bar20 in my comments and a thread over at BearInsider. The two biggest things it seems they need to work on is signage of where to go and keeping the buses out of the flow of foot traffic, both of which are important. The one comment I don’t get is that it took too long because they went down to Telegraph instead of staying on College. I think that person just in their mind believes because it wasn’t the direct route it took longer, but I can tell you from experience it was well within the norm of how long it would take the AC Transit shuttle to go up College. College is a nightmare on gameday, particularly around Ashby. Between the lack of left turn lanes that make it so often only a couple cars can get through a light during each sequence and all the stop signs that further queue people up and prevent them from getting through the key lights like Ashby, it’s got to be one of the most inefficient roads in America. Telegraph on the other hand is a 4 lane road with no stop signs and was much more smooth. So while it was a longer route, I’d argue that it was at least as fast as staying on College and likely faster.

In fact, I was so impressed with Telegraph that I was disappointed when the buses took College directly on the way back and we sat in gridlock like usual on College (perhaps Telegraph isn’t as nice after the game). I also thought to myself that if I do switch over to getting parking through the University in future years, I’ll be taking Telegraph on the way to the game, not College as would be more convenient for where I’m coming from.

When I was at the stadium on Tuesday I took more pictures of the SAHPC construction. Excavation is effectively complete but the real big news, at least for us ticket-holders, is the raised walkways that replace the asphalt walkway that used to go around the western rim of the stadium. That’s gone now because of the excavation. As I commented earlier this week, the University is doing everything it can to minimize the impact of the construction.

That includes installing a railing that replaces row 27 from sections D to HH to encourage people in the lower rows to exit towards the field, not towards the concourse:

There are really two raised walkways. One goes from the stairwell between sections EE and E and heads to the North parking lot (so every section from EE towards A can exit the stadium through the stairwell). Here’s what the walkway looks like from the stairwell:

Then there’s no exit between E and GG.

The 2nd raised walkway starts at the stairwell between GG and H and goes to the south parking lot. Here’s a picture of it as viewed from the south parking lot (well, close to there anyway):

Finally on the topic of the walkway, this is the best picture I took that shows what it’ll look like while on it:

As for the SAHPC itself, as I said above, the big breakthrough is all the excavation. Here’s the view towards the I-House (which also provides another view of the south raise walkway):

Also notice that the excavation on the northern side is not as deep, particularly on the western side of the building (I wish I had got some shots from the street to show the excavation up against the stadium on this side):

Finally, here’s the northern view where you can see the exit of the northern raised walkway as it exits to the north parking lot:

You can see the entire set of pictures here.

When I arrived at Memorial Stadium for the first time in the fall last week, there was a newly installed railing on the Alumni side in what used to be row 27, which was now missing. It stretched from D to HH. When I asked about it, one of the other reporters said that it had something to do with crowd control now that the SAHPC was under construction.

My initial response was that I didn’t see how things were going to be different because the tree sitters had the entire area blocked off both of the last two years. However, in retrospect, I realized that response was incorrect. The excavation for the SAHPC further eliminated the walkway around the west side of the stadium. It’ll be physically impossible to exit the stadium on the west side. One would have to walk around the concourse to either the north or south exit because of the new excavation.

Well, it turns out that the Athletic department thought this through and decided to put a smaller than the previous walkway but still a HUGE benefit, elevated (in the sense that it is over the top of the SAHPC construction site, but it’s level with the old ground level) walkway that will allow for some number of people to continue to walk outside the western rim.

Then, on Friday, they released a exit plan for games that showed where they hope fans from each section will exit. (You can find a PDF of the critical graphic for better resolution, here.)

As you can see if you look closely at the PDF, the hope is every one below the new railing will exit towards the field instead of into the concourse or to the new elevated walkways.

Just an FYI for better planning… I’ll take some pictures of all of this, including overall pictures of construction progress, tomorrow when I’m back at the stadium for practice.

UPDATE on June 25th: This post has been getting a lot of attention lately so I talked with the Athletic Office today to see what the probability of moving the students is. The answer I got from Herb Beneson was that this is not a discussion point and while not every decision has been made, there’s been no indication that the students will be moved. Herb also pointed to the Haas Pavilion where the Basketball team plays. When they moved there from Harmon Gym, the students still got mid-court seats on one side. So looks like the Athletic Office views things very similarly to use regular folks. I’m going to be working with Herb to get an interview with one of the people in the know to get more details on how the seating will be arranged after the renovation, with the caveat that things are still in flux, so look for additional blog posts on the subject in the coming weeks.

bar20 made the comment down in my new stadium seating analysis that I was completely overlooking the idea that the student seats may be moved from the 50 yard line premier seats to make room for displaced donors and longtime season ticket holders.

It’s true, I did.

But I guess that’s because I don’t want to even consider the possibility. Every stadium I’ve been to where they displace the students into the endzone has felt wrong to me. It might as well be a pro-stadium, potentially an old one, but a stadium where there’s no more ownership of the team than owning season tickets.

In my opinion, students deserve good seats. It’s their school afterall. Not to be too harsh, but every alumni who wants to push them out in my opinion is taking an “I got mine” attitude, because when they were students, they got the best seats. Now, instead of handing down that tradition and benefit they received they want to be the group that gets the best of both worlds, the best seats in college and those same seats as donors.

Yes, yes, I know that’s what all the other programs are doing. I’ve never accepted that as a reasonable answer. You do something because it is the right thing, not because it is what the herd is doing.

But maybe I’m off base. Answer my new survey on the sidebar and add you comments: Are you willing to accept worse seating so that the students don’t have to be displaced?

My previous post about the donor program going well has had me re-hashing thoughts about how the seating will work out after the stadium renovation and I thought I’d share some of those thoughts. But first a disclaimer:

I have ZERO insider information to justify my thoughts. It’s just based on my deductive reasoning and my general sense of fairness.

Let’s start out with an problem statement:

Currently there are about 72,000 seats in Memorial stadium. When the renovation is finished there will be about 63,000 seats (current estimates). There are only about 45,000 season ticket holders, but those season ticket holders generally hold the best seats in the stadium. Those best seats on the west side will now be spread out. As such, fewer people will be able to sit close to the 50 yard line on the west side. Thus the fundamental question is: who will be displaced and to where?

Here’s the base analysis of how many people will be displaced:

(By the way, I might be helpful to open up a seating chart for Memorial stadium at this point.)

There’s 48 sections in Memorial stadium and for the most part they are similar in size. 72k/48 = 1500 seats per section. Currently the donor seating on the west side compromises 8 sections (EE to I) for a total of 12,000 seats. Based on news reports, it appears that capacity will be reduced to 8,000 seats. There will be 3000 premier seats and then 5000 “regular” donor seats. My assumption is that the “regular” donor seats will extend as far as they have in the past, EE to I.

Of course, that’s only a 4k reduction, so we need to come up with 5k additional seats that are converted from bleachers to seats. Assuming the same ratio of 2 seats take the space of 3 bleacher seats that the donor section has, that means 10 additional sections must be converted. I’m going to make a stab and say the following sections will be converted: T, TT, CC through E and II through K. There’s other options here, mostly putting either more or less seating (could there be none?) on the east side, however I’m going to stick with my setup because it’s exclusively on the west side minus where there is donor seating on the east side.

So where are season ticket holders currently sitting?

Basically, current ticket holders take up all but 18 sections. To simplify matters, I’m going to assume all sections are filled before they move to the next, which is obviously not true. Nevertheless I think it is a simplification that doesn’t leave too much unaccounted for. Those single-game seated sections would be C through D (3 sections), JJ thorugh KK (3 sections), MM through PP (includes visitor section for 7 total) and UU through WW).

So, somewhere between 6 and 9 of those sections, depending on whether the new sections have seats or benches are going to be filled by people displaced from the west side (and the two donor sections on the east side). CC, D, JJ and K, all of the remaining non-donor seats get 4,000 displaced season ticket holders. V, UU, and PP, being bleachers would basically round it out with 4500 additional displaced season ticket holders (we’re 500 short, but my math is rough enough here to make that count).

So that’s the practical matters of how much we’re going to get spread out, or at least my best guess at it anyway. The big question remains: who gets moved where?

Here’s my best guess:

If you’re sitting in a donor section and are willing to either keep or start ponying up the donor fees for your seat then I think you’ll be able to sit close to where you always have (see gotcha #1 below for the limitations of that). I suspect 1/3rd of those sitting there are former-donors or long time season ticket holders who aren’t going to be willing to pony up in the future, so those of you who do will be in good shape overall and won’t get signficantly displaced. The big question mark is sections DD, E, II, J and U, the non-donor sections.

There are two big “gotchas” for those sections:

1. Because they’re going to be seats in these sections, the seat numbers and rows are going to be different. You physically CAN’T sit in the same seats as before. Row 33 won’t be where row 33 is today, nor will seats 4-8 in row 33. So the likely demand of “I want the same seats I had before!” just doesn’t make logical sense.
2. If you’re thinking “well it might not be the exact same rows and seats, but I can ask for the same area” gotcha #2 is for you: We’ll have been sitting somewhere else for a season or two. We’ll have been at the Oakland Coliseum or Candlestick or something. It’s a lot harder in 2013 to want your old seats back when the last time you sat there was 2010.

So the result on the west side (I’m going to ignore the displaced east side people at this point) is that 4,000 former donors and 6,000 non-donors get to divy up 8,000 seats on the west side and 2,000 of the get displaced to the east side. Perhaps there will be less displaced from the west side against their will if the Blue and Gold zone’s are expanded up to KK and C so that they included all the bleachers and that entices some people to take the cheap seats now that they’ve been displaced from their formerly choice seats.

And what about priority? It’s significant difference sitting in CC from E (or the similar story on the southwest side). It’s anybody’s guess but my gut feeling tells me that length of holding season tickets as well as squeeky wheels will be all that matters. I can’t imagine any other way of doing it. Why would former donors who are new get priority over long-time ticket holders? Why would people who’ve been sitting in E for years get priority over people who’ve had tickets for 30 years but are getting displaced particularly when the specific seats don’t exist anymore? What else is there to go by? I just can’t see any other “fair” metric between non-donors besides how long one has been a season ticket holder.

Other thoughts?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but my biggest concern when I heard about the plan to pay for the Memorial Stadium retrofit, the plan to charge a fortune for luxury boxes and other prime seats to the tune of $50K-$225K per seat over 50 years, my biggest worry was where they were going to find the people who would pay it.

I thought it was a great plan, but they were already having trouble getting people to pay the Bear Backer fees for the seats they had. Heck, I know I’m sitting in seats outside the Bear Backer section because I’m not willing to pony up the big bucks. My 6 seats cost more than I’m comfortable with already.

Additionally, while I know this is harder for people like Jason my co-blogger to hear (because he has those prime seats), I’m OK with the idea that we’re going to kick some former donors or long time season ticket holders out of their prime seats to make room for new donors (or extended donors). At this point, those people will get about 10 seasons of exceptional seats for a program that is good enough to justify doing what other good programs around the country have been doing for a long time. They’ll still get pretty good seats as long-time season ticket holders in the non-donor section when everyone gets shuffled around. I think a 10-year thank you for their loyalty through the thin times is sufficient even thought I don’t begrudge them being disappointed for wanting it to last indefinitely.

The point of that longer-than-intended explination is that I was perfectly happy with plan and its consequences, but I was unsure whether it would work. Were they really going to find 3000 people who had a couple hundred thousand (two seats) to give over the next 30 years?

Well, good news!:

Since Cal began the seat endowment program in January, 40 percent of the 3,000 available seats have been claimed, with about 10 percent paying up front and the rest making 30-year commitments. So far, the university has raised more than $164 million, Rosselli said.

I’d say that’s pretty good progress on the program. Considering that the renovation is going to cost $250 million or so (estimates vary), we’re about half way there! Now admittedly, they’ve only got about $40-$50 million of that in the bank with the rest coming over 30 years, but still, great progress!

Good news all the way around

(As an aside, if you click on the link for the article, do your best to ignore the derisive tone of both the article and the ill-informed commentors. We know what’s going on and whether or not we agree with the mechanism used for raising the money, we know it needs to be raised. Seeing that this mechanism is working suggests the University did the right thing.)

As promised, I took more pictures of the SAHPC construction at the final spring practice. For the most part, not much had changed. The two notable things were…

Actual excavation on the south end by the I-House:

And a newly brought in pile-driver:

(Assumably to drive all those retaining steel beams into the ground)

Other than that, not much had changed:

You can see the rest of the collection here:
http://thecrawfordfamily.net/gallery/sahpc-4-18-09

Yesterday before practice I took the time to take some pictures of the construction progress of the SAHPC next to the stadium:

As you can see from the above picture, not much of a hole has been dug yet. I was expecting there to have been more progress there. It’s important to remember that this is a 4 story structure that’s roof will be at the same level as the bottom of the stadium. As such, they’ve got to dig a pretty big hole.

But what you can see is that a bunch of steel beams have been delivered to the site. In fact, they ring the entire western side of the stadium as can be seen from this picture taken from on top of section E:

What’s also impressive is how far construction extends. I didn’t get a picture of this far around the stadium, but most of the south entrance to the stadium is blocked off. The furthest South picture I took was pointed at the I-House:

At the other end, you can see that it wraps all the way around to just short of the north tunnel (sorry for the camera angle):

My guess/understanding is that those steel beams are for the retaining wall that will be used to keep the big hole intact after excavation. So I suspect the next step is to either drive those steel beams into the ground or dig a trench and install them into it. I don’t really know how they’re going to do it.

I’ll take some more pictures at the final spring practice to show what progress has been made in the next few weeks.

(Note that you can click on the images to get a larger image)