This meant to go up Wednesday, but the website wasn’t up in the morning and once it was up, there was a lot to go through to get all the data I wanted. Let’s get straight into it.

We now have just about all the information that we’ve been wondering about for Memorial Stadium in 2012. The key piece of data is out there at the new site, the seating chart:

(you can click on the picture for a larger version)

There are a number of notable things right off the bat:

• FINALLY we know which sections will have seats, which will have bench-backs (benches with backs like a seat) and which will have benches. Only the ESP section will have stadium chairs and the old donor sections on the west side will have benchbacks. Everyone else keeps their benches.
• While it’s not in the picture, we also know that all the sections from EE to I will have more space between the rows (more legroom) from the text on the website.
• Sections EE and I are shown as “double wide” sections kinda like the old G and GG sections.
• The Blue Zone on the south side of the stadium is gone.
• The Gold Zone on the north side of the stadium is much larger than in the past.

There are others but those are the big changes.

Of the above items, the one that has me scratching my head is the changed width of sections EE and I. Are those sections REALLY as big as they show? Hard to tell just from the above picture, but the Ticket Office tipped their hand on a different page…

If one goes to the ESP section, you can already pick individual seats right now. They’re a fortune, but they’re there. And when you look there, you get a good finished graphic of the west side:

Based on this (I put in the section letters, so it’s possible I’ve misjudged this but I doubt it), it’s pretty obvious that FF and H are VERY narrow sections, barely a half section, that F/HH is the original section it used to be and EE/I is both the old EE/I, plus half of the old E/II. So really that wide section is only a section and a half and the new E/II is a pretty narrow section.

The next big question is pricing:

FF/H: $1500
F/HH: $700
EE/I: $500
TT/T: $400
E/II/U: $350
Std Price: $300
Gold Zone: $225 ($100 discount for kids)

Another way to look at it is this: If you want added legroom and a bench-back, it’s going to cost you $200 over the standard reserved price. For those who want better seats than that, you can pay another $200 and if you want to be right next to the ESP, it’s another $800

If you don’t care about the bench-back, and you don’t mind staring into the sun, an extra $100 will get you seats on the East side equivalent to the bench-back seats. Or for an extra $50 over the standard price will get you as good seats as you can on the West side, sans the backed seats as well as some East side options.

All of that frankly seems fair to me except for the FF/H bump of EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS!?! That’s a HUMUNGOUS bump to get an extra 5 yards closer to the 50. My feeling is that’s going to be the most empty section. Now, it’s a pretty small section, so maybe there will be just enough suckers who have money to burn but aren’t quite willing to buy into ESP. I see this being people who also haven’t been long time season ticket holders or donors to Cal athletics. Why? Because the plus side is that with the lack of demand I anticipate, you’ll be able to pick your seat (isle, center, high, low, what have you) in that section. Since new-timers won’t get to pick until all the good seats are gone, they’ll get a choice to get some choice seats if they’re willing to pony up.

At least that’s the way I see it going.

The rest of it feels about right. An extra $200 to get the bench-back and the legroom seems fair to me. I might even do it myself (and those who have been around long enough know I’m a perpetual cheap-skate who’s never before paid to upgrade my seats). I think that says something about the demand that will exist for those seats. I know it’ll be a lot easier to talk my wife into that $200 than it was to talk her into $150 or even $50 before (not that I ever tried).

I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not all that much more than those seats were before the stadium upgrade when everyone was on benches and the only benefit of paying was getting a bit closer to the middle. It doesn’t seem like they’re asking too much for the privilege of additional comfort.

This is of course with the glaring exception of FF/H.

Finally, the selection process is going to be similar to the process at AT&T with one new HUGE wrinkle. They’re splitting the overall set into 3 groups. The first group is 2011 season ticket holders or donors over $1200 (before 12/31/2011… hint, hint). The second group is 2010 season ticket holders or donors over $100. Finally, the third group is people who put down season ticket deposits for 2012.

This is great news for those of us who bought season tickets at AT&T as even us relative new timers (and I learned being a 12 year season ticket holder with one missing year in 2003 makes me a “new timer”) will get to pick before just about everyone who didn’t. They’re rewarding our loyalty: YAH!

Within each group, it’ll go back to the whole points system where those who have donated lots of money over the years get more points than the rest of us. One has to go all the way to the FAQs to find this out, but they’re using the exact same point system as last year, so my decision to donate $100 last year got me 5 extra points. YAH!

All of this is a long way of saying I’m happy with the consistency of the Athletic Department. They said they were going to reward those who bought tickets in 2011 and they are, in a big way. They made clear what their point system was going to be last year (something I wish I had known years earlier as I would have donated $100 a year if I knew it was worth 5x what my buying season tickets was), and they’ve stuck to that system. And of course, if you’re willing to pony up big money for the program today, no matter what your history is, you’re going to be rewarded.

Plus, while there are a few quirks in the seating map, it’s a fairly level-headed and evolutionary set of changes, many of which were hinted at during the project.

All in all, I’d say the Athletic Department got this one right.

I got an e-mail this morning from the Cal Ticket office announcing the new site for the 2012 Memorial Stadium ticket sales (or at least promotion):

http://www.CaliforniaMemorialStadium.com

So far all that’s there, is a 1 minute promotional video, but they promise that tomorrow, 12/14, they’ll have 2012 season ticket information including seating options and pricing. It’ll be very interesting to see. I sure hope it’s pretty detailed. I really liked how for AT&T they had seat-by-seat information by the time it came to purchasing. They also claim that they’ll have priority information. I might even be willing to send in a few extra dollars to get higher on the priority list.

For those who remember, I had my criticisms of the AT&T plan and my prediction turned out to be mostly correct. The cheaper seats were packed but the middle of the stadium was downright empty and when it wasn’t it was because the USC fans bought all the single game tickets. The ticket office seriously misjudged how much people were willing to pay and also how many people were interesting in premium seats. While I might have been wrong that they’d sell out of the cheap seats, it was only because so few people bought tickets.

Frankly, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Check back tomorrow to see if I think the Ticket Office has learned their lesson.

I bear no ill will towards our hosts at AT&T park, even though I’m a life-long A’s fan, but I have to admit I was glad to hear the Giants quest for the post-season is officially over. On the one hand, nothing would make me happier than another Bay Bridge Series. However, I’d want it in a year where Cal Bear games wouldn’t be affected by the outcome. So sorry Giants fans, but thankfully you’re eliminated.

No more grass infields, lightly painted lines/logos and other AT&T compromises for the Bears! Woohoo!

Just some various things from around the web:

• CRITICAL UNIFORM UPDATE: This is for co-blogger Jason, who’s always interested in uniform stuff: The Bears will be wearing blue-on-blue (see the bottom of the article). It’s my favorite combo.
• Field layout at AT&T: From the same article linked above:
  

  The Bears will be on the sideline that runs along the third base line. The biggest change is the fact that there is room for teams to be on opposite sidelines. … The football configuration was moved eight feet toward the third base line, giving more room to the sideline in right field. It also made it safer for players to run through the end zone that is in left field because the left side of the end zone now leads to the open part of the fence where it meets the third base grandstand.

  Is it just me or is that a little confusing? If the two sidelines are the 3rd base side and the right field side, both teams were on the right field side in the Emerald Bowl. How can moving the field towards the shorter 3rd base side give it more room? Perhaps they mean just the opposite?

• Pay for play cost: The Blue Hose will receive $400K to come play the Bears. Considering that they’re coming all the way across the country it doesn’t seem like all that much in today’s era of nearly million dollar pay-for-play payouts. Still a lot of money compared to what was paid 10 years ago.
• West of Pittsburgh: From the same (2nd) article, the farthest west Presbyterian has ever played is against Pittsburgh. I’d say ‘they’re not in Kansas anymore’, but Kansas would be farther from home than they’ve ever played before too. To put this in perspective, every time Cal plays UW, WSU, ASU or UA, i.e. twice a year, they travel further from home than Presbyterian ever has. WOW!

I’ll admit it, I wouldn’t have remembered if it weren’t for CGB. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth remembering that today is the 3 year anniversary of the final tree-sitters being extracted from the last standing tree and it being cut down, clearing the way for the now nearly complete High Performance Center.

So where were you on oak-grove liberation (OGL) day?

As for me, I was in New York City looking at the World Trade Center site the day the final trees came down, having flown directly from the WSU game in Pullman to Springfield, MA to pickup my brother for a road-trip/tour of the East Coast on our way to the Maryland game the following weekend. Tuesday 9/9/2008 we took the commuter train in to NYC from Newark, NJ (cheap hotels 🙂 ) and toured the city.

While the final tree was coming down, I was looking at the cross that refused to fall on September 11th (click on the picture for a larger image):

OK, that’s a bit over the top 🙂 (but true)

Share your ‘where were you on 9/9/2008’ story in the comments.

OK, I was a bit miffed that parking was $30 (was I some ignorant fool who didn’t know about some reasonably close and cheaper parking?), but other than that, I don’t get why people are so down on Candlestick. The concourses were a bit narrow and everything was showing signs of wear (things that could be easily fixed if the plan wasn’t to bolt), but the escalators to the upper decks were very nice, the sight lines weren’t bad (better that the Oakland Coliseum for football) and frankly, after all the nightmares I’ve heard about parking, I was appalled just how easily I got both in and out of the stadium. And the weather… Maybe we just got a nice weather day, because it wasn’t any worse than Memorial is normally.

Perhaps it’s kinda like that movie that everyone tells you is horrible and then when you see it your expectations are low enough that you find it entertaining, but I sure didn’t get why this place is such the abomination that everyone says it is.

Well, the word on the street is that ticket sales for the Fresno State game are going slowly. So far they’ve sold about 7500 tickets and they need to sell about 1500 more through the Cal Bears ticket office (the ATO) to break even.

And my thought is “DUH! Of COURSE ticket sales are going slowly.”

The increase in ticket prices is a real problem that the ATO needs to understand. The ticket prices for the season tickets, for only 5 games, were about the same as last year with 7 games, including the Big Game. So if I had gotten the same seats I usually get (regular reserved with no donor money), and got the Big Game tickets I’d pay on the high end of what I usually pay (somewhere between $2k-$2.4k):

6 season tickets: $300 x 6: $1800 (avg ticket: $60)
6 big game tickets: $75 x 6: $600
Total $2400

And now to add to that another game, where equivalent seats would be ANOTHER $75 each, and we’ve got a budget buster of a situation.

For me it’s even worse as with a new baby in the house and my insurance continually whittled away so that my percentage of the birthing cost going up significantly over previous kids (honey, are you SURE you want that epidural?), we had to cutback and get the cheap seats at AT&T. I still got the Big Game tickets because tradition is tradition, but I’m just not feeling like paying out for all my usual tickets.

Knowing me, I might end up forking over for two tickets or something at the last minute, but, sorry, I just don’t have it in me to pay more than in the past particularly for what is a pretty mundane/weak lineup of games.

Well, my date FINALLY came up. After two and a half weeks of patiently watching all the seats get grabbed up, I finally got my chance at 1:46 PM today.

The process was smooth and simple, as I expected. I have to admit this automated self-selecting system is far nicer in concept than the traditional “hope the ATO is nice to me and understands my note” system that has been used in the past. (BTW, I found the ATO to be very nice in their selection when I wrote a good note, explaining exactly what I wanted and where I was willing to compromise. The seats we’ve had for the last handful of years were great.)

Of course the seats I got were not nearly as nice as I hoped and there’s no doubt that lots of formerly high donors were snapping up cheap tickets this year, which is fully their right. There are plenty of cheap tickets left, but the good ones are all but gone. I guess that’s my penalty for not being a donor. For me, we ended up picking seats in the 2nd to highest row of section 332. We’re in the middle of the row, which wasn’t what we wanted, but I felt the slightly better location was worth it over seats in section 317 that were only two from the isle. In either case, we were going to be in the highest rows. At this point, unless I was going to pay for big-donor seats, everything was at least 2/3rds the way up the upper deck.

The lower deck was out of the question for me. They’re SO low, the sight lines are horrible, particularly from the endzone, the only place a non-donor could sit down there. Which brings me to my thought for the day:

I think the athletic department made a mistake in where they put the “reserved” seats and where they put the “blue/gold zone” seats. They should have switched them, and put the $275/seat and no discount for kids seats (the equivalent to the old reserved) on the upper deck. As I stated above, the sight-lines are better and it’s not that far from the field. It also better matches the reserved seats in that they were in the corners, not the endzones. Conversely, they should have put the $225/seat with a $75 discount for kids seats (the equivalent of the old blue/gold zone), in the endzone. They’re the cheapest seats and have always been in the endzone and again, as said above, have a worse view.

The fact that the “reserved” seats have lots of available seats and the “zone” seats are filling up fast, indicates that they got the pricing/demand curve backwards on those two. Had they got them right, and flopped their locations, I probably would have paid the extra money to sit in the “reserved” sections and gotten better seats within the same section I’m sitting in.

The good news for me is that this year’s tickets cost about half what I expected. I budgeted $2500 for 6 tickets in the annual budget and paid $1225 (plus a $100 donation so that next year I’ll have a better priority number). I ended up going with 4 adult and 2 kids tickets because there are some games, like USC as a night game, that I won’t be taking the kids to and would like to take friends to, but would also like to save some cash when I bring the 4 kids with my wife.

Good luck to those who haven’t yet had a chance to pick! Here’s a tip: I’ve you’ve got some extra dough, there’s still some GREAT big-donor seats left. 🙂

For the season ticket holders out there, they know that seat-picking time is around the corner. I wanted to give some of my thoughts on what’s about to happen.

First the positive:

I went to AT&T park for the promotional open house event. It was simple but well run and getting to walk the stadium was well worth the drive (my family combo’ed the event with a trip to the Exploratorium for the kids). Minus the left field corner seats where both the foul pole and the stadium structure make it hard to see the near endzone, there’s very few bad seats in the house. The lower deck, particularly the endzones have some depth perception problems because of how low they are (since it’s a baseball park), but overall, it’s pretty good, particularly on the upper deck, which was better than I expected.

Which brings me to my concern:

I believe that the University is significantly over expecting people to pay for expensive seats.

I’ve thought this for a while now, from the first instant I saw the seating/pricing chart. If you look at it, there’s a LOT of high priced donor seats and a fair number of seats that look to be the equivalent of the Blue/Gold zone and not much in-between. But my instinct grew stronger when I went to the stadium and was surprisingly happy with the upper deck (“view level”) seats.

But not wanting to solely rely on my instinct, I decided to see if they were really asking for too many people to pay donations for their seats. Not having exact seat counts for each section at both Memorial and AT&T, I had to guestimate, but based on how the sums worked out, my numbers probably aren’t too far off. I assumed each of the sections in Memorial had 1500 seats and each full section at AT&T had 500 whereas the smaller middle level was half that (BTW, that results in a Memorial capacity of 67K and 38.5K for AT&T). That results in the following table of seats:

*The student section, being bleachers, is the section I’m least confident of the AT&T quantity. That could easily be 5K, but 3K is my best guess.

Obviously one would expect a number of sections to be smaller than their Memorial equivalent, so I’m not particularly concerned with the young alum, student or visitor section. The two that are troublingly small to me are the Blue & Gold equivalent (which is the white seats in the linked diagram) and the general reserved. While not all of the 21K reserved seats at Memorial were sold as season tickets, my gut feel is that the number is higher than 6K. Even more troubling is the Blue and Gold, which are PACKED at Memorial. They are reduced by more than half.

Are they really expecting these people to bump up into donor seats?

Then, if you look at the donor sections, they’re all larger in size. Of particular note is the $600 to $800 bucket, which is now 5,000 seats larger! And to be perfectly clear, I was generous in my groupings. Memorial didn’t have $800 donation seats, they had $600, so by grouping those two together, I’m already assuming some of the $600 donors are willing to up their numbers a little. I used that same grouping methodology across the entire table, assuming that many of the $300 will be willing to go to $400, the $150 to $200, the $75 to $100.

Even with that generous grouping the ONLY donor section that didn’t increase in size was the top-end $1200 level… but that’s because they’re the source of most of the ESP seats. So really if we were to group those two, that group would be rising in number too.

And here’s where this concern gets personal… or said another way, here’s where the concern ends up with a lot of ticked off people:

The seat selection process goes from the long term donors to the short term non-donors (which is perfectly fair). I fit somewhere in the lower middle third, a medium term non-donor. I’m around selection #25000 out of 40K. I get to pick on April 6th, when the first selections start March 14th. (Again, I think that’s fair.)

But what happens when all those bigger donors and longer season ticket holders decide to buy cheap seats? There’s nothing that mandates that they pay for the expensive ones. I see a domino effect where everyone keeps pushing out, section wise, picking cheaper seats than the University is expecting both because they don’t want to pay as much as the University wants AND because by they time they get to pick, the section they’d like to sit in is down to the last few bad seats from the higher donor groups. This is particularly true when combined with my earlier positive that there’s very few bad seats in the house. Why pay more when you can get a darned good seat for less?

In any case, as each group expands beyond their prior grouping, things will get worse down the line until when they get to me, there will be a ton of VERY expensive seats left and effectively no seats available in my price range. (This is particularly worrisome for me because I need 6 adjacent seats.)

I sure hope I’m wrong, but I’m quite concerned. How will the University respond when #39000, a guy with two Blue Zone seats goes to buy his tickets and all that’s left is $1200 donor seats. The guy was guaranteed seats as a 2010 season ticket holder, right?

On February 15th just before 6 PM PST, the first section of the historic stadium had been destroyed so that the exterior wall was visible on both sides:

In the week since then, the vast majority of the western wall has been exposed:

(Note, click on the picture for full res pictures)

Nice to see progress being made!

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