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New Oakland Athletics Ballpark Will Have $3B Impact: Report

1960 Oakland Coliseum proposal

A new Oakland Athletics ballpark would have a $3.05-billion impact on the local economy over 10 years no matter where it is built, according to a report released today by the team and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

The report estimates that 2,000 construction jobs would be created at the beginning of the process, with attendance boosted by roughly a million fans a year over the first 10 years of existence, settling in at a little less than 2.4 million fans a year. That level of attendance would be in the middle of the MLB attendance figures; in 2016 roughly half the teams were above that figure and half were below.

You can read the report here.

The report doesn’t touch on how a new-ballpark location would affect these numbers, with the apparent assumption that the financial impact would be roughly the same no matter where the ballpark is built. It’s been reported the A’s are expressing”strong interest” in a 13-acre site that is currently occupied by the headquarters of the Peralta Community College District. That location is one of three in the mix, as the A’s are reported to also be considering Howard Terminal as well as the land surrounding the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

“A new Athletics baseball stadium would be very, very good for Oakland,” Dr. Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, said in a team press release. “These types of signature projects come along only once every couple of generations. A new ballpark represents a significant and important investment in Oakland that will generate tremendous buzz and excitement, creating local jobs, supporting local businesses and spurring even more investment in the city.”

Now, you can take a report like this whatever way you want: folks who oppose any public assistance for sports facilities will dismiss it out of hand, while folks who see sports facilities as a sound public investment will tout it as proof the system works. But it’s hard to argue that a new Oakland Athletics ballpark won’t have some sort of economic impact — no matter where it is built.

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