It’s Musical Franchises in Bay Area : Every City, It Seems, Is Trying to Attract, or Keep, a Pro Team

At a time when sports franchises across the nation are struggling to make a buck, San Francisco Bay area cities are vying like rival suitors to win the favors of athletic teams.

Officials in at least three political subdivisions are studying plans for a new $50 million baseball stadium, fixing up Candlestick Park for $30 million and adding a $30 million basketball arena and perhaps a $100 million football stadium.

Yet basic questions remain:

--Can an area with less than 5 million people spread out in six counties over 3,775 square miles support five major league teams?

--Will the key cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland ever work together, and with the 100 smaller communities, on regional solutions?

--Will companies in Silicon Valley, many still developing, put their money into sports?

Only one team in the Bay area, the National Football League-champion San Francisco 49ers, has been profitable in recent years. And the 49ers were barely in the black last season despite success on the field and sellouts at every game, according to team owner Edward DeBartolo Jr.

“With operating costs so high, especially player salaries, it’s hard for any team to show a profit,” he said.

Baseball’s San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s are perennial losers at the box office. Even when they were steady winners on the field, they didn’t show much profit.

The Golden State Warriors of the NBA are averaging 7,326 fans in 13,295-seat Oakland Arena this season. The Oakland Invaders of the United States Football League are drawing 19,208 a game in the 55,000-seat Coliseum.

Poor play may be partly to blame for the woes of the Giants, A’s and Warriors, but there are other reasons: Crowded freeways, diffuse populations and competition from other activities.

The most publicized problem is the fickle weather, especially the cold, wind and fog, that plagues 25-year-old Candlestick Park during the baseball season.

Giants owner Bob Lurie, whose team averages about 13,000 fans a game, warned he’ll move the team if the city doesn’t act by season’s end to build a domed baseball stadium downtown. Plans backed by Mayor Dianne Feinstein for a downtown stadium were crushed, however, and there’s little chance they’ll be revived. Lurie rejected Feinstein’s plans to dome Candlestick.

Weather is no problem in the rest of the area. San Jose and Oakland are blessed with balmy, fog-free summers. The A’s play in an almost windless 54,000-seat stadium, yet averaged more than 37,000 empty seats a game last year.

Why, then, all the fuss about luring or keeping professional teams?

“A lot of it is image,” said Bob Beyer, San Jose’s deputy city manager. “There’s also a ripple effect of jobs that are created, but mostly the benefit is that the city is sort of identified as a big league city.”

San Jose is eager to get the Giants, but the city hasn’t studied the potential economic or social impact on the community.

San Francisco gets about $1 million a year in direct benefits from the Giants, including Candlestick rent, parking and taxes. The city also takes in millions in indirect benefits, mainly through hotel and restaurant revenues, Deputy Mayor Jim Lazarus said.

Feinstein, who cited a sense of civic pride and unity as the No. 1 reason for wanting sports teams, said she’s offered to reduce the rent the Giants pay, perhaps even eliminate it, if the team would stay.

“I asked (Lurie) if there’s anything we could do to keep the team, we would,” she said. “If he wants me to plant tulips along the first base line I’ll go out there and plant them.”

Threats by the 49ers to join the Giants in searching for a new home prompted the city to offer to spend up to $30 million to refurbish Candlestick, including 118-130 luxury boxes, 10,000 added seats, a new scoreboard and improvements in concessions and restrooms.

San Jose, 50 miles south, is considering construction of a $50 million baseball-only stadium, privately financed on public land, to tempt the Giants. San Jose also is completing plans to build a $30 million multi-purpose arena officials hope will house an NBA team.

Oakland is talking about a football stadium, a project that could run $100 million, adjacent to its coliseum-arena complex in hopes of getting an NFL team to replace the departed Raiders. The city also is pursuing its legal battle to get the Raiders back from Los Angeles.

Redwood City, a community of 55,000 residents halfway between San Francisco and San Jose where the 49ers train and have their headquarters, also is studying plans to attract the Giants.

All these activities are going on independently. Roy Eisenhardt, president of the Oakland A’s, has called for talks among Bay Area communities to promote sports, but so far none has taken place.

“Political subdivisions are an anachronism when it comes to sports teams and stadiums,” he said. “A regional approach is the only reasonable one.”

“People are coming to realize that for baseball this is a one-team market,” Feinstein acknowledged. “The opportunity may come for us to talk about solutions on a regional basis.”

She said that if the Giants stay and the A’s move when their lease in Oakland expires after two more years, “it would be possible for the Giants to play day games at Candlestick and night games in Oakland.”

San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose form a power triangle around the bay, but account for only a third of the area population. According to the 1980 U.S. Census, San Francisco had a population of 678,974, San Jose had 629,400 and Oakland had 339,288.

Although the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley are slumping now, they portend a faster rate of growth in San Jose, where there is more land for expansion.

“This valley is booming and there’s so much money around for new projects,” said Ray Collishaw, a developer who hopes to build the Giants a home in San Jose. “I don’t know what their economic impact would be on the area, but everybody’s excited about the possibility of getting them.”