7thriv

Little Santa Clara has been waging a low-level war to steal the San Francisco 49'ers from San Francisco. Ominously, the team is 100% supportive of the effort to woo them. The bait? A new stadium. Mmmmmm. Stadium: Council Vote A Win, But Battles Loom For 49'ers

The Santa Clara City Council has approved a financing plan for a new $937 million stadium, but significant challenges lie ahead for the South Bay city that wants to lure the football team from San Francisco.

The most obvious is convincing Santa Clara voters to back a deal that calls for a $79 million public subsidy and another $35 million from a new tax on guests at eight hotels near the stadium site.

"If you want a football analogy, we just won our division," team President Jed York said after the City Council's 5-2 vote that took place early Wednesday. "But we still need to get through the playoffs."

For those of you who are not hip to Bay Area geography, Santa Clara is a suburb of San Jose, not San Francisco, so the 49'ers moving down there would effectively be the end of SF's having a football team. There's talk of "suing" the 49'ers to prevent them from changing the name, but I don't know what good that would do. San Jose is to SF as Baltimore is to DC. Could the Ravens credibly call themselves the Washington Ravens? Of course not.

San Francisco for its part has been promising to build a new stadium for the better part of 15 years with absolutely nothing to show for it. You could almost say this is a symbol of the change in the Bay Area's economic and political balance of power: South Bay = dynamic, risk taking, pro-$$; SF = slow, hide-bound, short-sighted, unwilling to dirty its hands for $$.

And, of course, SF's plans for the "new" SF stadium involve "green" concerns. Lots and lots of "green" concerns. But, don't call environmentalism a job killer! Gavin's Green Turned 49'ers Red

The Niners' brass tell us that their biggest concerns about the city's plan to clear a spot for a stadium at the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard were the toxic cleanup issues and fan access.

Getting into and out of Candlestick Park is already a nightmare, and the existing stadium is a lot closer to Highway 101 than the shipyard site. The 49ers told the city they wanted a bridge built across South Basin that would connect the site to the freeway, something environmentalists oppose.

The cleanup money came through, but the team was less than impressed with progress on the bridge.

It didn't help that when the 49ers expressed their concerns, the ever eco-conscious Newsom came back with a big concern of his own - namely, that the $900 million-plus stadium be LEED-certified, which means green as green can be.

For example, Newsom wanted solar panels to generate power for the stadium. The team thought that was nice, but not necessarily a top priority.

This is almost beyond parody. Solar power for a football stadium? "Environmental concerns" over a bridge in Hunter's Point (Take my word for it, nothing lives there)? Obviously, no one at City Hall actually wants to get anything done. But they, like Michigan Democrats who did so much to screw up the Big Three, will be leading the shocked press conference when the 49'ers leave the City.

(Yes, I realize the team could simply be using Santa Clara to get SF's attention. Hey, it works in dating, why not in pro-football stadium financing? I also realize that the 49'ers are deserately trying to obtain public financing, rather than pay for a stadium themselves. Boooo! But, SF politicos seeming willingness to lose the City's football team is deserving of note.)

The real problem is the snotty high-mindedness of SF's leaders when football demands a different attitude. A football stadium isn't a platform for "green" tech. It is an entertainment facility and beer delivery system. Santa Clara understands this well:

Mayor Gavin Newsom has also raised the possibility of suing the team over the use of San Francisco in its name if it heads two counties south.

Mahan and other Santa Clara leaders have said they have no intention of trying to change the team name.

"We're not in it for the name," Mahan quipped. "We're in it for the money."

A mercenary attitude will take you far, especially against the fading snobs to the north.