A state appeals panel has agreed activists can’t rely on technical environmental concerns to stall plans for a new Oakland Athletics baseball stadium.
The A’s have for years been looking to replace their longtime home, known as Oakland Coliseum when it opened in 1966. The team's proposal, called the Oakland Waterfront Ballpark District Project, involves building a new stadium on 55 acres at Jack London Square, primarily on a Port of Oakland site currently used chiefly for storage and parking. The project has won the favor of the city of Oakland.
The Oakland City Council started preparing an environmental impact report for that plan in November 2018, issued a draft in February 2021 and certified the final version in early 2022.
Groups opposing the project, led by a coalition known as the East Oakland Stadium Alliance, then filed petitions challenging whether the report is fully compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act. The Alliance has a stated goal of building a new stadium for the A's at their current site, at the Coliseum, about 6 miles south and east of the proposed Jack London Square waterfront location.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman said the report showed one inadequate mitigation measure, related to effects on wind patterns, but otherwise rejected the concerns.
The plaintiffs challenged that ruling before the Fourth Division of the First Appellate District Court of Appeals. Concurrently, the City Council, Port of Oakland and Athletics Investment Group filed appeals challenging Judge Seligman’s ruling concerning wind mitigation.
Justice Tracie Brown wrote the panel’s opinion, filed March 30; Justices Jon Streeter and Jeremy Goldman concurred.
According to court documents, the 35,000-seat baseball stadium would be only part of the project, which also could include a performance venue, 3,000 residential units, 270,000 square feet of retail space, 1.5 million square feet of other commercial space and up to 400 hotel rooms. It would take eight years to complete everything, including 8,900 parking spaces and 20 acres of public open space.
The panel explained its review considered the conclusions of the environmental impact report, not Judge Seligman’s decision on the petition. That meant reviewing things like fencing designed to protect pedestrians from railroad traffic, the location of an overpass for foot and bicycle traffic and the utility closing certain intersections during baseball games. Review of those issues, Brown wrote, did not reveal a basis for reversal.
Other issues included the need to replace 30 acres currently used for overnight truck parking at Howard Terminal somewhere within the project site. The panel said activists’ concerns regarding one possible site for parking overlooked the fact the report considered multiple locations, including land once set aside for military purposes.
The panel further agreed with the report’s assessment on the nature of vehicle emissions projections.
“When the environmental impact from a particular project feature cannot be reliably ascertained and estimated, it is properly characterized as speculative,” Brown wrote. “The EIR reasonably determined that sufficient parking would be available near the project site to accommodate the displaced trucks. Although the EIR recognized the likelihood that some truck parking might nonetheless relocate outside the Port, it concluded that the extent and character of relocation could not be reliably determined at this time and any attempt to estimate the extent of relocation was, therefore, speculative.”
The panel also found the report adequately analyzed the potential use of generators and properly deferred greenhouse has emission mitigations by linking that issue to future municipal construction permits.
“The measure prohibits the approval of any permit allowing the project sponsor to proceed with construction until the (greenhouse gas) mitigation plan is formulated,” Brown wrote. “The same requirement applies with respect to the updates required prior to commencement of subsequent phases of the project; no phase can proceed without an appropriate update.”
Turning to hazardous materials, Brown noted such concerns “at Howard Terminal did not begin with” the stadium proposal. Although the advocates argued the report didn’t separately analyze the effects of removing a concrete cap presently sealing soil contaminants, Brown said the opposing argument is that the report’s “entire discussion of hazardous substances is, in effect, a discussion of the risks associated with cap penetration.”
The panel further said the report properly considered hydrocarbon oxidation products along with other hazardous chemicals and, as such, adequately relied on a 2002 ecological risk assessment, although that predates recognition of HOPs as a pollutant distinct from total petroleum hydrocarbons.
Finally, the panel said the petitioners attempted to circumvent the California Environmental Quality Act’s procedural requirements by challenging the entire report as noncompliant and rejected an argument the report’s cumulative impacts analysis failed to consider “impact of the use of a portion of the project site to expand the Port’s turning basin for large vessels,” Brown wrote, adding the Port hasn’t proposed such an expansion and, if so, it would warrant its own analysis.
With respect to challenges to Judge Seligman’s opinion on wind mitigation, the panel agreed the report’s performance standard fails because “the mitigation measure provides no reliable means for deciding the degree of wind impact reduction required with respect to a particular building,” Brown wrote.
Representing the East Oakland Stadium Alliance are attorneys Ronald Van Buskirk, Margaret Rosegay and Stacey Wright, of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, of San Francisco.
Oakland is represented by city attorneys Barbara Parker and Maria Bee; and attorneys Timothy Cremin and Shaye Diveley, of Meyers Nave Riback Silver & Wilson, of Los Angeles.
Representing the Port of Oakland are Port Attorneys Mary Richardson and Kimberly McIntyre; and attorneys Charity Schiller, Sarah E. Owsowitz and Tiffany Michou, of Best Best & Krieger, of Riverside.
Oakland Athletics Group is represented by the team's general counsel, D’Lonra Ellis; and attorneys Mary Murphy and Sara Ghalandari, of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, of San Francisco; and Whitman F. Manley and Christopher L. Stiles, of Remy Moose Manley, of Sacramento.