Just sent out: "SSV urges members who are able to attend the San Jose City Council meeting next Tuesday afternoon, April 19, at 1:30 p.m. to support a proposal which may significantly increase the number of recreational soccer fields in San Jose. The San Jose Earthquakes are working closely with the City of San Jose, Mineta San Jose International Airport and the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy to develop at 7-field soccer complex and a new park at the Guadalupe Gardens at the intersection of Hedding St. and Coleman Ave in San Jose. The $37 million project – in which the Earthquakes will invest over $25 million – would feature four lighted artificial surface fields and three grass soccer fields. This is an extra three fields more than the previous play for a 4-field complex by Avaya Stadium. Additionally, moving the fields to a new location will create a better parking situation and traffic flow for fans at Avaya. The fields would be for public youth and adult use and would also be a home base for the Earthquakes Academy. The development will give the Quakes Academy a world class training location.Adjacent to the fields, the Earthquakes will build a new park that will feature trails, benches and picnic areas that will connect in with the Guadalupe River Park trail. The project will bring more attention to Guadalupe River Park and trail, one of the hidden gems of San Jose. The 7-field complex will attract more tournaments and give more opportunities for children and adults to play. Six of the seven fields will have lights. The Earthquakes would also construct a locker room and office building for their youth academy and there would be a locker room building, bathrooms and a concession stand for public use at the site. Also, with high quality grass fields available, the City can host big international club teams like Manchester United or international teams like Brazil for training camps, increasing revenue for the City from out-of-town visitors at local hotels and restaurants. As our members are aware, there is a huge demand for quality soccer fields in San Jose, especially lighted fields. This project will go a long way toward filling some of that demand. : Your presence alone (wearing Earthquakes colors) would be greatly appreciated by the Earthquakes and everyone who supports soccer in our community, and if you are willing to speak in support of the measure that would be even better. We hope that you can join us on that day at City Hall to support the project. Yours in Soccer, Boardmembers of SSV"
It is seriously loud and scary at that site. Come for the soccer, stay for the PTSD. Why doesn't the Wolff/Fisher syndicate just devote more land at the area next to Avaya for youth soccer fields? Oh, never mind.
They probably want to build more garages in place of the fields next to Avaya. The current parking lots will be office buildings soon, and the City needs jobs more than youth soccer fields. It's just the way it is.
This situation is a land grab for the Guadalupe site, pure and simple, so that the Coleman site developers can use their land for more profitable uses. Now, youth soccer fields are an excellent use of public land. However, this piece comes with big restrictions from the FAA (for good reason, try hanging out there while planes approach the airport just hundreds of feet above your head). I don't live in San Jose, so I'll leave it to folks there to help their electeds decide. I suggest that you insure that Fisher/Wolff etc., who own the land adjacent to Avaya where the smaller number of youth soccer fields are currently supposed to go, maintain that restricted use until the FAA clears the Guadalupe site for this youth soccer field/academy plan. From what I've read, that's not what is being proposed. It is to free up the Coleman site from youth soccer fields, approve the Guadalupe site for them, and hope for the best from the FAA. Potentially, you might end up looking for another site while additional office buildings and parking garages sprout up just north of the Quakes' training field, if the FAA sticks to its guns. Like most cities, San Jose has a long history of mis-allocating public resources at the behest of private interests. And if you want to know why, attend Tuesday's hearing.
Here's a link to the San Jose City Council agenda for next Tuesday, April 19. The Coleman Soccer Fields are item 5.1 on the agenda. You can also access links to the various memoranda and letters from the public. http://sanjose.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?event_id=638476f5-a9a7-40df-b02e-fd2597215e7d
I live in San Jose. I could be mistaken, but it's my understanding that the City of San Jose owns the Airport West land where the four recreational soccer fields financed by Measure P (2000) bond money are currently approved for placement. The Earthquakes have simply been contracted to operate the recreational fields for the City (which is in my view better for users than having the parks department operate them). The new site in Guadalupe Gardens, requiring FAA approvals, would allow for additional fields accessible to the public and paid for by the Earthquakes. It's a good deal for the public if it can be made to work, and worth exploring since there is a substantial deficit of recreational soccer fields in San Jose, which will remain even after the Measure P fields are built. (Per supplemental memo #4, dated April 15, parks officials appear optimistic of reaching a deal with FAA.) The previously expressed concerns from certain councilmembers of which I'm aware (I have not read letters from the public) have focused on the unreasonable delay already incurred in building soccer fields which the public funded 16 years ago. My view, as someone who has been concerned about this decidedly unreasonable delay for many years now, is: we have waited this long; we may as well wait just a little bit longer to see if we can obtain what would be a much better deal for the public.
My only concern with the plan is the flight path thing and the proximity of planes flying over. It just doesn't feel like it will make for a comfortable setting for the young players and families. That said, I haven't actually spent time standing in those areas to really assess it.
You are probably right about the ownership of the land. However, I stand by my advice that the city save that land for soccer fields until the Guadalupe site is a done deal. The end game for the Airport West/Coleman Highline developer is to incorporate the area now allocated for soccer fields into that development. There is nothing preventing building the originally planned soccer fields and building the complex under the airport flight path if the public wants it and the money is available, except that the Airport West developers want that land. The answer to the ownership of the Airport West soccer field area should be in the documents in the link you posted. Thanks for doing that, even if I won't read through the documents. SSV and the Earthquakes should have also linked to the documents in their emails asking people to attend the meeting to support the Guadalupe proposal, so that potential attendees could easily access all available information.
Not quite on topic, but last night I had a line on an NPL game at Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park (just reopened after the Super Bowl), and it was fantastic! The grass was amazing.
The City of San Jose needs more commercial and office space (and jobs and the revenues resulting from those activities) than it needs youth soccer fields. That is the truth. And as someone who lives in San Jose and understand the financial situation of the City, I'm OK with this. As for the planes flying overhead, we'll all get use to it. I work in Downtown and gets interrupted often by planes during smoke breaks, we just deal with it. No biggies.
I changed my mind and perused the documents. There are some interesting tidbits in there. Somehow, San Jose has already spent about $4M of bond money on the Airport West soccer fields. The city admits that the parking situation at Avaya "could be better", and that the new development will add to problems because anticipated tech company tenants have security and time of work demands that will cause parking availability conflicts with Avaya events. The new plan would provide more parking on site where the soccer fields would have been and overflow parking at the Guadalupe site. One of the issues with the FAA is financial--a requirement that non-aviation activities generate market rent for the property. San Jose is trying to buy its way out of that requirement, but the two parties can't agree on a price. City staff determine FAA approval as a "high" risk. The new plan would have lower public construction costs because of the Earthquakes' contribution, but the general fund would be at risk to cover possible financial liabilities because of the FAA requirements. One of the documents also recognizes the possibility of losing the Airport West/Coleman Highline site for soccer fields and not getting FAA sign off at the Guadalupe site. I understand now why the Quakes and SSV did not provide the link that Gagliardi did. There are two letters, both in support.
Socharist, the documents were not available to me when I sent out the SSV notification. Don Gagliardi is on the SSV Board and he made the link available as soon as he could.
OK. Now that you have the documents, I look forward to SSV's follow up email with the link so that the people you are recruiting to attend the meeting in team colors and to speak in support of the plan can easily access the publicly available information in order to assess the proposal themselves, if they desire. Obviously, I have no idea when Gagliardi had the link available for distribution here. I will note that I saw that same link on reddit on Friday, and Gagliardi didn't post it here until after I wrote a critical, if somewhat speculative, post about the Guadalupe Gardens plan. The documents confirmed much of my speculation. Also, I remember hearing through the grapevine and maybe reading on Big Soccer that Gagliardi resigned from SSV in the aftermath of the Ultras' troubles in Portland in 2012 (?). I didn't realize he was back with the group. I thought he was acting on his own behalf and I reiterate my sincere appreciation for his posting the link above, as I am passionate about transparency and accountability. Please don't take my postings as an attack on SSV. I understand that yours is a volunteer group and I approve in the strongest way your fundraising for game tickets free of charge to children from poor and working class families. This change of plans for the youth soccer fields raises many interesting questions. What is the impetus for the change? I think it is the Coleman Highline developer's desire for the land allocated for the soccer fields and the ensuing profits from it. I could be totally wrong, but I've been around the block as a community activist on land use/development issues for 30 years, very intensely for the last few years. An enterprising reporter or activist might be able to dig out emails and other communication among public officials, the Earthquakes and the developers through FOIA and sunshine requests to discover more. Why the delay on building the soccer fields at the original site? I think San Jose chose the site more than 5 years ago, the Earthquakes cleared the land in 2012, and the voters allocated the money in 2000, nearly a generation ago. Certainly, the Earthquakes Academy has needed a home since its inception and, if they had been completed in a timely fashion, the four soccer fields next to Avaya could have been it. In the meantime, I believe they use Mustang. If the Earthquakes pay rent to Mustang, it looks like self-dealing by John Doyle. Both entities are private businesses. However, in this instance, their actions are intimately related to the development of these youth soccer fields, wherever they end up. As I said, interesting questions. And I didn't even mention the already spent $3M to $4M (depending on document) of bond money on soccer fields that exist only on paper.
Your innuendo is misguided and very much unappreciated. If you felt the city council agenda link was so important and saw it on reddit before I posted it here, why didn't you post it here as part of your "critical, if somewhat speculative" original post? SSV's alert was sent on Thursday, at the earliest opportunity and in an effort to give members the most advance notice of next Tuesday's hearing. City council agendas typically are not finalized until the Friday beforehand and consequently it did not occur to me to even look for the agenda or request that Ned link to the agenda. Indeed, I don't recall SSV ever linking an agenda in the past when we were seeking a stadium, although I suppose it's possible it happened at some point. Your cynicism disserves you. You are more likely to be correct assuming inadvertence than sinister forces at play, especially in discussing the actions of a volunteer organization involving fellow Quakes fans.
I became more interested during the weekend when I had more time and after this discussion got started here. I am sincere in my appreciation for you posting the link, and I believe that my dispassionate description of the chronology of events is accurate. Your interpretation or reaction to my comments is beyond my control. I try my best to refrain from personal attacks. I am satisfied with how NedZ handled my concerns about circulating via email the same link that you did here, as my rep to his latest post indicates. And I did wrongly believe that you were no longer affiliated with SSV. I will say that I feel that the Earthquakes and SSV were encouraging me (and others) to support something without enough information to accurately assess it, to which I took offense. And when I examined the documents and saw the potential problems with the Guadalupe Gardens proposal, I quipped about the Earthquakes and SSV leaving out the information in their emails. Now, I understand that my concern about SSV withholding information may have been wrong. I don't know if NedZ would have sent out the second email without the goings on here. In any case, I appreciate that he did.
I'm having a hard time following your reasoning. You admit that you were wrong about ownership of the Airport West site where the City's Measure P recreational soccer fields already went out to bid. You state you nonetheless "stand by my advice that the city save that land for soccer fields until the Guadalupe [alternate] site is a done deal." And you mention $4 million invested in the Airport West site already. You seem to suggest that the City of San Jose officials are contemplating doing the bidding of private interests rather than the public good. And your suggestion that the documents linked to the city council agenda "confirm" this strikes me as misleading. Supplemental memo #2, dated March 10, 2016 from various city department heads (economic development, parks, public works and aviation), outlines the risks and rewards of the alternative project of which the Quakes and SSV are proponents. No risk that the Airport West site will be developed in the near term is identified. Instead, the primary risk identified is that the City will have to re-bid Airport West site for construction of the soccer fields if the alternative proposed site falls through: "it is likely that rebidding the project could result in the City incurring increased construction costs ranging between zero to three million dollars" of which the developers "have agreed to cover only $500,000." This is the only real financial risk identified. (The other three risks are that the alternative site either does not pan out or it results in further delay.) Yet, it is not clear how real the financial risk to the City really is. Only if the renewed bid is greater than $500,000 more than the current low bid would the City lose any money in the process. Is this "likely"? And even if it is, it might be worth the risk to pursue a much greater public reward. Meanwhile, there are five significant benefits identified by senior city staff to the alternate project proposed by the Quakes and SSV, including "free[ing] up funding for additional parks capital projects in other areas of the city [because of a] savings of nearly $5 million. . . . Additionally, . . . the Earthquakes would pay the City back the $3.25 million spend [sic] on the project at Airport West to date so the City would have over $8 million free to spend on other parks capital projects throughout the City."
I speculated that this process could end up with the City losing access to both sites for the soccer fields, a possibility specifically mentioned in one of the documents. As far as the merits of the current proposal in relation to the original one, I just hope that other people, especially San Jose residents, planning to participate in the public process take the time to learn as much about it as possible.
"If the City pursues the soccer complex at the Guadalupe Gardens site and is unable to overcome the challenges, including not being able to return to build it on the Airport West soccer site, it could be several years until the City is able to deliver a regional soccer complex to the community" (Supplemental Memorandum #2, page 4.) I now regret getting interested in this issue.
From what I remember there was some type of problem with the bidding process/company that won the bid , and I also heard ( a rumor?) there was an issue with contaminated soil. If you choose to go digging around city documents online you can find info on this.
Thanks. I see how I missed the language, "not being able to return to build it [a soccer complex] on the Airport West soccer site." (Emphasis added). This "challenge," in the event the alternative site is eventually abandoned, is buried in the third risk factor concerning potential further delays in delivering on the promise of soccer fields from the 2000 Measure P bond. Since, as previously mentioned, I'm not particularly concerned about a further short delay in light of the 16 years of unreasonable delay already incurred, I failed to carefully parse this paragraph. However, the risk of not being able to return to the Airport West site -- and to re-bid the construction of soccer fields there (see first risk factor) -- is unexplained in the memo. The non-return eventuality is not described as "likely." Indeed, it's not described at all. Thus, this so-called "challenge," asserted without substantiation and entirely in passing, strikes me as highly unrealistic considering that the City owns and controls the Airport West site and can condition its development on completion of the soccer fields elsewhere. There is no indication in the memo that the developers have refused such a condition or are in a position to do so.