The 49ers' Parking Spaces and Evicting the Youth Soccer Park, Part One

Dear Santa Clarans,


When the 49ers' Stadium Boosters on our City Council voted to allow a 14.5-acre stadium on a 17-acre parcel, what on earth did they expect would happen?

The San Francisco 49ers can't seem to stiff-arm enough businesses in the Great America corridor into the "parking district" needed to accommodate more than 20,000 autos.   No surprise there;  without being privy to any of the discussions, we can just guess what the lot owners' lawyers are asking the 49ers:

"You're mixing drunken fans and flammables on our private property.  Who's liable when a deadly assault or a fire or explosion occurs?   The 49ers assume all liability, right?  Or, the Santa Clara Stadium Authority has us covered, right?"

Well - probably not, and probably not.  Or, the lot owners could be holding out for a much bigger slice of the parking-stall fee payments than the 49ers' are willing to part with.  Guess.

Back in 2011, in any event, we residents were informed in our own Council Chambers - by the 49ers themselves - that we were not even entitled to know how many parking spaces they had secured by the first round of their letters-of-intent.


Only in the last couple of weeks have we learned that the 49ers are short by 5,000 parking spaces.

What?  In a Council Meeting of several years ago, former Councilman Kevin Moore, indignant that anyone would challenge his 49er-booster claims of 'more-than-enough' private parking stalls, stalked off the dais and returned to chambers some moments later with his famous two-by-three-foot storyboard showing "tens of thousands" of parking spaces surrounding the stadium site.

No problem, he and the four other 49ers' boosters on our Council assured us.

Well, yeah - there is a problem:   Please note that the Stadium Authority, identically our City Council, approved the Non-Relocation Agreement of March 15, 2012.   On page 12/23, note that the San Francisco 49ers have the power to break this agreement if 20% of the parking spaces are unavailable to them.

While it's unlikely that the 49ers would do that at this stage, it's the deal-making by our own City Council=Stadium Authority that actually gives the team a perverse incentive to tank the NRA above if they ever decided to use the parking issue (or mustard stains on more than a fifth of the stadium's seats) as an excuse.   But that isn't even the most deplorable part of this fiasco.

We've now learned that the 49ers are demanding that the City of Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park be evicted so that the 49ers can pave it over for the parking stalls they're unable to squeeze out of the business owners on Great America Parkway.

A note to the suits in the 49ers' front office:    The best you can do is maybe 1,300 spaces by forcing out this vital City of Santa Clara youth resource.

It should not even come to that.   This has an easy solution:

First, to former Councilman Kevin Moore:

• Please dig out that old 2-by-3 piece of foamcore with your much-vaunted "tens of thousands" of parking spaces.

• Give it to the 49ers.

Problem solved.

Second, to the Santa Clara City Council=Stadium Authority: 

The City Of Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park does more for the young people of our community than the San Francisco 49ers ever will.   The YSP should not be made to pay a thing for the poor planning which caused the stadium parking fiasco - no matter how many hot dogs you tell us we're going to sell.



Thanks for all of your support,

William F. "Bill" Bailey, Treasurer,
SantaClaraPlaysFair.org

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Tomorrow:  What will we use for money?