On March 26, San Francisco voters will go to the polls to decide whether or not to build a new ballpark for the Giants. The stadium would open in 2000. Two leading protagonists in the battle, Larry Baer, executive vice president of the Giants, and Joel Ventresca, a member of San Franciscans for Planning Priorities '96, sat down with City Editor Jerry Roberts to debate the plan.

QUESTION: I would like to ask you both about financing the ballpark. Larry, on your part, that there's no or minimal taxpayer funding involved. And, Joel, give us your take on what you see as the cost to the taxpayer.

Larry Baer: This project will be very, very different than any of the proposals in the past. This is a different ownership and we have made a commitment, a bold commitment, to finance the ballpark entirely privately, that the $255 million cost will be raised entirely by the Giants' investors, that a good portion of the cost will be paid off through Giants' operations. This will be done through $100 million or so of up-front sponsorships, corporate sponsorships and the like.

Then another $145 million or so through Giants' borrowings, of financing. The last piece is redevelopment, which is a $10 million piece in which basically the dollars come from the Giants' own taxes.

This (plan) has been somewhat of a startling and unwelcome move among the owners around major league sports because it may somewhat limit their ability to go out and get their municipalities to trigger public funds. But we've determined that we're going to do it entirely privately.

Q: Joel, financing?

Joel Ventresca: What's being proposed has not been accomplished for three decades. That's one thing to keep in mind. This proposal will require tens of millions of dollars in public subsidies and public tax revenues -- without question. Its ultimate price tag is unknown because the stadium promoters have refused to disclose details or conduct relevant studies. The project costs that the public could be forced to pay include land acquisition, toxic cleanup, relocation of existing tenants, demolition of buildings, infrastructure, improvement on and off the site and increased city services such as Muni and police.

Let's look at those: 1. Land acquisition: 40 percent of the site is owned by the state. The city is going to have to buy that site. It was estimated in '89 that that would cost $13 million. Who's going to pay that price tag? Two: The toxics on the site have been estimated between $2 million and $20 million for clean up. Who's going to pay that? Relocation of tenants: There was an estimate in '89 that the Port Commission, which has its maintenance facility on Pier 46B -- that big building; on one side it's the bay and the other side you have a public street. It would cost a million dollars to relocate that maintenance facility, and that was six years ago. Plus all the other tenants are in the 13- acre site. Who's going to pay all the relocation costs?

Then all the buildings have to be demolished, that's going to be several million dollars. Then infrastructure improvement: sidewalks, water, sewer, realignment, streets, moving. . . . Who's going to pay that? Then there is increased city services. There's no Muni line that goes in front of this facility now. The rails are there, sure. But there is no Muni service yet. That's going to be a new Muni service for a 42,000 to 45,000 seat stadium.

And there is a major public safety question. And now the sleight of hand that's going on here, I believe, is they're talking about the structure itself and all these other things that I've been talking about they haven't been talking about.

Q: Larry, your response?

Baer: Because there hasn't been a privately financed ballpark in 30 years doesn't mean that in San Francisco, which is a progressive community, we can't be the first.

No. 1, infrastructure improvements and the expansion of Muni service: The King Street improvement corridor and the expansion of the Muni line will happen whether there's a ballpark on that site or if the site continues as it is -- vacant, realizing no revenue to the City and County of San Francisco.

In terms of land acquisition and toxics: All of this will be done under the "legal governor," which is that it must be done at fair market value. We will be entering into a relationship with the port and we will pay whatever the fair market value is for the land. The toxics will all be factored in and the toxic clean up will be factored in. If we were to go away, the port would develop the land in other ways. They'd have tenants, a few tenants. Most of that area is boarded up with "Poison, Keep Out, No Trespassing" signs. The few tenants that do exist there exist on a year-to- year lease.

We all feel that we want to encourage the use of Muni. We want to encourage the use of CalTrain, we want to encourage the use of BART. I don't understand what the problem is. Right now 96 percent of the people that come to Candlestick Park arrive by car. What we're saying is we're going to change that modal split and we're going to encourage widespread public transit use.

Right now at Candlestick Park there are police services. Most of the police services are paid for by the Giants. So, with these arguments about you're going to be paying tens of millions of dollars for Muni and for police and land acquisition, it's just all not true. They're scare tactics.

Q: Joel, please respond.

Ventresca: The '89 proposal, once a budget analyst took a look at it, and we itemized all these things that we've been talking about, it came to $100 million that the city was going to have to pay. We don't know what the price tag is this time because there is no detailed financial plan, there's no environmental impact report. There is no long-term lease with the Giants. They wanted a short-term lease so they could get out once a year; every year they can pull out of their existing lease. There is no guarantee that the Giants will remain in San Francisco. There is no financial safeguards for the taxpayers. There is no disclosure of risk or liability to the city.

Q: Larry, I wonder if you might just outline what the parking and traffic situation is and what you see as the impacts.

Baer: None of the people that were responsible for designing this proposal were around in '89 so I'm not going to speak to that. What I am going to say is when you throw out figures of $50 million and $100 million, I hope you have the data to support that and back it up because those figures are just pulled out of thin air.

What we're most proud of, I think, is fact that this can be the most accessible park, or one of the most successful urban parks in America. As I said before, 96 percent of our fans currently come to Candlestick by car. What we have (with this plan) is the opportunity for fans to take basically four modes of public transportation to the ballpark.

There will be a Muni Metro stop right across the street. If there was no ballpark, there would still be a Muni Metro stop right across the street. The stop has been constructed already. So, it has nothing to do with the ballpark. Muni Metro will be servicing people on King Street between Second and Third. Fans from the East Bay will be able to come to the Embarcadero BART station or Montgomery Street BART station. As they step off, they can either do the 15- to 20-minute walk or take a transfer, a platform transfer, and a one-stop by Muni to the ballpark.

Fans from the South Bay will be able to access by CalTrain. The depot is one block away. People from North Bay, East Bay and even from San Francisco will be able to access by ferry; we'll be building a ferry boat landing right behind right field. So, parking, the rapid transit, mass transit, which doesn't exist now to Candlestick, will be not just improved but will be a revolutionary change from what exists.

Then you move to the existing parking supply that exists within a 10 to 15 minute walk of the ballpark. And that's a supply of 6,600 spaces. It's important to note that we're going to be playing games on week nights and weekend days. Those spaces are not used. For a 7:30 start and for a 1:00 o'clock Saturday . . . a 7:30 start Monday through Friday, a 1:00 o'clock start Saturday and Sunday, we have surveyed those times and found 6,600 spaces exist in a 15 minute walk radius for those times.

Then there will be up to 5,000 dedicated parking spaces as part of this project. The very strong opinion after much study and analysis is that we want to try to build less parking rather than more parking, if possible, to be responsible. Q: Joel. Parking and traffic.

Ventresca: At the Oakland Coliseum, you have a BART station. The highest percent of fans that come by transit is 20 percent. (The Giants) are suggesting 50 percent. To my knowledge, there's no stadium in the United States that has that kind of transit access to a stadium in terms of how fans get there. I think that's complete nonsense.

Let's look at some of this. The CalTrain is supposed to go down there but may not. BART is relatively far away. This Muni Metro service doesn't exist yet. That's going to have to come on line. And then it's going to have to accommodate people moving to and from the stadium.

Q: Just for the record, clarify your point about CalTrain, why you say that that's not a good planning thing.

Ventresca: The joint powers that are planning to take CalTrain downtown San Francisco just in the last few days has recommended that it go to the Transbay Terminal.

Q: Then there will be no stop there?

Baer: They've also recommended that there be, if (the ballpark plan) happens, there will be a stop possibly even closer to the ballpark. And people will be able to get on here and go one stop to the ballpark from here.

Ventresca: There is no guarantee there is going to be a station here. If it goes to the Transbay Terminal, it could be there is no station here. BART is relatively far away.

Parking: At Candlestick Park right now you have 77 acres of parking. If you take the parking lot at Candlestick Park plus the other lots that are available during game times, there's 28,300 parking places available. And the primary reason is that recent studies indicate that up to 85 percent of the fan base for the Giants comes south of Candlestick Park, meaning San Mateo County or further down the Peninsula.

Now it could be that they're trying to change their fan base but basically what's happening is the fan base that's coming up the Peninsula is being asked to go beyond Candlestick Park and to come to downtown San Francisco. A third of the day games that the Giants had last year were Monday through Thursday in the afternoon. That's when there's no parking around here available because you basically have a scattering of private lots that are not under the control of this developer.

This is multimedia gulch. There are 250 businesses in this area. So there is business parking and there is resident parking now. And it's at capacity in the afternoon. So if the Giants have afternoon games, you're going to have parking congestion, gridlock, and you're go ing to have a significant lengthening of rush hour traffic on the Bay Bridge. Baer: You can say CalTrain is going to move and go away, you can say that Muni Metro is never going to happen, you can say all those things. The reality is that CalTrain exists here a block away from the (proposed) park. The Muni Metro stop is across the street; it has been funded. Muni Metro, the F Line is going to happen. And this is all part of a waterfront plan that is independent of the ballpark. Whatever happens with that CalTrain planning and the Muni Metro planning is fine by us. We're going to access that.

One very important point that is not being heard here is we're talking about playing week night games and weekend day games. The team can say it can play all night games, we can play night games seven days a week if we wanted to, we can play all day games if we wanted to. What we're talking about is playing Monday through Friday night games, Saturday and Sunday day games. So his arguments about congestion tied into the lack of parking spaces during the weekdays is inappropriate and does not apply.

   1868    Recreation Grounds         San Francisco's first enclosed	
           25th and Folsom Street     baseball park.	
   1885    Central Park               Eighth and Market streets.	
   1887-   Haight Street Grounds      Site of first "Big Game"	
   1894    Haight and Stanyan street  (Cal vs. Stanford football	
                                      in 1892)	
   1897-   Recreation Park            Destroyed by 1906 earthquake	
   1906    8th and Harrison streets	
   1907    Recreation Park            Home of the San Francisco Seals	
           "Old Rec," 15th and      and S.F. Mission Reds until 1930	
           Valencia Streets           home of the Booze	
           (capacity 16,500)	
   1914    Ewing Field                Used for a half season Seals	
           Masonic at Terra Vista     who returned to Recreation Park	
           (site of Wallenberg        because of excessive fog at	
           High School)               Ewing	
   1930    Seals Stadium              Giants first home in San	
           16th and Bryant streets    Francisco. Razed 1960.  Home	
           (capacity 22,900)          of the Seals and Mission Reds	
   1960    Candlestick Park           Capacity expanded to 59,083	
           (capacity 70,207)          in 1971 and 70,207 in 1995 to	
                                      accommodate the 49ers