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Alvina Wong, right, with a Chinatown business
owner who expressed concern about an A’s
ballpark near Laney College.
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OAKLAND
Alvina Wong grew up in Chinatown. As a child she walked with her grandmother to buy groceries, learned Chinese calligraphy and made friends in the park. “That’s the type of community we have in Chinatown as well as East Lake and that is what is forgotten when we look at big sports stadiums,” said Wong during a rally attended by community activists, students and local business owners who believe the A’s planned 35,000-seat ballpark will negatively impact the working-class immigrant community.
“We get to decide the fate of our community,” said Wong, a member of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. “In no part of that dream did we ever imagine putting a stadium there.”
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Chinatown and East Lake community members,
along with students have deep reservations
about a ballpark on the Peralta site.
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The community groups, though, criticized A’s ownership, specifically team president Dave Kaval, for failing to approach stakeholders in Chinatown for meetings in their own language before announcing its decision earlier this month to build at the Peralta site .
The A’s hope to open the ballpark by Opening Day 2023.
But, antipathy toward the proposed ballpark partially on the grounds of the current Peralta Community College District office’s on 8th Street is not mutually exclusive with their stated love of the baseball team. Numerous speakers Tuesday morning described themselves as A’s fans and many others sported the team’s iconic green and gold caps.
“Let’s make this clear: We love the A’s. They’re the only sensible team to stay in Oakland.
Wong, added. “We also know the A’s are a business and this business decision to move a stadium is really concerning to our community.”
Shirley Gee, a former Oakland City Council and community activists, expressed dissatisfaction with the team and equated their proposed move to President Trump’s immigration policies. Â “I am not loving the A’s right now. They A’s apparently have gone over to the dark side because they have been a community-oriented team up to this point,” said Gee.
“They have actually joined Team Trump in his anti-refugee and immigrant campaign. When you come into the community and displace thousands of people from their homes, change the character of the neighborhoods they live in, you are attacking that neighborhood.”
Another, a member of the Laney College faculty, said the ballpark will adversely effect the campus and education. “There’s no way you build a stadium right there and not totally disrupt our institution,” said Roger Porter. He later compared the A’s to Christopher Columbus.
ebcitizen.com 
Someone needs to tell all those newcomers to downtown about who played in the laney College parking lot from 1962-1965
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By MW:
While right now a lot of the big boys in Oakland's business community and politics are taking the position that they want to build a stadium by Laney/Peralta College, however the key question is whether they are actually serious, or whether, and on the other hand, they are just playing with the public, and really for instance want to build somewhere else, and which they intend to eventually “grudgingly” agree to, and as a “compromise.”
The big boys pull stunts similar to that all the time.
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This is not publicly accessible land. It's private land held by a public agency. Additionally, there is no mandate that this specific parcel of PCD land be used for educational purposes. Right this minute it's incredibly underutilized with just a smattering of maintenance and administrative facilities. So you have no valid point. The A's are offering to pay PCD for the land, possibly build them a new admin campus and make other financial contributions to the district. There are no negatives in the A's plan, but just in the minds of some people who fear change. My gosh does Oakland have it's share of people with this problem.
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This is public land, dedicated to education! We already own a huge sports site with ample acreage. Let's use it and build a shiny new stadium with water and hill views, great BART access, and plenty of space for development around it.
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Shirley Gee is ridiculous and her politics are tired and worthless. No-ism is pointless. If someone proposes something legal and generally socially acceptable like a baseball park the reasonable thing to do is WORK with them. Oakland's fetish with saying NO is why it's one of the saddest cities in America.
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