Letters to the Editor: Find better location for Oakland A's ballpark
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Illustration of proposed new Oakland A's ballpark at Howard Terminal featuring a rooftop park.Oakland Athletics / Bjarke Ingels Group
Regarding “A’s expect ballpark plan to cost $12 billion” (April 24): Sarah Ravani’s article about the Oakland A’s ballpark project was excellent. I write today to comment. It is a big mistake to locate a sports stadium and a huge real estate development on toxic dirt, right in the midst of Oakland’s very busy, important and successful shipping port. There is talk about the glamour of locating at Jack London Square and the waterfront. But it’s the wrong part of the waterfront. Why purposely introduce activities that interfere with the port’s established essential shipping? Why introduce physical danger to hordes of people just for the glamour? People moving around a stadium and their personal housing will conflict with the heavy shipping of the Port of Oakland, where there is continual traffic of enormous trucks, all of them in a hurry to load and unload enormous ships. Lawsuits because of delays? Traffic accidents? Deaths? Of course.