Real estate mogul Lewis Wolff, managing partner of the Oakland A's baseball team, has presented San Jose State University officials a plan to renovate the ancient facility.
A year ago, he negotiated a three-year exclusivity agreement with MLS, giving him sole authority to revive the Earthquakes. He has already reached agreements with Fremont city officials and obtained enough land to build a baseball stadium for the A's. In an interview last year he said there wasn't enough room for a soccer stadium and a baseball stadium on the Fremont site.
According to a local source, Wolff's Spartan plan would widen the playing surface, upgrade the facility, and rebuild each side of the stadium in separate phases while reducing capacity to 24,000. It currently seats about 30,000.
Wolff is also discussing possibilities with city officials in San Jose and Santa Clara, as well as other communities. He has yet to see much progress from San Jose, and Santa Clara is enmeshed in a bid to wrest the NFL 49ers to the South Bay, so Spartan – for now – may be the only viable option.
There will have to be significant progress soon if San Jose is going to be one of the serious expansion candidates to join the league in time for a 16-team lineup foreseen by Commissioner Don Garber in 2010.