Mad about the A’s shifting from Oakland to Sacramento? You’re missing the big picture | Opinion

The Oakland A’s temporary relocation to West Sacramento is all part of an unsettling inevitable. Sacramento is becoming part of a bigger mega region, that at least for now, isn’t losing a Major League Baseball team.

Put another way, a modern mega-region stretching from San Jose to Sacramento is challenging our long-held geographical identities. The A’s are not leaving the Bay-Delta, the coastal San Francisco Bay and the inland Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary. They are shifting location.

We already have some examples of true mega-regionalism. Those passenger trains that run daily between Auburn and San Jose are governed by leaders of Placer and Santa Clara counties, among others. The prevailing order of the present, however, is one of intense tribalism. Rare is the San Franciscan who has neighborly thoughts about Sacramentans, or vice versa.

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In Oakland, there is grief and rage about losing its team. In Sacramento, some celebrate and some have mixed emotions as they sort through their allegiances. Among our tribal leaders, there is euphoria and speculation about what this does for the Sacramento area. “It’s truly the stuff of dreams,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Barry Broome, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, said the Sacramento-San Francisco mega-region already exists economically, if not spiritually.

“I think we are beginning to see employers co-locate in both locations which is attractive to the mega region. It will avoid out migration to Texas and other competitor states,” Broome said. “The more we share the workforce and innovative assets the better the sustainable balance is between the Bay Area and greater Sacramento.”

It’s eerie how the geography of the new economy mirrors that of the historic estuaries, and how their natural personalities now mimic the societies that replaced them.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta was and still aspires to be, a 700,000-acre workhorse. Before today’s 1,100 miles of levees, there existed an impossibly complex labyrinth of wetlands and sloughs that sheltered native species such as salmon, smelt and sturgeon. Sutter Park is at the northernmost point in today’s “legal Delta,” as mapped by the Legislature back in 1992 via the Delta Protection Act.

Although half the Delta’s size, San Francisco Bay by location was the star of the show, with its grand entrance to the Pacific and its wide open water landscapes. So grew San Francisco, the city on the hill, as Sacramento initially struggled amid marsh and flood. The combined region hydrologically is known as the Bay-Delta. The economic mega-region is not commonly known by the same name.

Historic disparities in prosperity remain live issues, particularly the lopsided economic relationship between Oakland and San Francisco. It makes Oakland’s hard feelings toward Sacramento over the Athletics seem like child’s play.

Take, for example, the cities’ respective international airports. They are both adjacent to the same San Francisco Bay. Last month, the operators of the Oakland International Airport announced that they were considering changing the name to the San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport. Port officials are convinced that many international travelers don’t realize that the Oakland airport is in the same region and on the same bay as San Francisco International.

San Francisco, meanwhile, has threatened to sue Oakland if it goes through with this name change. Oakland has lost its professional football team, its basketball team to San Francisco and now its baseball team to Sacramento, and then (by current plan) Las Vegas. The more the Sacramento Delta region merges with the San Francisco Bay Area regionalism, the more these conflicts become ours here in Sacramento.

The Sacramento area, says Broome, remains the top place for Bay Area residents to relocate. Overall, “we have about 21 %of our market from the Bay Area.” The daily travel back and forth between areas is 100,000 or more trips each way.

What’s exciting about the future of our mega-region is the money, talent and jobs that migrate here are on the rise. Broome is seeing exciting new business activity in Folsom and Rancho Cordova, for example.

A weakness, which used to be a strength, is affordable housing. Our homeless crisis is a direct consequence of the Sacramento area’s housing costs and rents increasing. It reinforces the need for dramatic housing production within existing communities to avoid the congestion and isolation of sprawl.

“The Sacramento Athletics” does have a nice ring to it. But they’re the Bay-Delta mega-region’s team. It’s not bad to be part of something bigger than ourselves.