More from Media Day: A Conversation with Paul Pelosi (now owner of UFL team)

UFL Access ^ | 11-26-09 | Nation Hahn

[STARWISE]

Paul Pelosi seems to be loving every minute of being an owner in the United Football League.

He has traveled to many of the games and before that he traveled to many of the events leading up to the launch of the league. Everywhere he traveled he seemed to have a smile on his face – owning a football team just seems to be fun for Pelosi.

Pelosi told me that he would give the first year of the UFL a 7 or 8. He went on to explain that, “You listened to Michael Huyghue speak, he is doing a great job and he knows his stuff. By and large our product was terrific also. We have to review our marketing and advertising campaigns but we will improve those.”

“The other thing that is important to note is that when we did the financial numbers for this first year we put nothing, or next to nothing, for ticket sales. So the attendance figures didn’t impact our bottom line in a negative or positive way. We understood that sponsors and television were the key for our revenue and that will remain moving forward,” said Pelosi.

He admitted, as did other league officials, that it was somewhat of a mistake to have the California Redwoods live in Arizona and just come in for games.

He said that, “Look, the media loves Dennis Green. They wanted him to do interviews but he couldn’t fly in from Arizona for a round of interviews when he was rushing to put together a team in three weeks. Moving forward the teams will be in the local market and that will help.”

As for what local market that remains unclear. Pelosi acknowledged that he loved Sacramento as a market and with facility upgrades that are going on now it becomes increasingly likely. He said that the Redwoods had also looked at UC Davis, in addition to San Jose.

Speaking of San Jose Pelosi said that, “My old friend Bill Walsh loves the idea of a team at San Jose State. He told us that he thought San Jose would be great for the league as we were getting this off of the ground.”

San Francisco fans should take heart in the fact that Pelosi still believes San Francisco could play a role in the Redwoods future saying that, “The fans we had were great, we just didn’t reach enough of them. The games were terrific that we played there and those who attended saw good football.”

He went on to say that San Francisco may still see games in late October and November moving forward.

[STARWISE]

Update

3-3-10: Commissioner: UFL team will pump $10M into economy

The United Football League team that’s relocating to Sacramento in the fall expects to pump $10 million into the local economy, the league’s commissioner said Wednesday.

Commissioner Michael Huyghue announced the relocation of the California Redwoods at a news conference Wednesday afternoon in downtown Sacramento with Mayor Kevin Johnson, team owner Paul Pelosi, and David Green, general manager and team head coach.

The team, whose new name will be decided by a contest, will play at California State University Sacramento. Sacramento State will see an immediate benefit from the football team’s relocation from San Francisco. The league is contributing $300,000 toward the $1.04 million cost of an artificial turf at the Sacramento State’s football stadium, according to university representatives.

*snip*

Pelosi, a San Francisco investment banker and husband of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said he’ll get some local help with the team. Local developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos and David Lucchetti, president of Pacific Coast Building Products Inc., will be involved, but Pelosi did not elaborate at the news conference.

The football team will play 10 games during the three-month season, of which five will be at home, Mayor Johnson said.

The league launched a year ago with the understanding the first year it would experiment with different venues and markets, Huyghue said.

*snip*

The Hilton Sacramento Arden West near Arden Fair mall also will benefit. That’s where the team will stay and eat meals for 64 nights of the season, coach Green said.

The league will kick off the season in September with its four existing teams and two expansion teams that will be announced at the end of this month. The league currently has franchises in Las Vegas; Orlando, Fla.; Hartford, Conn.; and now in Sacramento.

~ ~ ~ ~

Familiar Name, Brand New Game

Paul Pelosi, Husband of House Speaker, Takes His Shot at Football

###

Excerpt:

"I understand, of course, that since a woman has had such a phenomenal success [people wonder], 'Who is this guy she's married to for 47 years and has five kids?' I understand the curiosity about that. But it's her celebrity," businessman Paul Pelosi says of his more famous wife, Nancy.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

LAS VEGAS -- Through a fading desert evening late last week, the owner of the California Redwoods football team stepped into the lights of Sam Boyd Stadium for a celebratory coin toss that would be the first official act of the United Football League. He tried to blend in with the other league executives gathered around the field's center, just as he has for the past two decades, always careful never to draw too much notice.

Until the stadium announcer called his name. And Paul Pelosi was anonymous no more.

*snip*

He knew the fortune he amassed as an investor and developer in San Francisco -- estimated through her 2008 financial disclosure filings to range from $24 million to $108 million -- would be a distraction.

And then with a single investment in his friend Bill Hambrecht's longtime dream of a second professional football league to challenge the NFL, the curtain had been pulled away.

Although he is not a big sports fan, Pelosi paid $12 million for the franchisefor the same reason he has made countless other investments over the years: He felt it could bring him a nice return.

[Ingtar]

With Paul and Pelosi for names, is there any hope for his being a “normal” person?

[STARWISE]

~~'Tis good to be queen

Pelosi 2008 Financial Disclosure Form

[MichiganConservative]

This guy needs to get a handle on his psychotic woman.

[JeffChrz]

At least Paul Pelosi is throwing his own money down a rat hole.

Not other people’s money, forcefully taken, like his wife does.

[VRWCmember]

What is the team name? The San Francisco 69ers?

[STARWISE]

Piracy on Treasure Island
Congressional land grab for developers?

###

Politicians with ties to land developers are trying to force the Navy to hand over one of the most valuable pieces of property in the country for free. The House version of the 2010 Defense authorization bill scheduled for conference today contains language that would speed the transfer of Naval Station Treasure Island to the city of San Francisco at no cost.

Treasure Island is a 535-acre man-made island in San Francisco Bay owned by the U.S. Navy. The naval station was selected for closure in 1993, and Navy operations ended there in 1997. Some of the property was transferred to the Federal Highway Administration, the Labor Department and U.S. Coast Guard, and the rest is open for development.

However, problems have arisen over the terms of the transfer, specifically Treasure Island’s fair-market value. One would expect it to be a highly valuable piece of property, given the island’s size and location and the potential for waterfront lots with spectacular views of San Francisco.

The Treasure Island Development Authority, the local redevelopment agency acting on behalf of the city, valued the land at $13.8 million, and the city offered the Navy a $40 million in-kind deal.

The Navy commissioned two independent estimates, by the firms Ernst & Young Global Ltd. and Duff & Phelps Corp., which returned a fair-market value of $250 million. These assessments were reviewed and verified by the General Services Administration.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/07/piracy-on-treasure-island/

~ ~ ~

Republican Committee Accuses Nancy Pelosi of Cutting Sweetheart Deals for Her ‘Nephew,’ Gavin Newsom — Who Is Surprised to Discover He’s Pelosi’s Nephew
By Joe Eskenazi, Monday, Aug. 3 2009 @ 12:01AM

###

No use hiding it, Nancy! We know your secret!

A blustery Friday release from the National Republican Congressional Committee accused Rep. Nancy Pelosi of playing hardball politics to wrest Treasure Island away from the Navy.

No surprise there — that’s not the first we’ve heard of that. But the Republicans’ rationale did strike us as odd: The committee accuses Pelosi of directing federal funds to her hometown to benefit her nephew — her “nephew” being Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Say what? The release — which also uses the term “last Wednesday” to describe a meeting that took place in 2004, appears to have been removed from the NRCC’s site. Here it is below:

*snip*

Is Gavin Newsom really Nancy Pelosi’s Nephew? We asked the man who ought to know best — mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard.

“These conspiratorial coxcombs are confused about consanguinity,” replied Ballard, showing a flair for alliteration and GRE-level words.

“The mayor’s father’s sister was at one time married to the Speaker’s husband’s brother. So the Speaker’s nieces and nephews are the Mayor’s first cousins,” he continued.

“For the black helicopter crowd, this kind of diagram is too difficult to sketch. So, instead they call her his aunt.”

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/08/republican_committee_accuses_n.php

~ ~ ~

PAY-TO-PLAY BAY AREA
http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/kirshenbaum_061029.shtml

*snip*

The entity Treasure Island Community Developers needed to be created because giving a development contract to a lobbying firm is like asking an ad agency to start a strip-mining operation: it doesn’t make much natural sense. Unless the ad agency can’t resist the thought of finding veins of gold in the ground, and creates an entity for that purpose.

Considering the grand, incestuous family that is politics, maybe it’s no surprise that Platinum’s development entity has been handed the Treasure Island bounty.

Given the Pelosi and Newsom history of enthusiasm for developing the Presidio, we should hope it’s not too late to keep a close watch and short leash on Treasure Island developments.

Unfortunately, this means paying attention to the entire family.

That would include even the new president on the Commission on the Environment, Paul Pelosi, Jr., who is Nancy Pelosi’s son and Gavin Newsom’s cousin. As for TIDA itself, all the members are appointed by the mayor; all but one is a City Hall official.

Who else will benefit from the arrangement?

Certainly Lennar Corporation will. They are a partner with Platinum’s Treasure Island Community Developers. Lennar has experience developing former military bases, and is one of the country’s largest residential housing builders.

By what could solicitously be called a coincidence, Laurence Pelosi was president of acquisitions for Lennar.

He is Nancy Pelosi’s nephew, and currently works as executive director of Morgan Stanley’s real estate division. As Newsom’s former campaign treasurer, he would have worked with Darius Anderson on the campaign fundraiser for Newsom.

He’s not the only one: Doug Boxer, son of Senator Barbara Boxer, is an attorney who has worked for Anderson as a Platinum lobbyist, and has been a partner with Anderson at Kenwood Investments.

~ ~ ~

(Excerpt from a long, detailed article about all the nepotism and nefarious business deals)

April 5, 2009
Singing in the rain: Hunters Point Shipyard enriches SF’s most powerful families
http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/singing-in-the-rain-hunters-point-shipyard-enriches-sf%E2%80%99s-most-powerful-families/

###

A chronology of legal, ethical and regulatory oversight violations involving the transfer and development of Parcel A of the Hunters Point Shipyard with investigatory follow up 2002-2009

by Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, M.D.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attends a San Francisco Opera gala with her husband, Paul Pelosi. Both are suspected of major conflicts of interest.

* * *

“No public official at any level of state or local government shall make, participate in making or in any way attempt to use his official position to influence a government decision in which he knows or has reason to know he has a financial interest.” – California Government Code Section 81002(c)

* * *

Nepotism is defined by Webster’s dictionary as political favoritism based on family relationships. In an email to the San Francisco Bay View, Laurence Pelosi verified that he was a Lennar senior executive in March of 2004 at the time San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, his cousin for whom he had served as mayoral campaign treasurer, had signed the Hunters Point Shipyard Conveyance Agreement at the behest of Laurence’s Aunt Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

San Francisco Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code Section 3.212 governs political decision making involving family members and Section 3.214 requires disclosure of personal, business or professional relationships for elected officials of the City and County of San Francisco.

Laurence Pelosi is the son of Ronald Pelosi and Belinda Barbara Newsom. He is Nancy Pelosi’s nephew by marriage.

Laurence Pelosi was identified as the vice president of naval base acquisitions for Lennar in a program he participated in concerning the master plan for development of the southeast community held at Mission Bay in 2006.

After resigning from Lennar in May of 2004 – immediately before the shipyard conveyance legislation went before numerous City boards and commissions for approval – Laurence Pelosi joined the board of directors of the influential urban development think tank SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research) and went to work for Morgan Stanley.

Newsom, as chief executive officer of the City and County of San Francisco, took what is clearly a discretionary action by entering into the Conveyance Agreement for the Hunters Point Shipyard with the U.S. Navy.

The Conveyance Agreement set a specific timetable for giving the City a portion of the shipyard – Parcel A – as well as giving commercial development rights to Lennar/BVHP, a limited liability private, non-governmental corporation.

At a Dec. 14, 2003, hearing of the San Francisco Redevelopment Commission compounded by arrests, civil rights violations and invasions on the constitutional rights of the free press, the Redevelopment Agency approved a Disposition and Development Agreement granting Lennar Corp. of Miami, a company that enjoyed annual sales of $9 billion, exclusive development rights for the shipyard.

[freekitty]

Wonder what football will be like in the future with all these rock stars and congress critters buying them.

Sissy teams comes to mind.