Lewis Wolff sits down with the San Francisco Chronicles to discuss the Athletics' quest for a new stadium. Here's his clever idea for building a ballpark:

What cities do have, especially in the area of growth, and the Bay Area, good or bad, is growing, whether it's growing right or not is not my decision totally, they have zoning rights. We call them entitlements; you're entitled to build 1,000 apartment units.

Those entitlements are the new currency, in my opinion, for cities, governments and regionals and counties and so forth.

So let's assume there is the Oakland army base, and that has a lot of demands from a lot of groups, and it's not a great location for a ballpark. It's a piece of land I think the city owns, but if not, they can get to it.

Let's assume that developers, not so much ourselves, feel that is a great housing location. Our idea might be that since it's not zoned right now but is to be zoned or to be entitled, why not entitle it for 3,000 apartment units?

Those units might be worth $100,000 a piece. It's sort of your land value. Whether we're the developer or we join with a developer or a developer that we're not associated with says, "We'll pay $300 million for those entitlements rights."

We're saying to the city, "That's the subsidy we want, but we don't want it for free. Put it into the ballpark. If the ballpark costs $500 million, we'll add the $200 million, take care of the overruns, and we'll do the land under it."

That entitlement is a value, is a currency they can help us with. So what do they get out of it? They get a ballpark, which they'll own, and we'll have a longer lease than we have today, and somebody will build 3,000 apartment units. We think it's a very interesting idea.

In talking to a lot of people who are a little more creative in thinking in government and the private side, they think it's a unique approach. It's not totally, but you could call it a huge subsidy if you want. You could call it a clever way of getting through the process.