On Thursday, officials from the A’s and the Port of Oakland took a field trip to Howard Terminal. There they discussed the site’s viability as a Major League Baseball venue.

I wasn’t invited. I’m sure it was an oversight.

So I took my own tour Friday to get the feel of the area. It was at Jack London Square, near the ferry landing, that I ran into Minh Hang, who just happened to be wearing a green and gold A’s T-shirt.

“I just recently heard about (the possibility of a new ballpark at Howard Terminal) actually, on the news,” he said. “That would be really great. Where would they actually be putting it?”

An artist’s rendering shows the stadium snugged up against the Oakland Estuary, with the right field wall closest the water.

“Are they going to have it so you can see the cranes?” Hang asked. (The rendering indicates they would.) “That would be really cool.”

Let’s get real for a second. A lot of things would be really cool. Winning the lottery. Getting a puppy. The A’s hanging onto homegrown talent.

The A’s lead the majors in artist’s renderings. They reveal enticing stadiums in Fremont and San Jose in addition to Howard Terminal. Somewhere there are artist’s renditions of how the Coliseum was supposed to look after renovations to accommodate the Raiders upon their return to Oakland in 1995.

One showed Mt. Davis barely higher than the original Coliseum upper deck, with beveled edges that, in the words of one of the architects, “are sympathetic to the existing structure.” Next time you’re at the Coliseum, check it out and have a laugh.

Bottom line: Don’t go falling in love with the pictures too soon. There is a long way to go before anything happens at Howard Terminal. Assuming anything happens at Howard Terminal. The project would have to make political and economic sense, and those types of determinations take time. We can’t even be sure at this point whether the team and city are serious about perception, reality or none of the above.

My tour was to gauge whether a new waterfront stadium would make emotional and pragmatic sense. From what you can see, ground zero is a little rough around its industrial edges. Ditto the area of Market Street and Embarcadero West. But there are lofts, storage units and small businesses. Remind yourself that AT&T Park sits on what were once glow-in-the-dark toxic warehouses.

Every block south you go from Market and Embarcadero, the more appealing the area gets. Retail outlets (Cost Plus, BevMo) and small boutique restaurants bleed into Jack London Square. You don’t need much of an imagination to foresee a robust bustling retail corridor surrounding a new ballpark.

“With Jack London, there’s lots of stuff around here,” Hang said.

Another corridor would have to be freshened up — the walk to the proposed new stadium from Civic Center and the nearest BART station.

I made the 1.25-mile trip in 26 minutes, moving leisurely — a pace midway between the mall walk and “Daddy has to find a restroom!” When you emerge from the BART station, you are undeniably in Oakland. That’s a good thing, given that the best ballpark experiences resonate with a sense of place and time — San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston.

City Hall looks down upon you, as do the Tribune Tower and the twin towers of the Ron Dellums Federal Building. I passed a farmers market that stretched a block in every direction from the intersection of Ninth Street and Washington. And because Oakland is Oakland, I got the occasional whiff of cannabis, met the occasional panhandler and heard the inevitable siren or two.

The closer you get to the proposed site, the seedier it gets, with homeless camps, auto yards, graffiti. Hardly an Iowa cornfield. But it’s fixable. Again, think Third and King pre-AT&T.

Hang said he has attended games at the Coliseum (“I like it for the memories”), but not lately. He’d be inclined to visit a new waterfront stadium.

“That’d be really nice. I would,” he said. “Because I’ve been to the park in San Francisco. It’s next to the water, that’s pretty nice, too. That’d be cool if they did something like that.”

Do you have a column topic for Gary? Contact him at 925-952-5053 or gpeterson@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/garyscribe.