The stadium, which was essentially a temporary home while Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum was being built, sat 22,000 and cost $400,000 to build. The facility was named for Francis J. Youell (1883-1967), an Oakland undertaker owner of the Chapel of the Oaks, Oakland City Councilman, and sports booster. It was located on the grounds of what is now part of Laney College next to the channel which connects Lake Merritt to the Oakland Estuary. The site was formerly part of the "Auditorium Village Housing Project", one of several temporary housing tracts built by the federal government in the San Francisco Bay Area for the thousands of workers who poured into the region during World War II to work in war industries, especially, in shipyards such as the Kaiser Shipyards.