Opponents of the Golden State Warriors’ proposed Mission Bay arena are calling on the City and team to evaluate an alternative site near Pier 80.
In the eyes of Mission Bay Alliance, the 21-acre site bounded by Cesar Chavez, Islais Creek Channel, and Highway 280 is “far superior” and “in the best interests of the environment and everyone.” But the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which is in the middle of building a new bus depot on the western third of the site, would likely disagree.
Keep in mind that upon completion of the new Islais Creek Depot, the SFMTA had intended to shutter the Kirkland Yard on Beach Street and the Mayor’s Office of Housing had been in negotiations to purchase the Kirkland Yard site for the development of 220 unit of housing.
But given the growth in the City and new transportation projects and vehicles required to support said growth, the SFMTA reversed course and declared the existing Kirkland Yard an essential element of their real estate portfolio, as is the Islais Creek facility.
“Hey Warriors, we want you to consider this hugely inferior alternative site that you don’t own and could never assemble as a parcel as a viable alternative to the very expensive and much better located parcel that you fully control in Mission Bay. Sound reasonable?”
*crickets*
Don’t forget it won’t do anything to the traffic situation, well, the people at UCSF will be slightly less bothered when they refuse to use mass transit to get to work. Won’t SOMEBODY please think of the UCSF commuters?! It will be much easier to eliminate a number of streets than build on one appropriately sized lot, trust me, don’t even look into it.
Pray you will never need to access care on an emergency basis at the UCSF MB Med Center.
It isn’t going to be any better if the area is where they propose it, but you do have a point. They should look into developing high visibility vehicles, maybe add flashing lights and a siren, so in an emergency people can get out of the way. Maybe go one step further and make it a law that when you see one of these fictitious vehicles coming toward you, you should pull over and let them pass.
But SFPD wouldn’t enforce that. SFPD are too busy ticketing cyclists on the Wiggle.
Anything Goes, are you high? Cyclists being ticketed in SF is like a coin toss coming up on its edge — possible in theory but in reality, quite rare (being generous).
We can only wish SFPD enforced the law against cyclists. SFPD should be sued for not doing anything to try and dampen blatant disregards for laws that is rampant in cycling community. So entitled brats
Ever see an ambulance try to get through SF Giants traffic? Doesn’t happen – It’s faster to walk.
Emergency vehicles will be able to use the physically separated T-Third Muni lane in the center of the roadways to pass all private vehicle traffic without obstruction. For this reason, only community “activists” groups have raised this concern and not UCSF itself.
amazing how other cities seem to have major hospitals in much denser areas. Columbia, Memorial Sloan Keeting, Etc. Patients must die every day due to traffic in NYC. this is such a red herring. its just about employees not wanting traffic. its not about emergency care.
UCSF are such sore losers!!! Yes, they care about patient care BUT they care more about losing that 1 parcel of land for future growth. Hopefully, when is all said and done, this UCSF tantrum triggers PAYING TAXES!!!
UCSF the institution is not objecting to the MB site.
If you give your kid a $10,000 allowance your family is not $10,000 richer.
You do realize UCSF is a State school right?
So that means if they pay taxes to San Francisco the money comes from Sacramento – who gets the money from raising taxes on ? Yep you.
Or Sacramento just lowers the amount they give to San Francisco for other reasons. Zero sum game.
I think CCSF has arithmetic classes you may benefit from.
no! my favorite skate spot will be gone
If this can materialize, could be a huge positive to Bayview.
Exactomundo. This would be the missing link between BV and dogpatch in one fell swoop. Voila!
Do you think? I often wonder how that wasteland can be bridged, especially now that Dogpatch officially extends to Caesar Chavez.
It might attract other businesses (food, bars etc.) in that area bI ut worry is it will only bring chaos to the T line and brawling sports fans 🙂
Looks like a last ditch effort. Literally. Unless their ingenious plan is to get the Warriors to shift south in one-mile steps until they are at Candlestick or the Cow Palace.
Exactly what I thought. Keep going south until you get to Santa Clara, for your San Francisco sporting events.
Ok, just a little farther South. A little farther. No, still a little farther. Ok, perfect, you’re in Gilroy now!
If we were back in time 3 years, this isn’t a bad idea. It’d be great to see Islais Creek redeveloped and cleaned up, and this could be a great anchor for that, as well as help pull the Dogpatch redevelopment south and even boost the Bayview redevelopment.
But we’re not 3 years ago, we’re today. Even without the SFMTA monkey wrench, this proposal has too many complications. What happens to the existing Warriors site – do they just sell it? Do they swap with the City (and we gat a beautiful SFMTA bus depot at 16th & 3rd)? And you can’t just plop down an existing building plan in a new location – soils and topography have to be examined, as well as views and amenities – e.g. in their proposal, they’ve turned the arena so that the windows and promenade face 280 and the back side of Potrero Hill – hardly the same as facing a view of the Bay Bridge and the Bay.
And what about the Warriors’ office buildings – which both drive the site from a walkability / vibrancy perspective, but also help make the economics work.
Finally, this doesn’t really do anything to address the traffic concerns – yes, people coming off 280 will have a little better flow; but for people on transit the situation will be even worse than the current plan – further from BART; just as far from the 22nd Street Caltrain station; even further down the underutilized T line on 3rd, etc. All it does is move the traffic kerfuffle 10 blocks south, away from UCSF – but it doesn’t do anything to ameliorate those traffic issues.
Is the original site – by the bay bridge – absolutely not an option? Still my favorite.
Would have been world class, but, alas, SF is not world class.
Agnos would have put the Sydney Opera House in the Sydney equivalent of Hunter’s Point if he had been mayor of Sydney.
Pretty funny comment about Agnos but true. Agree, Pier 30/32 was most inspired, but not without it’s problems.
pier 30/32 was by far the best for transportation and should ahve had least traffic concerns
I’m not that familiar with the history, what were the problems at 30/32?
Primarily, the same old “No ‘wall’ on the waterfront” BS.
Pier 30/32 was best for mass transit; lousy for car transit. Big monolith that blocked views which NIMBYs also complained ruin the shoreline. Designed connected land with sea well and allow the public to circumnavigate the arena with wrap around ramp which afforded the public great views of the bay and the city. The real killer was the protracted entitlement process but more so the exhorbitant cost to upgrade the rotted piles below the wharf which held up the piers. The later didn’t make sense for ownership to throw away a huge chunk of money restoring below grade PUBLIC infrastructure that could not be recouped. Instead, they packed up and used their funds to buy a choice piece of private redevelopment land in the mission bay. A no brainier.
Search socket site. There’s plenty of history.
Looks like the Balboa Park Reservoir Site (SFPUC) and CCSF site flipped, two parcels never with sufficient coordination or planning, promised as housing, meant for public use, and being flipped for whatever political statement is beneficial at the moment… City planning at its finest…. Keep it near the Ballpark, at least transit will adequately be provided at the downtown site…
Pure politics on the part of Mission Bay Alliance. They are well aware this site is a non-starter but it allows them to point at something and say “See, we provided an alternative!”
When activist types were pointing at Mission Bay (and Civic Center) as a more appropriate site than the pier, I called that the second they moved there, these same types would talk about how implausible the very site they suggested is. It’s infuriating. This is the most ridiculous proposal yet.
Can’t they just stay in Oakland? That’s my vote!
Agreed!
No.
Because Oakland is even less organized…
Pier 80 would be a nice spot.
Pier 80 would be a great location. However, site is owned by the Port of SF …meaning years of wrangling with multi-agency approvals.
The current proposal will never be built. IMO it will be soundly defeated at the box office.
The Warriors aren’t going south towards Candlestick and starting again from scratch.
The Warriors will stay in Oakland and be an anchor to Coliseum City which could turn out to be a magnificent city within a city – can we hope for canals connecting with the Bay?
The Warriors PTB know this. How much longer they continue to play around with plans to build in SF and basically throw money-away is up to them.
Their getting into Coliseum City at the early stages will be far more lucrative for them than the building of a couple of office building at the proposed site in SF would have been.
And this does not even touch on the transportation issues they would have faced/caused in SF.
Coliseum city is dead. Didn’t you see the big fallout with Klephart blasting Oakland/Alameda city/county for lack of leadership to make it happen? Not even sure they’ll be able to keep the Raiders at this point.
Also, nothing’s going to be defeated at the “box office.”
Dave@ if it goes to the ballot, it has 61% approval from the electorate. This is according to the lates field poll. Coliseum City in Oakland is dead on arrival. The City of Oakland has no money and will not put up any money. The investors are no where to be found.
Transportation? T line right outside the door to connect with BART. Possible future ferry line across the street. Five blocks to Caltrain.
The Warriors will build their new Arena in San Francisco and will eventually be called the San Francisco Warriors.
Sorry Dave.
I got 3 paragraphs in, and thought “this must be a Dave post”, and only then looked up to see — yup! Oak-town boosterism at its finest.
But, but….everyone is leaving SF for the MAGNIFICENT CITY WITHIN A CITY in East Oakland. Everyone.
Come on, Dave. You need to learn to use the PROPER CAPITALIZATION in your DOOM AND GLOOM/OAKLAND BOSTERISM posts.
Nonsense! The Arena should be built at Seawall 337 where the Giants are proposing 11 buildings 9-24 stories tall. An arena at this site with Piers 48 pavilions being developed like the Herbst Pavilion @ Ft Mason and sports clubs and restaurants around the arena like LA Live and Staples Center in LA. The transportation options at this site (Muni T & N lines, Caltrain, Ferry Dock @ ATT Park make this a logical site for the arena. Instead the Mayor has been MIA in these negotiations and the Giants and Warriors are looking out for their own interests rather than joining together to create something truly great for the City. In regards to the housing the Giants are currently proposing with their development (11 buildings 9-24 stories tall, 40% BMR housing), that should be built where the Warriors are currently thinking of building the arena @ 3rd & 16th.
In regards to possible conflicts of two events happening at ATT Park and Warriors Arena, that would happen anyway where the Warriors are currently considering and it would just take more coordinating between the organizations.
Mayor Lee, if you want a legacy, get on the ball and start thinking about what can be.
Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewery and his shoreline beer garden has first dibs on Pier 48. Sorry. Herbst type pavillion, the original inspiration, would have been nice on lieu of pier 48 smelling like hops. For some that may be the smell of heaven.
Fritz Maytag sold Anchor Steam a long time ago. And yes, the smell of beer in the making is heaven on earth. Bring it. All of it.
SWL 337 is the logical spot for the Warriors Arena. Just good land use.
I’m guessing either the Warriors billionaires have not yet slipped Ed Lee and BOS enough unmarked envelopes of cash to make it happen or the Giants slipped the politicians more $?
Dave – the address change from Oakland to SF will substantially (9 figures) increase the value of the Warriors franchise. That alone makes the move worth it for the Warriors PTB.
This will utterly CRUSH traffic coming into the city, and the area just south of SF General. So, to recap: WE HATE TRAFFIC NEAR OUR HOSPITAL, IT’S A PUBLIC SAFETY THREAT! (but it’s OK if it happens to the only trauma hospital in the city, amirite?)
Brian@ The Trauma Hospital is SF General on Potreo. So, calm down and come up with something else.
Dave@–Brian is actually right…exit to get to SFG is Cesar Chavez, which already gets backed up on normal (non-game) days since everyone trying to get to the city or over the bridge is choosing between 101/280 and flowback starts around Cesar Chavez (another reason tech workers choose Bernal/Noe/Mission). As any commuter coming north on Giants game nights knows, traffic gets positively horrible for the Cesar Chavez exit that would serve SFG…so gotta give it to Brian
And all of the traffic coming from across the city will cut through the mission, most of it through Cesar Chavez or on Potrero – thus clogging all of the surface streets around SF general. Stop and think for half a second about the number of people trying to access that already horribly congested freeway interchange and the already horribly backed up surface streets around it.
This scheme has my vote. I like the Cesar Chavez proposal MUCH better than at Mission Bay. This site gives the Warriors more freedom to design something spectacular. IMO, MB site was squeezing a size 12 foot in a size 8 shoe. While it may not be as superior of a neighborhood, the stadium can be an economic catalyst for the neighborhood. Location separates traffic between the Giants and Warrior’s much better and is closer to hwy 101 & 280. This scheme would provide great reasons to move the dingy, dark and hidden 22nd St Caltrain station out from under 280 freeway and south nearer to Caesar Chavez.
Assuming the ownership issues could be magically resolved by your vote, I’m trying to imagine exactly how many days a year the Giants and Warriors would have games on the same day. Maybe 10? That seems like very little hubbub to completely upend MTA’s long-term depot planning with a giant question mark.
The Giants play over 80 home games. The Warriors intend to generate 200 plus venues. IMO there will a bit of overlap. Don’t forget the many foot races, cirque due soleil and the may other festivals, events, concerts held within pier 48, seawall 337 and ATT. It’s deceptively looks quiet, but it’s a seasonally busy area.
Mission Bay can hardly be called a “superior” neighborhood.
You have a point there. Architecture and street scape are pretty banal I have to admit. But the percentage open space is awesome.
remind me people: Did anyone complain when UCSF moved to Mission Bay because of all the traffic they have brought to the neighborhood?
I’ve been all for the MB location but I do like this idea even more. Might act as the missing link that jump starts some long overdue Ceasar Chavez, Islais Creek and Bayview investment while giving some breathing room between this and the Ballpark. Downside seems to be that it’s farther from Bart but perhaps this becomes part of the kick in the butt we need to get a 2nd transbay tube and a subway down third or a least a major upgrade to the T so that it’s not so slow and basically useless.
If, as at least one of our Supervisors has proposed, 280 into San Francisco was removed, this location could become (excuse my wishful thinking) what the San Francisco waterfront became once the Embarcadero highway was removed.
This is all a big maybe, but interesting to consider.
No one, not even His Lunacy, is proposing to tear down 280 this far south. And I’m hard-pressed to imagine how the single-story warehouses and industrial uses along Islais Creak become just like the Embarcadero, even *with* the arena here and the creek restored.
The simple unavoidable fact is that no active populated neighborhood in the city wants the impact of two pulses of 20,000 fans 200 days a year. That kind of concentrated traffic cannot be mitigated or worked around. It permanently damages the neighborhood.
Well go thing there will not be 20K fans 200 days a year. In fact technically I think there will be 20K fans zero days/yr
Defu – explain to me how AT&T park permanently damaged the neighborhood? They have 45,000 fans 100 days a year. What people don’t want is a ball park or arena in the middle of no where with no public transportation and no infrastructure like Candlestick and Oakland’s O.CO. Mission bay makes perfect sense. The southern location near Pier 80 is DOA because it is an SFMTA site, not for sale, not ready for development, no bueno!
Heck, AT&T Park *created* that neighborhood. The young’uns here clearly have no idea what that area was like before the ballpark – the Caltrain station was in the middle of a dead zone of parking lots and vacant warehouses – you felt out of place simply walking on the sidewalk from BART to catch a train (something I did many times in 1991 & 1992); often you were the only person (and if you weren’t the only person, odds were that you’d cross the street because the other guy looked pretty dodgy).
So yeah, the arena will “permanently damage” the neighborhood… just like Fenway has ruined Boston, or Wrigley Field has decimated Boystown, or even how the new and expanded TD Garden in Boston has laid waste to the old North End. (Not, not, not… etc.)
Next straw man, please!
No kidding. Every planner, real estate developer and architect in this City recognizes that the construction of Pac Bell Park turned the mishmash fit-and-starts redevelopment by Catellus of the former Southern Pacific railyards known as “Mission Bay” into something that had a “there” there. And that includes running Muni Metro out that way to Pac Bell – which light rail extension preceded the Third Street light rail by about a decade.
Damaged the neighborhood my left nut.
You also have to give props to Willie Brown for engineering the location of the UCSF campus to MB which had even more salutory effect in jumpstarting the build out/
I miss the Toot Toot drive-in!
Location doesn’t really matter. The global financial crisis gathering steam by the second and this project and many others will be put on ice and may never be resuscitated.
In Sacramento they are halfway done with the steel framing for the new Kings Arena that was proposed in concept stage at the Sacramento Planning Commission meeting in the fall of 2013.
From above. From streetview (Note as of May 2015 – actual progress is much higher than what is shown here.)
Not that I want to move to Sacramento, but it’s interesting how well the red state part of California works sometimes.
I live in Sac, here’s a couple pics I took last week of the new arena:
http://i.imgur.com/dvGAE6o.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/woRv68L.jpg
As for Sac being the “red state” part of California, just proves how small minded and provincial SFers are. Sacramento is more diverse than SF (actually second most diverse city in the country, behind Oakland), we got a black mayor (Kevin Johnson), and is a very blue city. It’s just that our Democrats get things done, and they’re not communists.
Very nice that it is downtown. If there is ever HSR from the Bay Area to Sac before I die will take it to a Warriors Kings game!
My friend who lives up there really likes the River cats games. That looks like a cool minor league park
The City of Sacramento is strongly Democratic in registration and voting patterns. Sacramento doesn’t have quite the same attraction for pro sports teams as SF. Sacramento is contributing ~$250 million to the construction of the Kings’ arena downtown. That’s most of the estimated cost.
Sacramento is also in the process of building a *second* arena.. a new soccer stadium for the Sacramento Republic FC, less than 1 mile from the Golden 1 (Kings) arena currently under construction. So, let’s see, SF has *one* sports stadium, baseball (West Sac does have the River Cats minor league baseball field as well) and Sacramento is building two, a pro league Soccer *and* basketball stadium, the 49ers just left SF for the ‘burbs, and yet SF is more attractive for pro sports? And you base this on?
The current estimated construction cost of the Kings arena is $507mm. So @ $255mm capped, the city might contribute half of the required funds, and probably a decreasing fraction if the project continues to go over budget.
This is my point – other cities are so enthusiastic to have professional sports teams that they make an effort to help arena construction happen.
Well, you can try to bury this under euphemisms like “enthusiastic” and “make an effort”, but the point remains that Sacramento had to cough up a quarter billion $ upfront plus many millions more per year in lost revenue from some giveaways that are now part of a lawsuit. By contrast SF kicked in a few tens of millions to get the Giants to build PacBellPark in the 1990s plus another ~$10 million/year give or take in subsidies. And the Warriors are likely to get less and maybe only half as much.
None of these deals have been done without taxpayers contributing, but the pay-for-play ratios certainly favor SF over Sacramento, or Oakland, or most other US cities. And not because our politicians didn’t want to bend over for the 9ers and Giants, but because the voters rejected those lopsided deals, again and again and again. That rather stubborn patience saved us enough to buy a lot of new MUNI buses and seismic retrofit some schools, both of which were quite overdue when the voters were telling Willie Brown ex Machina to stick his “enthusiasm” for spending taxmoneys for steroidal sports back in his pants.
Though we did have to let Santa Clara enjoy a dozen Sunday traffic jams a year for their hundred million dollars upfront and who knows how much down the road. Guess who will host the street parties for Super Bowl 50? Guess which skyline is shown in the national NFL TV coverage? Maybe the 9ers should pay SF for use of our name.
In the grand scheme of local governments that “get things done” “to have professional sports teams”, I’d say SF is on pace to outperform just about ever other city in America.
Cities approach professional sports support in different ways. The existing Kings venue, Arco Arena (Sleeptrain Arena!) is located miles from the city center and accessible only by automobile. By investing $255mm in the construction of a new arena in a walkable area of downtown, Sacramento is attempting to revitalize what had become a fairly dark-at-night under utilized space and foster greater economic activity. This may or may not work, but I believe it is a higher and better use of the space than the bedraggled mall that is being replaced. The neighborhood dynamics of the space west of the State Capitol and east of the Sacramento river are frustrated in part by the elevated Highway 5 that bifurcates the area.
San Francisco, on the other hand, recently spent $11.5mm hosting a sailing competition for billionaires which produced a third of the anticipated economic activity.
Is it better to fund one-off events or support a long-term capital expenditure projects aimed at revitalization? I guess reasonable people can disagree. If you don’t want an arena in San Francisco, then we’re doing well. Some people don’t like sports, but quite a few do.
Either way, I don’t think the city strategy has anything to do with Willie Brown’s genitals or how voters feel about them.
OK, you can continue to layer on the soothing light classical euphemisms used to sell these deals in every city and in every country, but the reality is that these large public investments to subsidize private sports teams almost never return as much as the same money would if spent on mundane ordinary civic needs. Sacramento could spend their $250+ million to replace “the bedraggled mall” without subsidizing the wealthy owner of a pro sports team, but their money, their deal.
The Giants certainly sold PacBellPark with the same story you just told for the new Kings arena. And people still spout the absolute nonsense that PacBellPark was more responsible for the boom of SoMa and South Beach than the $100+ billion in VC money invested in SF in the dotcom era.
The “different ways” cities negotiate with sports moguls are due to their relative strengths and confidence. Hopefully, Sacramento’s deal with the Kings turns out better than Oakland’s current deal with the Raiders. We should know in 10-20 years. Meanwhile, SF is almost sure to get a new basketball arena and much needed entertainment center for a cost to the public of ten cents on the Sacramento dollar. With those kind of savings, SF could afford to blow $11 million every year on one-off sports events. But you might notice that we don’t. Gave it a try, took a chance, lost a little at the Larry E roulette table, not as desperate as other cities to go for another spin of the wheel.
please tell me you are not one of those “high speed cable” built South Beach people, Jake. Were you down there before the Giants built the stadium? There’s no comparison. There’s no comparison between South Park then and South Park now. South Park had like one burrito place back then, South Beach had Burger Island and Happy Donuts. The ballpark made that neighborhood.
Not sure what you mean by “high-speed cable”. AFAIK, Comcast circuits are almost all low-speed, asymmetric, overpriced, middling QOS, junk.
I’ve lived in the South Beach neighborhood long enough to remember when One South Park was a garment sweatshop. The Chinese ladies would line up to catch the bus back to Chinatown. And on the weekends discount shoppers were bused in from the suburbs to buy $10 dresses and such at motley stores clustered between South Park and the decrepit pier that became the Giants ballpark. And South Park proper had a better selection of restaurants before the ballpark was built than it does now.
Then the Internet boom washed more than $100 billion in VC money through SF by the end of 2000. Oh, and the Giants built a ballpark and the city rebuilt the Embarcadero and the freeways. Those helped too, a little. Don’t let the sideshow in the corner distract you from the big circus.
I’ve posted the following before on SS, but for anyone interested SF Planning put together a brief summary of the dot com boom and early bust in SF (8 page pdf at namelink) as part of the eastern neighborhood planning. It covers job growth, vc investment levels, map of the new livework buildings, commercial and residential rental costs, and has plenty of stats and graphics. It is the most succinct summary of this period for this place that I know. Here’s a snippet:
“Between 1994 and 2000, San Francisco experienced a period of sustained growth and added over 86,000 jobs. … In 1996, venture capital (VC) companies provided about $10 billion to Internet and other high-tech start-up companies in San Francisco. Funding continued at about that level until 1998, when the funding rose 20 percent to $12 billion, even though many of the companies were not generating any profit. The amount of venture capital funding continued to rise and many new high-tech companies started to grow very rapidly, hiring staff and leasing more office space. In 1999, VC funding rose to $40 billion. In 2000, the last year for which we have complete information, VC funding exceeded $50 billion for start-up companies in San Francisco. This funding allowed the expansion of the high-tech office space. The reported leasing activity increased from about 0.5 million square feet to 4.25 million square feet.”
Whenever anyone tells you the Giants $300 million stadium construction and $200 million payroll transformed SoMa and/or South Beach, just remember well over $100 billion in VC money washed through in 5 years.
It isn’t about the money washing through. It’s about the permanent changes. You were correct in adding the deep transformation of the Embarcadero, Ferry Building, et al to the equation.
What do you think caused the changes? How about the VC and IPO money that funded the conversion of hundreds of buildings from pdr to office and housing and seismically upgraded many old office buildings. How about the construction of one of the densest fiber nets in the world in a few years paid for by VC/investor money. How about the tens of thousands of new high-paying jobs that survived the bust. How about the billions in fortunes made by residents of SF. How about the doubling of property values and rents for all of eastern SF north of Cesar Chavez and as far away as Glen Park and the Haight. How about knowing the difference between a mountain and a mole hill, a tsunami and a pitcher of overhyped ballpark beer.
The Giants ballpark had and has a big effect for about one block. Except for the extra congestion for an hour or so before and two hours after a game, by the time you get to Brannan St it doesn’t matter if that pier had been made into a ballpark or an office park or public park.
And I am a Giants fan, but not a fan of them taking credit for something of which they were a very small part and would have happened in the same place and with similar results if they had stayed at Candlestick.
Ya oughta read the pdf at namelink.
I agree that this would have occurred without the Giants. There was too much else happening.
@ Jake- I believe the new arena in Sac will pay for itself during the course of its life. Let’s say it lasts for 20- 30 years.. think about all the added revenues coming from this- increased property taxes from the increased land value and the added density that is a bonus of this development, hotel room taxes, parking fines during events, sales taxes from all the new stores opening up, business payrolls taxes from the companies that will move into the new downtown core.
There is incredible positive transformation going on right now. Just take a look at the renovations to these historic commercial buildings happening right across the street from the arena.
Also, a new 26 story office tower proposed right across the street from the arena.
I am a member of 24 hour fitness and have been going to the downtown spot for a couple years now, and the neighborhood has turned from a boarded up depressing blight of hookers and drug dealers to something of hope and vitality. It is very exciting to watch, and I am a huge supporter of the arena. If the $250 million alone makes it safe for people to go out at night, then I think that’s worth it. But we are getting so much more, an entirely new city.
There it is. The fiber network thing. South Beach’s transformation was primarily about the Giants. It was a wasteland of sweatshops and abandoned warehouses before. Tens of thousands of jobs survived the downturn, sure. But lots more were lost. You’re trying to stretch this into the whole of the southern part of SF? why? I was talking about South Beach. It isn’t what it is without the Giants, and yes the Embarcadero. Sure though. The whole eastern/southeastern parts of SF became more attractive to people and that’s not going to change. Where does both Gen X and millennials wanting to live in urban environs end, and tech’s influence begin? I’m not disputing tech’s vast influence. I’m saying that the Giants ballpark changed that area, full friggin stop. Wired, Lookseek, whatever. They were all there early on and the area was still dead.
I had friends who had moved into this area well before the new Giants ballpark opened in 2000 and spent a fair amount of time in the area. Things were developing rapidly already a couple years before then, which accelerated with the dot-com boom starting in about 1998. One lucky thing is that the land for the park was lined up a few years further back, before the big changes had kicked in. By the late 90s, when they started actual construction, the land likely would have been too valuable and expensive to site a ballpark.
On the contrary, I was working a second shift job down there in 1996 and I can tell you that there was practically nothing at all going on once I got out. It was a little spooky to be honest. It was practically a ghost town. There was even a funky RV park. I often had to walk to Hotel Utah in order to see another soul.
Well, you must not have been very observant. By 1996 there were late night drunks peeing in and around South Park from Trocadero, the Sound Factory, and Club Townsend. A crossroads of diversity doing our little part for the sharing economy even then.
Of course, with those clubs closed and the increase in housing, this neighborhood actually has less nightlife of that kind now than 20 years ago, though more restaurants; and the peeing of late night drunks has been replaced by the peeing of pet dogs. Gentrification accomplished.
FTR, this had been the most rapidly developing neighborhood in SF for 5-10 years before the Internet boom that started in the mid-1990s took it into hyperdrive. Part of the credit goes back to the Rincon Point-South Beach Redevelopment Project (namelink) which was started in the 1980s and another part has to do with this having been in walking distance of downtown, making it prime for expansion. Even before the Internet boom South Park was a nascient tech center.
FWIW, the dense local fiber net in the south beach/rincon area includes several major computer data and carrier network centers with a combined investment in them greater than the investment in the ballpark. They and what they enable are the lever that transformed this neighborhood, not a 19th century sport.
I am quite observant, actually. You clearly don’t have a precise vocabulary. The quality you meant to challenge there was my recall. Anyway, yes, the Trocadero and another janky place were also on that same block where Utah is. So, uh, there was that. Otherwise there was nothing going on and to say otherwise is a laugh.
Um, no, your comments belie a lack of original knowledge, not a lack of remembrance. But I don’t expect someone walking around in the scary darkness to understand what was going on in the daylight or in the startups and new lofts taking over what had been the printing center of SF.
Sheesh, you claimed “South Park had like one burrito place back then, South Beach had Burger Island and Happy Donuts.” It’s a shame you missed Fingale on the way to Hotel Utah. But you can still enjoy what you missed so long ago. They’ve hardly changed the menu in 24 years. But don’t take my word for it, why don’t you stop in to South Park Cafe and discuss this with Ward Little or take it up with Leslie Hennessey on Second St or David Baker at his office in the Clock Tower or the nice folks at Delancy St or maybe ask the folks at Zeke’s Sports Bar or Primo Patio or the editors at IDG or any of the dozens of other businesses that have been in South Beach since before the Giants proposed building there. There was plenty “going on”, though it appears you weren’t invited or clued in.
The ballpark added to what had been happening for a decade, it didn’t cause it. The opening of the ballpark coincided with the peak years of VC investment in SF but didn’t cause those investments. The recent SF tech boom has been backed by about $1 billion/month of VC money. In the dot com peak the VCs were investing $1 billion per week in SF. Even good old Pets.com was already headquartered on Brannan St before the ballpark first opened. Hope you’re not going to claim that the ballpark caused the VCs to pour $100+ billion into SF in just a few years, because they offered some strange rationales for their investments, but they never disclosed that in any prospectus I ever read.
So you rattled off a few more restaurants. Zeke’s, Fringale, Primo Patio … real happening bro. I’d say that in terms of restaurants and bars and hangout spots it was about the most sparse of anywhere in town back in the mid 90s. So, say whatever you like. But the Giants changed that .
In the mid-1990s, south beach was more “happening” than most of SF. Of course most of SF was and is more sparsely populated with restaurants and bars and clubs than the SB of those times.
BTW, the pier that was torn down to build the ballpark hosted some great parties in those days, but I guess you weren’t invited. Anyway, enjoy your delusions, the Giants pr flaks claim another victim.
no it wasn’t. it was lame and desolate. So there was a warehouse party here and there. big deal.
so you missed out, were there, but unaware, and still can’t deal with it.
how the hell do you know what i did or didn’t see or go to? warehouse parties, what have you? so weird. hahahha. ok. go ahead and have the last word bro. it was freaking amazing down there before the giants came along. the giants pr wing has brainwashed everybody. all the money that went through south beach completely altered all of sf. you got it.
@Jake, you’re being unusually snarky on this point. IMHO — and when we’re talking about 20+ year old memories of impressions we had at that time, it’s inevitably going to feature a lot of subjective opinion versus mis-recalled facts — in the early 1990s, SoMa, particularly south of 80, was a wasteland that made me nervous to walk through (and I did walk through it regularly, to get to Caltrain from BART). Were there businesses there? Of course. Were there more businesses than just the Utah and the Trocadero, etc.? Of course. But none of that negates that it was parcel after parcel of empty parking lots surrounded by chain-link fences, empty warehouses, and shady transactions. Heck, it’s easy to find headlines from when SFMOMA built their original building south of Howard (*north* of 80) back in 1995, and it’s clear that even that location, so close to Market, was considered edgy and risky (in both an economic and a personal safety sense).
(And recall that underlying all of this, in the 1992-1994 time-frame at least, was a wave of car-jackings and other crimes that was really becoming epidemic in the City and in the East Bay. That’s one reason I decided to go to law school on the east coast, b/c by 1994 it seemed like the Bay Area was falling apart – not about to experience one of the greatest economic surges in modern economic history.)
I stopped walking to Caltrain in 1993, so maybe by the “mid-1990s” things had changed – but I doubt it, because when I moved back in 1998 even then there was just a couple lone apartment buildings along the channel, surrounded by lots of open brownfield. We had friends that moved to one of those buildings in 2001, and even then it was “you live where?! why?!”
@Sierrajeff, sure, the neighborhood was edgy. Still is. Did you know they sometimes set the street on fire and even smashed a MUNI bus once? Sports fans. Unregistered fisticuffs and knife fights too. Win or lose, the Giants always add lots of drunks to South Beach. There’s still a mens shelter at Bryant/5th and SROs on and near South Park, and homeless. Interesting that you mention car thefts, since a friend of mine had her car stolen near South Park on a Sunday afternoon in 2005. Big city living on the edge, I guess.
The reason that Moscone and Yerba Buena are where they are is that was skid row back in the day. Being close to Market made it worse not better. Did you ever walk around the old Transbay Bus Terminal or the ramps leading up Rincon Hill? Now that was sketchy and foul and much worse than South Beach.
As for raising the snark, well I do tend to get that way when someone makes a series of provably false claims, then ignores or dismisses the proofs offered of their misstatements while failing to take the graceful exists offered.
Memories are reliably unreliable, even after only a few minutes. That’s why I look for more objective data and why ya’all oughta read the pdf I linked to yesterday and is at namelink on this post. Your tax dollars….
If you’re looking for the sparks that ignited the dotcom boom that transformed SoMa and South Beach, I’d say it was the Netscape-Lycos-Exite-Yahoo IPOs of 1995-6. They enabled VCs and entreperneurs to raise the megafunds that pumped up SoMa’s volume to 11 by 1998. They validated valuation based on eyeballs and Internet ad-based revenue models that so well fit the Madmen and creative talents of SF. And of course it wasn’t just SB or SoMa. Downtown and northern waterfront/jackson sq went crazy too.
Remember the Nasdaq doubled from 1995 to 1997, and then kept going. SF asking rents for both residential and office doubled from 1995 to 1998. Bill Gurley opened Hummer Winblad’s VC office on South Park in 1997. At 6′ 9″ and dressed a bit preppy, Bill was hard to miss. Any idea that South Beach was dormant or desolate until the Giants moved in three years later is absurd.
FTR, PacBellPark opened three weeks after the Nasdaq peak in 2000 and in the very middle of the crash, so I’m blaming the crash on the Giants. Popped a great bubble, but made up for it with their PR, PBR, and the recent biannual World Series titles. Get ’em next year.
Completely and absolutely ridiculous to claim that the construction of little old PacBellPark was more important than the $ trillions irrational exuberance of wall street, the fiber optics pulled under Second and Brannan and …, http, and the hard work of thousands in the startups all over the neighborhood; all of which preceded the ballpark’s opening day.
The ballpark transformed a pier and a couple blocks of King St and damaged MB by locking down a corner as parking lots. It also had a modest impact on one block of Townsend and nearly no impact at all past Brannan, except for the extra traffic.
ya’all oughta read the pdf at namelink, it’s the best last word, and you already paid for it.
you didn’t prove anything. I proved I was down there during that time, and voiced my opinion. Then you ranted and ramped up the snark to the point of full on snotty disses by the time you peaced out.
That really has nothing to do with anything that we’ve been talking about, anon. Thanks for being you though. We’ve disagreed and talked at length about an actual subject. You, you pipe up with some name from the hoary past for some reason.
2nd street was heated up a bit in 98 and 99, in terms of office space, but there were very few restaurants. things were starting to go down the toilet before ballpark finalized. the entire King St area is solely due to the ballpark. Most of the further development of 2nd street was also due to ballpark. The ballpark may not ahve created the neighborhood, but it made it a full fledged neighborhood with lots of options for residential and dining
“ya’all oughta read the pdf at namelink, it’s the best last word, and you already paid for it.”
read it. proves my point, not yours.
Oh, really, how exactly? How does it prove that a building that opened in 2000 changed a neighborhood that was undergoing dramatic change years before? You want to share what you found in the document, or you just trolling?
I’m far from trolling. That report clearly shows that the area was in steep decline commercially when the ballpark debuted. Does it not?
Secondly, the report only shows office space. You and I both know that the restaurant boom in the area only happened after the Giants put in the ballpark. Look, I get that you have a great deal of sentimentality toward the area, but this report backs up my point of view, not yours.
Uh, we might need to synch our calendars here. When PacBellPark opened in spring 2000 SF and South Beach had been booming for years. I don’t know why you would write “the area was in steep decline commercially when the ballpark debuted.” It wasn’t. Anyone that was around here should know that and anyone that reads that pdf should understand that.
FWIW, the downturn that started after the ballpark opened ran for a few years, but only wiped out the peak of the employment and RE price increases from the dotcom boom that preceded the ballpark, not the whole thing. Financing via VC/IPO/Nasdaq drove the boom and when the spigot tightened came the bust. There were plenty of real economically viable tech companies created in SF in the 1990s that survived, grew, and are still around. Salesforce for one.
Notice that PacBellPark had nothing to do with it. The neighborhood had been booming for years before it opened and the opening could not arrest the bust. The money it generates is too small to drive impacts beyond itself and about a one block radius. The total revenue for the Giants is less than $400 million/year and half of that goes into the pockets of players and staff that mostly don’t live in SF. Salesforce does more than $400 million a month. Twitter does it in two-three months. Even Zynga has more revenue than the Giants. The infamous “G” trying to sell his penthouse condo nearby banked something like that in a couple internet ad company plays. Halsey Minor also bagged that much selling his slice of CNET. It is kinda cute to think that a baseball team could drive this economy, but also naive.
It had not been “booming” for years. Office spaces in recently derelict warehouses, and desolation in the evening does not constituted “booming,” guy. Knock it off with that phony stuff already.
Anyway, you’re arguing overall economic resurgency in San Francisco. And I have stayed talking about the vibrancy of the specific neighborhood. You cannot make the point that the area was vibrant pre-Giants, because it was not. You’ve made a point about tech firms going in in the general area. Point taken. But that’s the only point you made. My point stands. The neighborhood was dead pre-Giants. Come on now. It had a friggin trailer park. ’nuff said.
I mean, CNET was in Levi’s Plaza bruh. Cute? Cute is the way you jump all around town with various businesses. What are we talking about? the South Beach area.
CNET had been at their current offices on 2nd Street Rincon Hill for years when Minor cashed out by selling to CBS. Maybe they wanted to be near their competitors like Wired and IDG at South Park. And their old hq on Chesnut St is no more Levi’s Plaza than their current office is Market St.
In the year PacBellPark opened, CNET had more revenue than the Giants, and Organic at 4th/Bryant went public, making the founder a billionaire and worth more than the Giants. Of course the area was booming before the ballpark opened. It hadn’t been hotter since it burned in 1906 and it took more than a decade to get back to anything like it was then, even with the Giants added in.
Notice how you avoid the key point, which is huge waves of tech investor cash are the main factor in the vitalization of South Beach. And the biggest wave by far was the one that passed through in the years when the Giants were still at Candlestick. Anyone who lived through it should know that, but maybe you didn’t get invited to many launch parties.
Those many investor billions are what paid to refurb and seismic the old buildings, and pay the high rents and high salaries of both the dotcom era and the more recent social/mobile/cloud boom. That’s why when the investors backed off in 2000, the party wound down and South Beach declined for years even though the Giants had arrived, and if/when investors back off of the current neg cashflow tech companies (Uber, Twitter, etc) there will be an economic pullback in SF. Tech became a major part of the South Beach and SF economy in the 1990s, before PacBellPark opened, and it remains a major part.
You wrote to me: “You’ve made a point about tech firms going in in the general area. Point taken. But that’s the only point you made.” Dude, you may as well say I’d made a point about the miners in the gold rush, but that was the only point I made. That is the point. Who do you think was filling all those converted pdr buildings, buying and renting those lofts, tearing up the streets to lay optical fiber, making the waits at restaurants so long that people in SF started web companies just to book a table? Who do you think made it tough to get a cab in South Beach in 1999 when it was easy in 1996? Who do you think was the target of the late-90s anti-hipster/tech/gentrification pushback? For the love of almighty Internet, what other point do you need?
Look, I get that you have a sentimental attachment to this mythos about a ballpark saving a neighborhood, and it did its part in the China Basin corner of the hood, but not much else, and it arrived after much more profound changes had been made all across the rest of South Beach by the dotcom boom. And you might notice that for half the year it is basically a huge brick wall on the waterfront, desolate, empty, nearly abandoned.
1. uh, the CNET offices were right around the corner from Levi’s Plaza jake. 2. How many times are you gonna make that “Giants popped the bubble” joke? 14? it was never funny. 3. I mean, you mentioned Zeke’s as a sign of life before. Think Zeke’s noticed much difference in business after the Giants opened the park? lol. 4. easy to get a cab in 1996 = no it wasn’t. because cabs had no reason to go there. Hard to get a cab in 1999? yeah, because cabs didn’t go there during times when people took cabs, still. 5. Bad analogy. Miners made ephemeral money. Institutions such as Wells Fargo, Levi’s made institutions that lasted for ever and changed SF. Kinda like the ballpark.
Fact: the old CNET office at 150 Chestnut is 3-4 blocks from Levi’s Plaza, and just as long a walk from Levi’s Plaza as their current office is from Market St. And, as I wrote, they moved to 2nd St years before CBS bought them. Levi’s Plaza is an actual place with a well-defined boundary, unlike “South Beach”, which to some people goes as far as Hotel Utah and to some people it stretches along the waterfront north of the bridge to around the Gap hq and up the slopes of Rincon Hill, and there are official SF Planning docs from before the dotcom boom that don’t include either the old RV park or South Park in their maps of “South Beach.” So, you can provide your own map of South Beach, but not of Levi’s Plaza.
I made the “Giants popped the bubble” joke once and only once. The point isn’t that the Giants popped the bubble, the point is that they didn’t create the bubble that popped about the time they opened PacBellPark. The joke that is being made repeatedly is by you in avoiding the facts. This is like you are in a poker game and you can’t spot the sucker, yet you play on.
Fact: I lived here in 1996 and it was easy to call a cab then. All you needed was a phone. The cab stands around Market/SouthMontgomery and the Transbay Terminal were a 1-2 minute drive away and there wasn’t nearly as much traffic then as now or 1999. I used to be able to call for a cab and about the time I was out front it would be pulling up. Only a fool walks anywhere near South Park trying to flag a cab on the street be it 1996 or 1999 or 2015. By 1999 people were routinely calling for two or even three cabs hoping one would show up in less than 20 minutes. And if it rained, fuggetaboutit.
As for “Miners made ephemeral money. Institutions such as Wells Fargo, Levi’s made institutions that lasted for ever and changed SF”, ya ever hear of Adolf Sutro? Might want to read up on your history. Software programmers and engineers may be better at holding onto their money than miners and mining engineers, but bankers and suppliers make money in every boom. Check out how much profit SF based VCs and investment bankers made in the late 1990s off the dotcom IPOs before the crash that coincided with the ballpark’s first season. And restaurants around South Beach were increasing prices and profits in 1997-9 and lowering them in 2001-4, not because the ballpark opened but because many dotcoms closed. The South Beach economy declined after the ballpark opened. Fact.
As for “institutions that lasted for ever”, well nothing is forever, but the Internet Archive is trying and Brewster’s fortune that he generously uses toward that purpose came from the sale of Alexa Internet to Amazon in 1999 for about 70% as much as the construction cost of the ballpark. And Craigslist has a decent chance of outliving us all. I used to get Craig’s friday email of SF happenings back in 1996. That was Craig’s list. Then he wrote some perl code, put it on the Internet, and changed more than just SF. Alexa has always been in the Presidio, and Craig is a Cole Valley guy, but last I checked the computer servers of both were in the datacenter at 365 Main St. And since I already mentioned Organic, it didn’t last, but the Apache web server did. Many hands made Apache, but Brian Behlendorf (techie, former CTO of Organic, and current Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) was a key contributor. And he got into the Apache genesis through his work in the launches of Wired and Hotwired in 1993-4 before the Netscape browser was released and from what was then a fairly quiet South Park hood.
You see, while you were walking around scared in the South Beach darkness, others nearby were at the forefront of a revolution that lasts to this day.
FTR, Organic was at 3rd/Bryant, their logo is still on the building. I like to get my facts correct and welcome corrections, as I hope you welcome my corrections of your many misstatements in this thread.
If you like I can deconstruct more of the false statements you’ve made regarding South Beach and the changes pre and post ballpark, but at some point you may want to accept that, regardless of the strength of your feelings or memories, the deck of facts you know about this time and place give you a losing hand.
I used to work with Craig, actually. In the building across the street from the ballpark. Your persona is really, really self confident. Kind of beyond the pale? Go deconstruct your own catching a cab science. It was real astute stuff I tells ya. In your internets others can’t easily move between memories, anecdotes, and fact, but you can. Heh. OK then.
Jake, there is no point in feeding the fluj troll (in his latest incarnation “Ohlone Californio” aka fluj). He adds nothing, supports it with even less, and responds with little more than “you’re wrong because I say so” every time one readily disproves whatever he is saying with facts. Don’t bother.
That really has nothing to do with anything that we’ve been talking about, anon. Thanks for being you though. We’ve disagreed and talked at length about an actual subject. You, you pipe up with some name from the hoary past for some reason.
IIRC, Craig did a brief programming gig on Netguide at China Basin between leaving his old job at BoA and Craigslist.com.
If you “worked with Craig” there then you were being paid with corp money from NYC looking to make the next Yahoo/Excite/Lycos/etc score because Netguide was never breakeven. And they, like so many other oldline companies wanted to find a way to leverage into the web boom, and SF was a hot spot of talent and netspinmeistercharlatans. We have our traditional trades, afterall. Besides, content plays like that one and Wired/IndustryStandard/RedHerring/etc, wanted to be in sophisticated SF rather than in a converted former chip factory/hazmat in Sunnyvale or warzone in Oakland.
And the reason you and Craig were at China Basin was Netguide needed cheap space and cheap bandwidth, neither of which was easy to get in the FiDi in those days.
And cheap space was abundant in SoMa because the SF city government had given up on protecting the declining pdr industry and port, so plenty of easy pickins with thanks and quick(ish) approvals from city hall.
And the cheap bandwith was at China Basin because Level 3 pulled it in, and they set lowish prices because they were a bandwidth play needing a growth story, unlike the incumbent telcos pacbell/mci/etc. that dominated downtown and almost everywhere else.
And Level 3 pulled fiber into China Basin because it is adjacent to the railroad ROW. Ya see, South Beach is and has been the telecom nexus of SF for ~100 years because it is between the FiDi to the north, the bridge to the east and the railroad and freeway to the south, which is where the longhaul network links run. That’s why the Internet NAP is at 2nd/Folsom.
One of the reasons SF has to repave 2nd St next year is that back in the pre-ballpark era fiber/telco companies opened it up so many times pulling new fiber that the surface is trashed. Much of that fiber terminates at 274 Brannan, a nondescript building, some might think it nothing more than a warehouse or low class office building, but it is a carrier hotel where fiber companies interconnect. Seemingly boring wholesale bits only biz, but one of the most functionally important buildings in SF. Good chance that some of you are reading these words after they pass through that building. Before the ballpark opened, there was more fiber pulled into that building than was connected to Australia, or Africa, or South America. But some folks think not much was going on and everything in South Beach was low-skilled sweatshops and abandoned warehouses.
On this silly restaurants as a sign of the economy metric:
First, have you ever seen how most programmers and sys admins eat? For every Nathan Myhrvold publishing a multi-volume tome on sous vide, there are thousands of tech grunts living on diner cheeseburgers and delivery pizza or being SF on vegan burritos.
Second, there are almost exactly the same number of restaurants in the same locations along both 3rd and 4th between the ballpark and the 80 freeway now as there were 20 years ago. And same for along the Embarcadero between the ballpark and the bridge. I kid you not, count em.
There are, of course new restaurant locations on King and a few on Townsend and about a half dozen more scattered throughout the rest of the neighborhood, but that’s about it. That’s your “restaurant boom.” Oh, and we lost what was the biggest club in the city, so more middlebrow food, less music and dancing. I think the dotcom boom and the current one have funneled more of their foodie $$$ into the Mission and FiDi than SB because Mission has a cooler edge and FiDi has a more sophisticated edge. Besides, they both have many many more existing licenses to upscale. All SB needs is enough for the office lunch and resident dinner crowds, oh and a few, very few, places for the drunks that don’t have game tickets.
Struggling to understand how you admitting that internet employees don’t dine out that often or that well supports your point, and not mine?
The only point you’ve made is that you struggle to understand. Point made and remade, further replay not needed.
You repeated yourself, sure.
Kids, for god’s sake go outside and play – you’re giving dad a headache.
and once again soccermom talks completely unfounded smack
The Sacramento political landscape is different from San Francisco’s in a more conservative way and more conducive to large scale construction projects being completed than the environment in San Francisco. They will have a completed arena years before we finish our planning process.
This news about Kevin Johnson being black has really thrown me for a loop. Next you’ll tell me he was in the NBA and has repeatedly been accused of making unwanted sexual advances with his employees.
I thought maybe when you said “red state” you were referring to the weather. It’s hotter than Satan’s armpit out here.
I guess you redefined the common understanding of “red state” and everyone misunderstood you
Let’s build an arena in the middle of a hospital! What could go wrong!
A lot could go right: Short ride for injured players and fans. LOL
Let’s engage in ludicrous hyperbole!
I thought part of the objection was the Mission Bay site was a bit of a walk from BART. This site is simply not walkable at all from BART or from downtown. A lot more people would want to drive to it. It’s like “Son of Candlestick”. It benefits no one except the NIMBYs who didn’t like an arena near them in Mission Bay. Heck, if we want an arena you have to drive to that’s nowhere near downtown there are all sorts of (bad) options.
How about we just ban all cars from mission bay, then there will be no traffic. The choice would be take muni or bike. If you have to walk 20 minutes from your parking spot maybe people will consider a transportation alternative to driving.
Even better, let’s build the area out on the Farallon Islands!
Then there will be no traffic problems!
Mission Bay Alliance? NIMBYs form fast in this city. Betting that most of the Mission Bay Alliance members just moved into Mission Bay within the last couple of years and now
You don’t understand the identity of that group. Most likely, they live on the peninsula or Marin.
Build the arena already. If the naysayers had their way AT&T park would never have been built
The original Pier 32 location was perfect and the design was epic. The toilet bowl shape of this new arena being the perfect euphemism for what the NIMBY trolls have done to this city.
A new thing, invented right here in SF: whole posts with nothing but paid-for comments, pro and con — but all paid for by 1 side. The 1 with the money.
Here is what’s really happening: money has been free for almost 2 decades. That is about to end and the people who have hoarded free money are desperate for assets to park it all in, since wild inflation will ruin money markets soon, or if not that money won’t be free anymore.
They are searching desperately for anything that qualifies as an asset class — and guess what: SF is like the Picasso of asset class cities. Kiss your neighborhoods goodbye, people. Ed has sold you out.
This seems like a generic copy-paste political statement that’s completely irrelevant to the discussion. If you’re getting, as you claim, paid for posting comments on internet message boards, then please tell me where I can sign up…
I’ll tell you this, anon: what’s up next will be disclosure requirements for lobbyists like you. And guess what: we’ll make sure that disclosure is retroactive. Good morning!
What a weirdo. You honestly think everyone posting here is a lobbyist? Wait till this goes to the ballot box and wins with a minimum 60%. The Luddite baby boomer set is rapidly being replaced. You can find solace in the fact that you succeeded in preserving SF in Amber for almost 40 years
SF = Picasso? More like Jeff Koons.
If the hospital and its supporters are so concerned about traffic then why did they choose to build the hospital so close to ATT Park? ATT Park was their first and the hospital came second.
Why did UCSF build here? Willie Brown lured UC to Mission Bay with cheap land to help to jump start the neighborhood. The Mission Bay redevelopment plan is well over 35 year old.
I wouldn’t be surprise if negotiation with UCSF and the City started before ATT was developed.
On a side note: UCSF hospital is just shy under 1 mile (.8). From the little I read, I think their issue has more to do with the proximity to the Warrior’s Arena and the combined traffic load .
UCSF Mission Bay *Campus* broke ground in 1999, same as the Giants stadium. (A downtown baseball stadium had been proposed at least as early as the Feinstein & Agnos era and the SoMa redevelopment, that eventually led to Moscone Center.)
However, Mission Bay was not identified for the new UCSF *Medical Center* until after 2000 (which is the year the Regents began looking at new sites, due to seismic safety issues as well as need for space). The fundraising campaign for the new UCSF Medical Center did not even begin until 2007.
Thanks SierraJeff!