The Design For The Warriors San Francisco Arena On Piers 30-32
October 15, 2012
Scheduled to be presented to the Citizens Advisory Committee this week, Snøhetta’s preliminary design for the proposed Golden State Warriors arena to be built upon Piers 30-32 in San Francisco have just been released (click any of the images to enlarge).
The proposed arena would rise 135 feet (AT&T Park is 183 feet to the light standard, 132 feet to the top of the seating bowl) and seat 17,500 (Oracle Arena seats 19,596).
Other key arena facts and the site’s open space overview:
Venue Footprint: 170,000 square feet
Venue Total Square Footage: 740,000 square feet
Community Event Room: 10,000 square feet
Retail: 105,000 square feet
Parking Spaces: approximately 630 covered by tiered landscaping (Piers 30-32 currently parks 1,500 cars out in the open)
The Warriors are committed to no less than 50 percent of the site being dedicated to open space (333,000 square feet out of 548,500 square feet as proposed) and the site will include a ferry and water taxi landing, a fire boat station, and a kayak launch.
The Warriors are budgeting $100 million to fix the piers and another $500 million to build the arena with a tight timeline to get the ball rolling (or bouncing as the case may be).
∙ The Plans For A Legacy San Francisco Warriors Arena Upon The Piers [SocketSite]
∙ Golden State Warriors Snag Snøhetta For Piers 30-32 Stadium Design [SocketSite]
∙ Piers 30-32 Citizens Advisory Committee Tips Off Tonight [SocketSite]
∙ Neighborhood Survey Says: Mixed Sentiments For Warriors Arena [SocketSite]
∙ Timeline And Key Milestones For Building The Warriors Arena In SF [SocketSite]
∙ Warriors San Francisco Arena Development Project: Venue Site and Images [nba.com]
Comments from Plugged-In Readers
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VERY VERY Impressive!! From an ugly, horribly underdeveloped pier that is nothing less than an eyesore to….A gleeming beauty.
Open arms…our urban oasis continues to flourish, this will be great addition and asset to our neighborhood. Exciting
Tremendous bliss from a local resident.
(Lives 3 Blocks from development)
So cool! I hope it gest built!
Beautiful. I’m really curious about the the little twin ‘towers’ across the street (just east of the Watermark) as well.
The fog looks so sexy.
I’m curious about the towers too. I think long ago when the cruise terminal was proposed for these piers the Port lot across the street on which these stubby little towers are shown was supposed to be for a hotel. Does anyone know if these are part of the Warriors development?
Love it, love it, love it.
Also would love to see those towers across the street (though the rendering for those looks stubby – make ’em three times as tall).
Better view of the towers across the street in the high-res rendering here: http://i.cdn.turner.com/nba/nba/.element/media/2.0/teamsites/warriors/images/fullres_sfarena20121015_farout.jpg
“Does anyone know if these are part of the Warriors development?”
Yes, I remembering reading the lot across the street would be part of the development as well.
This Snohetta design is top-notch. I’m very excited by the stepped-down/graduating Landscape Architecture (a la the Oslo Opera House). + the Multi-functional use! Wow. Stunning!!
I like that the arena is out on the end of the pier, sort of in the corner. That will be nice for the embarcadero. It will make the open space more userfriendly as well.
[Removed by Editor] This is stunning. I LOVE the Monterey Cypress in the renderings. Amazing contrast with the clean modern architecture, and puts the spotlight on one of our most beautiful local species.
Why is that building in the foreground on fire…oh wait – I get it 🙂
Those “towers” appear to be parking lots “covered by tiered landscaping.”
Looks great. Not always the biggest fan of Snohetta, but this design looks highly promising. Love the integration of the outdoor spaces — grand staircase, amphitheater, front lawn, steps down to the water. It’s easy to imagine many ways for the public to enjoy this development.
Gee, with this sensual building, the even more sexy 1 Van Ness, and SOM’s proposed serene high rise in Japantown — is this the beginning of a new era of amazing buildings that capture us, innovate and despite their heights & modern materials — somehow feeeeel that they were always meant to be here? Each of these large proposed buildings is delicate, pacific & elegant.
More please.
Incredible! I can’t wait for this to be built.
(live 1 block from development)
What is the exterior surface material? Stainless steel? Chrome/shiny? White?
I think it needs some bay windows…
Snohetta says the concept will have 630 parking spaces. They also say that the current pier 30/32 configuration supports 1500 parking spaces. If the pier is 100% dedicated to the arena and outdoor space (my guess based on the initial concepts), it only dictates that the seawall lot will be housing 630 cars in those ill-defined buildings.
Love the cypress trees as well! A nice change from the palm fetish that was overplayed. I have to say as a long time San Francisco resident (from 88), I would have never imagined the city changing this fast for the better. This new complex on top of all the southern development is a far cry from how dumpy this all was when I first moved here.
I like the renderings and this isn’t a bad plan. But I’d heard the idea discussed of putting an arena as several lower floors of the Transbay Terminal hi-rise…or maybe at Fourth and King, above the Caltrain station. Sort of a Madison Square Garden-West concept… and I think that makes even more sense, though perhaps it’s too late to be discussing it. But transit access to either of those locations is light years better than Pier 30/32, and there’s even regional transit flowing directly to and from those locations. I’d love to see more discussion of that before we plop an arena down in an inconvenient location that, if we’re being honest, should never be “wasted” on an inward-looking arena.
I’m not opposed to the proposed arena, but I’m not convinced it’s the best choice, though perhaps the fact that it’s not combined with a larger building project might mean that it could be built more rapidly.
Where is Red’s?
[Editor’s Note: Right where it’s always been and pictured in the upper left corner in both the second and third images above.]
Dubocian: The beauty of the Pier 30-32 site is that it increases public access to the waterfront, rather than blocking it off. And the windows on the arena with views of the Bay Bridge and the Bay mean that it will not be inward facing, but rather each day or night of operation will give thousands of people inside a new and spectacular view .
The parking is not on the seawall lot. It’s on the pier, under the “hill” you see in the last picture, which is labeled “grand stair”, “venue plaza”, and lawn.
Red’s is there– the little rectangle up top.
It looks like the lawn ends in a cliff above a promenade along the north side. I hope that’s where they put the retail, and that it’s not a big blank wall hiding the garage. Be nice to see some renderings from that side.
I wonder what “Bay Cinema” is supposed to be.
I think it’s a fine location transit-wise. A fifteen minute walk before and after a two hour game is not going to put anyone off.
All in all, I really, really like it. It’ll be a great public space, regardless of whether there’s an event on or not.
Alai, reading the Warriors website, they make no claim that the 630 parking spaces are “covered by tiered landscaping” as stated by Socketsite. All they say is that the site has 630 spaces (Parking Spaces: approximately 630. Piers 30-32 currently parks 1,500 cars). I believe Snohetta considers the pier and the SWL one contiguous site. I guess we’ll see what they say tomorrow.
I assumed they were saying that there would be 630 spaces on the pier itself and there would likely be additional spaces in the condos across the street. But you may be right. Perhaps there are no spaces on the pier at all. However, there is and ingress/egress shown on the pier side in site plan. I suppose that could be for deliveries, etc.
So much stadium, so little team….. where do we park for the kayaking adventures?
Alai is correct, the parking will be under the plaza/lawn/stairs on the piers and connected to the arena, not across the street. The retail will be in the two buildings along the Embarcadero Plaza, no taller than the existing structures at Piers 26 and 28.
I like it! It looks like a marshmallow; or perhaps a souffle.
Hate to be a downer, but I was hoping for more for the arena design. The overall concept for the plaza and other facilities look good…but the arena itself seems a bit generic (although for SF it could be much much worse). I was hoping we’d get something a little more impressive than a glass-skinned cylinder (which the renderings seem to dramatize). Oh well, beggers can’t be choosers…
I can’t tell from the rendering if you can walk all the way around the building.
[Editor’s Note: That’s the plan, as far as we know.]
I live one block fromhere and still believe this is the wrong site. Artist rendering does not realistically show the size of this building… 135 feet! Over 12 stories. Walk to the pier and just imagine that. Also, the parking is NOT public parking.
Looks good!
@ grace:
And if you look across the street from the pier, there’s an even taller building! Wow! It’s almost as if downtown, and the areas around it are full of high rises! Who knew! And the height of this arena is small potatoes in comparison to most of them anyways.
“And if you look across the street from the pier, there’s an even taller building! Wow! It’s almost as if downtown, and the areas around it are full of high rises! Who knew!”
In a way, that supports Grace’s point that taller buildings belong on the other side of the street. The piers are zoned for 40 feet, not 135.
Hope the design is “bird safe”:
“This property is within 300′ of a possible urban bird refuge. Planning Commission Resolution 18406 established policies concerning the window treatment, lighting design, and wind generation for certain projects in this area.”
^But it’s craziness – if you look down the waterline, you’ll notice AT&T Park, taller than 135′, right there on the water!!! I know, wild.
It looks like a lot of details about the design of the arena itself are yet to be revealed.
Not a marshmallow or a souffle. More like a scallop or an abalone. Which is very appropriate considering the location. A gnocchi also comes in mind, if we want to highlight our Italian heritage.
^not to mention, you’d now be able to walk OUT ONTO the pier instead of just by it.
let the lawsuits and proposition drives to ‘save our waterfront’, or some other nonsense, begin in 3,2,1 …
the stadium itself looks like a first draft or placeholder. Which is just as well, since it will certainly go through many tweaks as everyone gets input. I’m expecting this to be something like the deYoung reconstruction: it will have many opposed, and several revisions, but it will get done. Interesting to see Snohetta take their style in a more rounded “organic” direction.
“Interesting to see Snohetta take their style in a more rounded “organic” direction.”
Check out Snohetta’s projects page: http://www.snohetta.com/#/projects/
They’ve proposed many curvacious designs.
You can’t even tell what it looks like. Sloppy renderings.
I support the Entertainment complex aka warriors arena coming to SF, but I do not think it belongs In this space. I would support it on other side of AT&T. And I do not support the city giving the Warriors the development rights for property across the street from pier. I am sure that the Watermark, Brannan and Delancey street Owners are in discussion with their attorneys.
^This is the best possible space in the entire region for a new arena. A dream location, really.
If anyone needs some folks to hassle/bother any groups that file suit against this or attempt to delay it, gimme a call. Happy to play my trumpet outside their windows for multiple years.
What Italian heritage?
“So there I was, in my kayak, spending another fruitless evening waiting for an errant 3 point clanger to bounce out of the arena and out into the bay.”
Personally, I’d rather see it in Mission Bay. That area needs something to draw people down there, so it can support dining and retail development. And how about throwing a nearby movie theater into the mix?
^Mission Bay needs more residents, workers, hotel rooms, and students, not more large event buildings not in use on most days. The last thing it needs is more dead space, on any day.
“large event buildings not in use on most days”
The arena will be in use “most days”, over 200 days a year and would bring up to 18,000 people into the area each time. The retail, which could be built into the base, will be open every day.
Something to think about. At 200 days a year of usage at maximum capacity (although I doubt all events will max out), the totally yearly amount of attendees is roughly 4.5X the population of the city. I think the big challenge isn’t so much parking, design, or location but how to effectively move that may people in and out without causing some type of gridlock over 50% of the year. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but its going to take a big effort from the city.
I am sorry but modern arenas, with the acres of fenced in parking and full service amenities inside do little for the surrounding neighborhood.
The reality is most people will drive in, park in the lot, spend all their money inside the arena, and drive out. The only benefit to the locals is extra traffic and some spending at local gas stations.
The only major sporting arena that I have ever seen lift a neighborhood is Wrigley Field in Chicago, primarily because there is essentially no parking except what visitors can find on the street or a small number of independent surface lots. Attendees can literally walk out of the stadium gate into a bar, restaurant, or shop across the street.
Where ever you put the stadium the key to the local economy is robust public transit and limited parking. That is the only model I have ever seen work.
^Perhaps something like what the city does for the ~100 days a year that AT&T park is open with more than TWICE as many people at each event.
Not a big deal folks.
“And how about throwing a nearby movie theater into the mix?”
This is in the mix. I heard on channel 5 news that a movie theater would be part of the arena plan.
the movie theaters in the Metreo, Westfield, and Embarcadero center are already all within walking distance to the site of the arena.
“The only major sporting arena that I have ever seen lift a neighborhood is Wrigley Field in Chicago”
Wrigley Field? Did it lift the neighborhood when it opened in 1914? I wasn’t around then.
I do remember how much AT&T improved the neighborhood when it opened in 2000 though..
re Wrigley Field, it does indeed have NO parking except for the players. I am not sure that it has “helped” the neighborhood since many who attend the games come from outside the city and end up blocking driveways so Chicago banned ALL street parking in the neighborhood on game days/nights therefore punishing nearby residents as well.
^Sounds like heaven – hopefully we ban all street parking around the new arena too. That would be glorious.
That’s a lot of money to build a stadium for a sport and team that no one is interested in seeing. Move it to the ‘burbs and put it where some big box store is.
We don’t need a big ugly box blocking the waterfront.
UPDATE: Redesigned Warriors Arena Unveiled: A Peek Inside And Out