While the Mission Bay Alliance is moving forward with at least two lawsuits aimed at disrupting the Golden State Warriors plans to build a Mission Bay arena, the Alliance’s challenge of the development’s 577,000-square-foot office space allocation was denied by San Francisco’s Board of Appeals in a 4-1 vote last night. Commissioner Wilson cast the lone dissenting vote.
One down….
Good.
Love the 1-car T train in the photo. SF transit at its finest. If the second BART tube gets built, this spot would be ideal for a station before curving up to 4th/King (Caltrain connection) and then under 2nd to Market (connection to Market St. Subway-ped tunnel to TTC) and out Geary. Never mind…it was only a dream.
To dream the impossible dream…add HSR to the Transbay Bus Terminal to that dream and we’re all out of dreams for the next century!
Anyone know what Commissioner Wilson’s objections were?
This was never going to succeed.
The more problematic factors for the Warriors are the lawsuits (non-CEQA related) which have no time limit on them. There are two right now I believe and more to follow I’d bet.
The goal or strategy of opponents is to wait out the Warriors. IMO.
If the MBA can delay this 4, 5 or 6 years they realize at some point the Warriors will likely give up. Look at Oakland again or maybe the South Bay. The 49ers complex has turned into a huge money maker for the 49ers as a business institution.
I don’t think will ever get built. I hope the Warrioes build in Oakland but won’t be surprised to see them ultimately end up in the South Bay.
Do I wish I did not have to travel to Oakland or the Shoreline for concerts and such?
Sure, but the cost in terms of the added transportation is not worth me saving an hour or two of time when I go to concerts. The added inconvenience this will cost so many SFers is not worth the few hours it will save me personally.
What lawsuits exist against the arena which “have no time limit” ?
There’s no public support for UCSF’s lawsuits. Actual Mission Bay residents made it loud and clear that they want the stadium. It passed environmental review. It has a green light from the Governor’s office. I think this is just a play for free VIP press box seats for UCSF board members or something.
So *ALL* Mission Bay residents and workers are in favor of the proposed arena? That is absolutely proposterous. Not one single person that I know who lives or works in Mission Bay or South Beach is in favor of it. I guess we hang in different circles.
People hang in different circles? Wow imagine that. FYI, polls show that the majority of SF residents want the arena.
I live in a building with about 1000+ residents in Mission Bay and it’s pretty much a given that everyone supports the arena. One of the main topics of a recent Mission Bay Citizens Advisory Committee meetings was showing City Hall that citizens WANT the arena. It will increase home prices and make the surrounding areas better. It’s a no brainer if you own property here.
Let’s see how that no brainer mentality works for you when folks living in MB start whining about the noise and traffic. But hey, your $1.5M matchbox condo in the sky is now worth much, much more. So typical in SF…only concern is your property value.
I don’t know where people get their facts, but there are NO residential building in Mission Bay that is has a 1000 units. The condos and apartments range from 99 units to 250 units. A largest recently finished 1 year ago is around 375 units. All residents are NOT in favor of it. I personally know a handful. Did the Warriors pay you to write on Socketsite? Released not so long ago was a study on new stadium’s impact home prices. Generally there was no really gain. Being caught in congestion is no curb appeal. That being said, what is going the kill the project is not the lawsuits but the cost of construction. The longer the Warriors are stalled the tougher it will be for them to meet performa.
There are no “UCSF lawsuits.” UCSF is officially on board with the Warriors. MBA is comprised of individuals “affiliated” (or at one-time) with UCSF.
And to be clear, UCSF is on record and in every public setting in support of the Warriors. The Mission Bay Alliance has no official links to UCSF.
Well, no official links to UCSF other than the fact that 3 of the 5 Mission Bay Alliance board members either are now, or have been in the past, UCSF administrators and/or faculty. And one of them has a Mission Bay campus building named after him. I spent 12 years of my career at UCSF, myself. And as to the question about lawsuits with no time limit, the lawsuit against Sam Hawgood has no time limit.
So what? Whats the worst that could come of that? That UCSF retracts their letter of official support? Likely years after the initiation of the lawsuit?
Still amazed at the NIMBYs that flock to post on a site about real estate development.
It’s not a letter of official support, it’s a legal agreement with the Warriors (including a promise not to pursue any legal action). The GSW don’t want to build their arena and then have it shut down by an injunction when UCSF sues them after it opens.
I’m sorry your son is ill, but I have to ask. How much is MBA paying you to be the public face of their personal opposition to the Warriors arena?
Greenware, the Mission Bay Alliance has never paid me a dime, and never will. Sort of a sad commentary that so many people find it hard to believe that a person wouldn’t stand up for her child’s access to healthcare (and that of many other families) without being paid to do so.
It just seems like the real answer to your situation is locating yourself more closely to necessary healthcare. If your sons health is so precarious and so dependent on timely healthcare why locate yourself in a city where traffic is a huge problem most of the time – without the arena. Again, I’m sorry for your sons health – but these are valid questions.
Greenware, we actually live in a great location for healthcare access. We can get to the UCSF ER in 10 minutes (and in fact did just that last month during the a.m. rush hour). We want to keep it that way.
Sorry about your son’s health Jennifer. I guess the rest of us in SF will just go without an arena, so that just in case your son has an episode, he will be able to get to the hospital in 10 minutes
Eflat, you may not be aware of this, but my son is, in fact, not the only patient who receives treatment at that hospital.
A world class city needs a world class arena. Build it.
Then you can’t be seriously referring to this arena. Even the arena in Sacramento is looking pretty rad. Should have kept the original plans on the pier.
Building on the pier was impossible due to Prop B. How could you build a stadium if developers can’t even build 100-ft condos?
That’s fine, but don’t call this afterthought “world class.”
Why couldn’t they build the colosseum without the condos? They would have faced less resistance without those towers across the street being tacked onto the initiative.
Please define “world class.” This phrase is thrown about with abandon like “luxury condo.”
Where are the Hotel Unions, the restaurant trades, the tourist commission, on this? You hear nothing from them as to how important this will be. The amount of jobs, hotel room bookings, and restaurant business that will come from this building being used by conventions, sporting events, and the like will be monumental. All we get is bad news from a “handful” of opponents, when will those most positively impacted by this speak up.
Tell Ed Lee to get the unions of San Francisco to start applying pressure to the MBA and get this built, enough already.
Uh, the Warriors themselves don’t make such claims. They know better. So do the tourist and hospitality industries.
~90% of the attendees will be Bay Area residents. They aren’t going to need hotel rooms. There is already an arena with sold out games that this is replacing. Moving it to SF doesn’t create a net gain in jobs for those games. Just moves them west ~10 miles. The additional events mostly take business from other discretionary spending. Plenty of studies of sports arenas show that.
The temptation to oversell the impact is monumental. Even the Giants games with 2+ times the attendance per event have modest business impact beyond about a two block distance. Except for the traffic impacts, which are negative and routinely extend for 0.5-1.0 miles.
Yeah you must have not seen that part of SoMa before AT&T park…
Not only had I “seen” it, that’s where I had been living for years before PacBellPark was even proposed. “That part of SoMa” had been dotcom booming for 4+ years by the time PacBellPark opened in 2000. In fact, PacBellPark opened after the stock market crash had begun that brought about the dotcom bust. 2-3 years after PacBellPark opened, RE values, residential and commercial rents, restaurant biz, etc were all down in “that part of SoMa.” I can explain this in detail with back up and have done so on SocketSite before.
The temptation to oversell the impact is monumental, just look at how many people have been conned into believing a single building, which is nearly vacant for 6 months a year, somehow “made” a neighborhood that had already been a focus of the greatest VC investment bing in history. People are so gullible, sad to see wealthy sports teams exploit them this way. At least the Warriors haven’t been given the special Giants only tax break that costs SF taxpayers $6+ million per year, every year.
Yet Giants players salaries keep going up. Interesting…
It also seems a little bit…inconsistent…to claim that opponents’ (alleged) concerns of interference w/ hospital operations is nonsensical (b/c Warriors games would only be 3% of the time) and then turn around and shill for it as a 365/24 kind of place; not that Deke is necessarily advancing both claims, but it would be swell if everyone was on the same assumptions page.
What was Wilson thinking?
Manhattan is a 365/24 kind of place yet that island has ~15 hospitals. How do they do it?
Helicopters. Too bad UCSF Mission Bay doesn’t have those. OH WAIT it’s the ONLY hospital in SF with a heliport.
Sigh, this again. The helipad is for transporting people from one hospital to another. It is not a substitute for an ambulance. Each flight costs >$10,000, and we don’t have a fleet of helicopters waiting to pick people up. And it’s hard enough trying to find a parking place on my block, much less a place to land a helicopter! As for Manhattan, it has this thing called a “subway system.” Mission Bay is served by a single, already-saturated light rail line and a few buses.
Jennifer, thanks. Totally on point. MUNI light rail (I use that term loosely) has system-wide issues every time there’s a Giants game. Let’s toss in another major event and see how well our “world class” city handles not just getting people to and from the events, but throughout the entire system.
there will be zero issues with ambulances and the warriors. this is a red herring. as pointed out many times, more dense citites all over the world with much worse traffic seem to be able to handle this.
Delayed ambulances and EMS are a very real problem in SF and has been for a long time. From a 3/2/2015 KTVU story (namelink):
“Ambulance response times for some potentially life-threatening emergencies in San Francisco are still too slow in many cases, according to fire department records and first responders who spoke to 2 Investigates.
Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White says the department is meeting its goal 83 percent of the time, but firefighters and paramedics who spoke to KTVU say ambulance delays are still common.
“On the paramedic’s part, it’s frustration. Especially when they hear what the call is,” said veteran paramedic captain Mike Whooley. “They will hear the severity of the call. They know that time matters.”
“We need to decide that instead of being reactionary that we’re going to be proactive,” said Whooley. “We need to move forward in a comprehensive plan that is going to not just plan for what happens this summer, but actually what happens in five years and what happens in ten years.”
It has been a scandal in Wash DC for more than a generation. They are currently investigating whether such a delay contributed to the recent death of an asmatic child there.
Happens in other countries too, the UK for example: “Thousands of people are dying because ambulances take too long to answer emergency calls, it was revealed yesterday.” — Daily Mail, 2/26/2016
I now live in the DC area and my brother works for Metro and he says the problem with ambulances in DC is that there are not enough of them as many are broken down. It’s not about traffic.
Yes, there are multiple issues in both DC and SF. I also used to live in DC. Both have needed more vehicles. SF added ~50 recently. Both have some dispatch issues. DC has been notorious for this. SF has worse downtown traffic, but DC has it’s congestion. Check out the bridges and commute routes like 295. A big issue in both SF and DC is service to some of the less wealthy areas. In DC the hospitals are center and west, away from Anacostia. SF moved EMS to fire stations to give better coverage, but still the southern neighborhoods have worse response times.
The litigation will not take 5 or 6 years. The litigation that challenged the new arena for the Sacramento Kings was wrapped up in about a year and that was a publicly financed arena on public land. The Warriors arena in Mission Bay is private.
I wonder how many of the existing centers in the US have seen to get an objective view of locations? Miami’s AA is on a major highway right on Biscayne Bay. Most others are city-centered, including Madison Square in NY. Look at Staples Center in LA for ancillary benefits. See Wikipedia for the age of the stadiums. Oracle (1966) is the oldest by more than 15 years. SF’s arena will hold half as many people as the China Basin ballpark, and plays half the amount of games. The stadium will also be attractive to other entertainment. Just compare the nonsense of the 49’er stadium. The opposition comes from a very small, but significantly rich, bunch of amature planners who would prefer the land be used for medicine-related development. They should focus their efforts to put this elsewhere in the City or to the South.
The MBA has proposed another site in the city which is further south, though I don’t think it is a better option. The Warriors own EIR forecasts making the traffic much worse in all directions from the arena.
The real problem in grading these projects is that SF does not have a standard for how bad traffic has to be to stop a project. SF officially signs up to targets for traffic flow, acceptable delays/congestion, and transit efficiency. Even has voters approve some of the targets. And when SF fails to meet the targets, planning and the BOS and Mayor just goes ahead and approves additional development or road changes even when the EIR analysis for these projects predicts they will worsen the situation.
The resulting gridlock around places like ATT Park and the Bay Bridge are directly traceable to the professionals refusing to say no, don’t need to blame amateurs.
The bigger problem is why do the Warriors, if they are renames the SF Warriors (for financial reasons) have to literally play in SF. This is old thingking. Non-regional thinking.
SF can’t absorb many more residents or workers or another sports venue.
The SF 49ers play in Santa Clara. Moving the Warriors to the Peninsula will not be the end of the world.
the 49ers move to SC has been a disaster. The stadium was less than 2/3 full for almost every game this year
No, building the arena in the more populous and heavily urban areas is very much the newer way of thinking. Aside from NBA, SF could use a 10-20k seat performance space. The Giants tried to add one when they first proposed to build at China Basin, but they gave it up after pressure from locals.
NFL stadiums are so different in size and usage from NBA arenas they are really different in kind.
A BART station there with underground lines to Market/2nd or 4th and Mission/16th would mitigate most of the problems. All about the $$$$$.
He said residents, not units.