Warriors Mission Bay Arena Rendering - East Aerial

UCSF, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, and the Golden State Warriors have reached a preliminary agreement that would establish a proposed Mission Bay Transportation Improvement Fund, could potentially cap the number of large-scale events allowed to be held at the Warriors’ proposed Mission Bay Arena on weeknights that the Giants are also in town, and requires the creation of off-site parking for event goers to the south of the arena.

And as such, UCSF now officially endorses the Warriors’ Mission Bay Arena development.

In addition to the $27 million in upfront funds for transportation and infrastructure improvements already included in the Warriors’ development agreement, the Mission Bay Transportation Improvement Fund would set aside upwards of $10 million per year for traffic mitigations, such as:

  1. Four new light rail cars dedicated to serving the arena and an expanded light rail platform;
  2. A Local/Hospital Access Plan designed to keep Fourth and Owens streets clear of event traffic;
  3. Increased bus and light rail service before and after arena events, including a quadrupling of service on the T-Third Muni Metro line;
  4. Up to 28 traffic control officers deployed before and after games and events (which is more than currently serve Giants games);
  5. Enhanced police foot patrols and street cleaning operations on event days; and
  6. Studying the feasibility of new or enhanced transportation options, such as dedicated ferry service, for the neighborhood

If initial traffic on weeknights that large arena events overlap with Giants home games exceeds a predetermined threshold, the Warriors will cap future dual events at 12 per year. And the stipulated off-site parking to the south of the arena is expected to be at Pier 70 and the former Western Pacific rail yard adjacent to Pier 80.

UCSF had announced qualified support for the Warriors arena in July, subject to a formal agreement and traffic plan addressing the university’s concerns about traffic, access to the hospitals and overlapping events at nearby AT&T Park.

Neither the California Nurses Association nor the Mission Bay Alliance, both of which oppose the Warriors Arena, have yet to respond. And no official word from the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association with respect to the stipulated parking which will likely increase traffic through their ‘hood.

77 thoughts on “UCSF Officially Endorses Warriors’ Mission Bay Arena Project”
  1. You know what the people of San Francisco want more than thousands of new housing units…. a brand new NBA sports arena!

    1. Sure – better still, let’s leave it as a vacant oil-stained parking lot, as a monument to the industry that occurred here 75 years ago. Or even better yet, let’s bulldoze the entire city – it should all be returned to scrub, marsh and sand dunes. Who needs buildings at all.

      1. Uh… I was being sarcastic. It’s absurd to build something and not use it. See how that works?

        I suppose it’s an indication of how silly this city is or how silly conversations are on here that you took me literally.

  2. Great to see the Warriors doing out reach and winning over stake holders! More trains, more traffic control, not mixing too many events. These all seem reasonable. I’m hearing that the Warriors are doing a lot of ground work to smooth out any problems with groups besides UCSF.

  3. Switch out the Giants development @ Seawall 337 and put the arena there with the Giants proposal being built here, makes more sense on so many levels. Mayor Lee can’t seem to get the Giants and Warriors organizations to explore this and instead lets them pursue their own selfish interests rather than get together to create an entertainment/sports center across McCovey Cove from ATT Park. Too bad they can’t think of the city’s interest rather than their own profit margins….Typical billionaires egos and self interests…at least they are paying for their toys themselves unlike the 49ers who screwed Santa Clara…

    1. speaking of 49ers, did you all see that the stadium was half empty last weekend. THis makes me happy as the owners truly deserve for it to fail for bailing oN SF. I hope one day that we can get a new football team back in SF. Raiders?

        1. as voters get more moderate in SF, i think we might get to a place where we can help fund a new football stadium. there are a lot of sad people because niners are gone.

          1. Public funds for sports arenas for privately owned pro sports teams is just corporate welfare. And its been demonstrated time and time and time again that its almost uniformly a bad deal for the taxpayers, esp. when involving football or basketball stadiums. Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College, one of the leading sports economists on the planet, is probably the best source for studies examining public funding of pro sports stadiums and the conclusion is that its a complete taxpayer rip-off.

            The voters of Santa Clara County were dumb enough to vote themselves to borrow $850 million to pay for the Niners Stadium (which financing included hotel taxes and redevelopment funds, which are just a different means of using property taxes). Let them have their white elephant.

      1. It is generally sold out. The Niners are so poor thise season a lot of season ticket holders are selling their tickets to individual games. That is why they were so many Green Bay Packers’ fans. As the commentator on one radio show noted.

        The stadium is beautiful and the area around it are booming with all sorts of new construction.

        SF is legally 49ers terrirory (but that includes all the west Bay. The Raiders could not move to SF. Not that they ever would.

        Similar to the A’s moving to SJ. SJ is the Giants market and the antitrust laws prohibit it. SJ is trying to get the courts to overturn that law.

        1. Minor correction: The A’s gave their San Jose territory rights to the Giants (for free) to keep the latter from moving to St. Petersburg. Once the Giants built their ballpark and the A’s made overtures about moving to the South Bay, Los Gigantes told the Athletics no dice. Dick move.

        2. Have you been there? The area near by is dreadful and looks like the worst of Orange Country and the stadium is nice but very corporate looking. Almost like half of it is like an office building to maximize luxury boxes and lounges

    2. The beauty of the AT&T park is the neighborhood around it is still lively even when there isn’t a game. Adding the shopping/offices/park to the Mission Rock will add to this energy. Another stadium would squash that as dead space.

      Weren’t they looking at some of those lots before they tried the pier concept?

      1. So an arena (and offices) will make an empty lot into “dead space”? Right….so what exactly would you call the lot now? Extra dead space?

        This will clearly make mission bay more lively, not less

  4. Disagree with the poster above that it is a choice between housing and an arena.

    Yes, SF residents wants new housing but the truth is most of the housing being built is not affordable to San Franciscans. This one site makes no difference in the overall housing situation.

    That said I oppose the arena – not because SF doesn’t need an entertainment venue for concerts and such, but because the infrastructure can’t support one. IMO.

    I am surprised UCSF went along as did they not want that site for possible future expansion?

    Looking at the photo/rendenring, there are still several (shaded white) areas to still be built. But once they are UCSF is pretty much hemmed in. It can’t expand south because those are residential areas and it can’t expand west, I assume, across the freeway.

    1. UCSF owns an open space just east of the hospital. Most of the surface lots will eventually become new buildings as money becomes available to build. Short term UCSF has to vacate Laurel Heights and will rent some office space downtown while it builds on the land it already owns. It will also buy south of the campus for residential units.

    2. I rode a company bus the other day from a mostly full Giants game. There was some traffic after and it took about 20 minutes to get to the freeway then it was pretty easy to head south

      I’m not sure what people expect. It is much worse in cities like Chicago and NYC.

      1. How is it worse in Chicago? Chicago’s CTA subway/”L” system has a station right at Wrigley Field. The CTA runs extra trains during games and unlike San Francisco, the CTA trains go to all parts of the city, and they run EXPRESS trains during games at Wrigley because their transit system is dual tracked so that many trains do not have to stop at every station like BART or MUNI. I can take the Purple Line express from Northwestern University to Wrigley field in less time than a San Franciscan has to spend in line at Blue Bottle coffee in the morning. (well…not quite….but you get the idea)

        1. Many of the concerns are around traffic which is bad around Wrigley.

          The L system is fine and as expected is super crowded after a game but the system in Chicago is a Spoke–hub so it is not the best for commuting between hoods. My experience in Chicago is everyone with a car drives everywhere unless they are going downtown or doing something in their neighborhood but it could just be my friends. It is certainly less dense in many areas allowing you to find parking pretty easily

          Anyhow Chicago has a much better system than does SF. I am just pointing out that cities are crowded places. I don’t think SF will stop working with 14K people going to Warriors games

          1. Chicago is a much bigger metro area and much older. The latter is key. Eastern older cities like NYC and Chicago generally have much better transportation systems than western cities for obvious reasons.

        2. Agree. I got the see the Giants get beat by the Cubs at Wrigley this summer. Took the train from Wilmette right to the stadium – in and out no problem. Too easy to even consider driving.

          1. Don’t see how this would be any different than this arena from the Peninsula if they put a Caltrain stop (even just for events) near by.

            Where is the Metra stop relative to the stadium?

            From many other suburbs in Chicago the commute to Wrigley would not be as easy. But regardless I am not trying to argue the commuter rail/PT in SF is near as good as Chicago

  5. it was very obvious that this would get approved. Almost everyone with power is behind this, its great for the area, and the vast majority of citizens support it. Its a shame it didnt happen at pier 30-32, but ill take it! this is fantastic for SF! go Warriors!!!

  6. Still no ferry (boo). This is fine but my primary reaction is still that it’s really blah and poorly located compared to the Pier 30 location. But I’m sure I’ll get over it.

  7. I hope there will be serious discussion over turning the mission bay and dogpatch neighborhood into a housing hub. Now that there’s a sports arena and a hospital, building dense housing should also be in the equation.

    1. I assume that’s sarcasm. There are thousands of units of “dense” housing under construction or planned for those two neighborhoods.

  8. Are they still planning on taking the 280 at Mariposa? That would certainly create some space for more housing and/or transit options.

    As for “why would UCSF” going along w/ this and the City’s involvement, keep in mind, as far as I heard, this is a private investment – SFDC sold the land to the Warriors who are privately funding the development. Not sure why the hospital or the school would have any say in what goes on here other than emergency transit considerations. This private funding model seems like it fits about 1% of the new arenas and stadiums going up in major metros the last 20 years, especially in such a high cost real estate market like SF. I’m thrilled to have a venue for both sports and concerts within the city and I know it’s not hurting my property values either in the long-run.

    1. Was the initial high level proposal for a 49ers stadium as part of the Lennar project privately financed, other than the City providing the land, or not?

      1. More or less. Prop G, SF passed in 2008, would have given land to the stadium and the city would have spent a bunch on infrastructure, but not cash to the 9ers. Lennar offered to kick in some cash for construction, but as much as Santa Clara offered. Highest bidder won.

        1. Levis stadium proves football only complexes are viable all year round. Not just for the handful of games played there is each.

          Partly it is because the stadium is next to a huge population and business center. And there was a lot of vacant land in addition to the land the stadium took up.

          New offices, condos, apartments and shopping/restaurants have gone up or are planned to in the area. its a new neighborhood and becoming a destination for some techy types who don’t want the long haul to SF to find a place to hang out.

          Someone suggested the Raiders come to SF and the City build stadium. Legally this can never happen as I explained but, beyond that, with Lennar/HP land all taken up with residential/commercial and retail there is simply no place in SF to put up a football stadium. Which has a much bigger footprint than either the Giant’s stadium or the Warrior’s proposed stadium.

          1. Uh, Levi’s stadium only proves NFL teams can still dupe local governments into wasting $$$ and land. Santa Clara is sure to lose money on it and the lost opportunity costs are enormous. That “vacant land” would surely have become either another office park or housing units, either of which would have returned more to SC.

            And total BS about a “new neighborhood”. The area around 101/Great America has been a high tech corp HQ center for more than 30 years. You do write some of the oddest fantasy on SS.

            Of course, Oakland’s current deal with the Raiders is even worse, but Oakland tends to bottom feed.

            FWIW, the optimal location for NFL stadiums is near airports so they can share the enormous parking lots that have their lowest occupancy during the weekend. At all other times, just a waste of space.

  9. Well Jake, I oppose tax-payer funding for these stadiums and would have voted against the SC deal.

    That said, its good the Niners did not build at Candlestick as Lennar is putting in houses/offices which will generate much more revenue to the city. Do you agree?

    The argument can be made that its better the Warriors not build but that Salesforce or someone has built there with hundreds and hundreds of more employees on that block and the tax revenue. I know the Warriors want to build some offices there but why not allocate the site all to offices (excluding UCSF as they do not py taxes to the City on RE in MB as I understand it).

    1. Candlestick has been pretty much in a get whatever you can out of it situation. So sure, if it can become an extension of the Bayview residential area or the 101 office park area or a blend. Fine. Just don’t expect much.

      With this UCSF agreement, I think we are seeing the last major shaping of the Warriors project. I expect once they win the vote, they will harden on negotiation and focus on construction.

      BTW, a long time ago (post-quake and pre-dotcom) the Warriors looked at building a new stadium on Folsom at the foot of Rincon Hill where the ramps were coming down. Given the massive amount of concrete and steel that has gone to fill the void between Rincon and Market around there, it would have been nice to have fit it in somehow, and with ~zero parking.

      1. I thought Candlestick might be part of the Lennar HP development. Or that they might have an option on the land given how long HP will take to build out.

        The article above mentions the Warriors building off-site parking south of the arena per the agreement. I wonder if that is that two story looking whited out area halfway up the right side of the rendering? Looks like two full blocks and that appears to be one of the few remaining, and I guess not taken, open lots where a parking structure could be built.

    2. arenas fit a downtown city like a glove. SF is lacking and this will be filled with conventions and events year round. Much different than a football stadium

      1. zig, yeah, it would have been sweet to get it downtown. IIRC, they were looking at the Lumina site, but they were so early they could have gotten worked into many different sites between there and Mission. The former ownership blew it. This is a make do.
        Dave, there are two existing parking garages across the street from the Warriors site. The Warriors agreed to build some overflow parking around Pier 80 and some 800-900 underground at their site. Otherwise, they are going to use whatever is around. Dogpatch streets will become parking for hundreds to thousands of Warriors fans every game, just like South Beach has been for Giants.

        1. So what is that low whited out area? Most of the whited out areas (planned structures) are 6 or 7 stories it appears. That area looks like 2 stories and seems to cover 2 full blocks.

        2. I was just referring generally to the CBD so this is less than perfect but pretty close

          Football stadiums don’t find on valuable city land

        3. Much like the Giants game the peaking I would think is less than an event at a venue in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere as people might arrive and leave at different times as there is more to do

          I often get up to SF for day Giants games on the train after dropping off my kids at daycare about 9:30 am and grab a coffee. I don’t have to do pick-up it is usually at least a beer or two after and maybe dinner before I get an uber or jump on BART

          This is why the issues around At&T are far from the disaster the chicken littles told us

          1. Not sure what you recall from the chicken littles of the 1990s, but my recall compared to the reality is that the effects on the bridge are less than warned by opponents and the effects on 280 are worse than forecast by the Giants. The bridge is so saturated where the Rincon ramps plug in that any disturbance near there on the bridge dominates all else. I’ve written before about what the Giants do to northbound 280. Complex because drivers bailout miles from the stadium to clog surface roads.

            A typical workday 7PM Giants game can completely lock up the southbound Embacadero to north of the Ferry Building. That’s more than a one mile backup. It is the folks that work in the FiDi/northern waterfront and commute down to San Mateo and south and western SF by car that are most screwed on those days. They have no other way to go unless they want to go 6th which is almost always backed up to Market.

            I was walking along the land side of the Embarcadero once back in August near Brannan in one of these Giants giant backups. The cars were at crawling speed, which means they were most often at full stop, and slower than walking. Every motorcycle (~5 while I was there) used the bike lane and every bike used the sidewalk. And that was the safest for all under the circumstances.

            A Giants game is about the same as a major accident at both the entrance and exit of one of the busiest freeways in the Bay Area at the peak of the commute. And they don’t pay a fee for these planned outages. Probably cost the community at least a $ million each time. And there’s no way to fix it with traffic control people or tech. Thousands of pedestrians crossing the commute traffic like stepping on a garden hose. But it only happens ~40 times/year and half the year the place is a void.

  10. nice to see 1 side of UCSF mouth says yes while other side of same mouth uses nurse union + donors to say no.

  11. “…the stipulated off-site parking to the south of the arena is expected to be at Pier 70 and the former Western Pacific rail yard adjacent to Pier 80.”

    Should I be surprised that there was no mention of the new off-site parking lots in the Mayor’s official press release about the agreement/endorsement?

  12. One thing this photo rendering brings out to me is the benefit of being able to develop whole blocks as single parcels. And then whole blocks developed together.

    I think the City missed a golden opportunity in terms of architecture in Mission Bay but still, the amount of green-space is refreshing given the lack of it in the rest of SOMA.

    Blocks not built everywhere to the lot line as is happening just west of Mission Bay.

    The two angled office buildings on the same block (to the left/south of the proposed arena) are a nice touch.

    Looking beyond the freeway the hodgepodge that is central SOMA. Mostly 2/3 stories, but with zoning it will build out eventually, wall to wall I’d suspect, with 5/6 story buildings having little or no architectural relationship to one another..

    It will be cluttered together separately on each block so the block does not relate to itself, let alone other blocks.

    Think Zeke’s. If that gets developed at some point to a 5 story condo what will follow. A four story condo next door and then another 5 story condo next to that. A jumble. Like the loft which sold for less in South Park. and is unrelated to anything around it, this is likely how central SOMA will build out.

    It is unfeasible generally to assemble full block parcels in SF, but imagine if that were possible. How much better the central SOMA would look 20 years from now.

    1. Your preference is the exact opposite most often expressed. Most on here complain about the effect of what you describe in Mission Bay as resembling Irvine

      1. Ok mission bay isn’t THAT bad. Walk down 4th street with all the new construction; it’s colorful and vibrant with interesting shapes. The UCSF buildings are a bit sterile but that’s ok, it’s a hospital.

  13. This area is transit under served by a 2 car T line light rail and two minor streets, one four lane north-south route (3rd) and one two lane east-west route (16th) that crosses the caltrain tracks with traffic stopages for trains. Build the arena, but a few DPT officers directing traffic isn’t going to help with 60k fans on such limited infrastructure. There needs to be a Caltrain stop at 16th for game days as well as significantly increased T and muni bus service. A bus route through 16th from BART in the mission on game days would also help.

      1. 60k is for when there are dual events, Giants + Warriors/Arena Concerts. The freeway offramps/onramps here are single lane and short at Mariposa and again at 25th. Traffic getting on and off 280 is already a disaster on non game days.

  14. The Mission Bay Alliance is a fraud pushing the phony issue of traffic and patient access. If the hospital is so concerned about traffic and patient access then why did they choose to build the hospital so close to ATT Park?

    For three generations, the 60,000-seatKezar Stadium was closer to the main entrance of the UCSF hospital on Parnassus Avenue than the proposed 18,000-seat Warriors arena will be to the main entrance of UCSF Mission Bay. Yet never in those generations— and thousands of49ers, were USF and high school games and traffic— there reported complaints about ambulance access. The hospital at UCLA is just two blocks from the 13,000 seat Pauley pavilion. Yet there has never been a single instance of an ambulance being delayed to that hospital due to an event at the pavilion.

    Stanford Hospital is just down the road from a 50,000 seat football stadium and 7400 seat basketball arena. Yet there have been no issue of ambulances to Stanford hospital due to events at either of these facilities. With 200 events per year scheduled to take place at the proposed Mission Bay arena and perhaps an hour or two of heavy traffic at each way, which means that the events at the arena might produce 400 hours of traffic. There are 8760 hours in a year which means that96 percent of the year will be free of arena traffic that might affect ambulances.

    As for parking, there was none at Kezar. The Warriors will build almost 1,000 spaces and the Giants are about to build several thousand spaces virtually adjacent to the new arena. Several thousand spaces already exist at UCSF garages, largely empty at nights and weekends when events will be scheduled.

    This isn’t about traffic or patient access. This is about of self-entitled UCSF executives who want that land for themselves.

    1. They are not a fraud, and they have real concerns, and the traffic plan so far proposed is a fantasy. I’m for building the arena, but there also has to be real traffic mitigation, and real transit infrastructure increases. The arena will not only impact the hospital, but also the southern neighborhoods.

      Kezar existed in a time before significant fan bases in the South and East Bay insisted on commuting to events by car. Stanford has significantly more road infrastructure and space serving as access points to their site. Mission bay is sort of an island with very few and narrow inlets and outlets. Please, propose real traffic mitigation solutions instead of attacking people with differing viewpoints from you. Their concerns are that traffic issues are not being addressed and they are correct in their assertion. That doesn’t mean an arena couldn’t or shouldn’t work. It should mean that a real traffic mitigation plan is developed in conjunction with the arena. Until it is, I’ll support the mission bay alliance.

      1. Its not about traffic. The real issue is that the UCSF execs who fund the Mission Bay Alliance just want the land for themselves. They will NEVER support the arena at Mission Bay no matter how good the transportation plan is. They had their chance to buy the land and they came up short so now they are throwing a temper tantrum by trying to block the arena. These UCSF execs didn’t raise any traffic issue when they decided to build the hospital next to ATT Park.

    2. My dad used to ride his bike to Kezar which is to say the city was much different then. A very large percentage of the people attending games lived in SF then and among everyone car ownership was much lower back then

      1. When “back then” was car ownership lower in the city (as a percentage of population)? Are you talking about the 50s?

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