The Golden State Warriors have the money, the location theyalways wanted and a high-five from the NBA. So on Tuesday, the teamhad a message for its long-suffering fans: San Francisco, here wecome.
The Bay Area's pro basketball team announced plans to spend atleast a half-billion dollars to build a new arena on the SanFrancisco waterfront, promising fans the first games will be playedon the western side of the Bay Bridge starting in 2017.
The deal, which caps six months of planning between San Franciscoleaders and team owners, calls for the Warriors to raise $75 millionto $100 million to fix decrepit Piers 30 and 32 and privatelyfinance the 17,000- to 19,000-seat arena, which will sit in theshadow of the Bay Bridge on what is now a paved parking lot betweenthe piers. In exchange, the city will lease the land to the Warriorsfor free.
Though they were known as the San Francisco Warriors beforemoving to Oakland in 1971, the team will still be called the GoldenState Warriors -- at least for now.
For the arena to become a reality, the Warriors need to sink twobig baskets. First, they need financing. Second, the team will needto clear the unwieldy planning process that will involve stateagencies and, most importantly, San Francisco's notoriously finickycity government, which drove the 49ers to Santa Clara when the teamwas searching for a place to put its new stadium.
Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, who paid a record $450million to buy the team 18 months ago, insisted they 'have the moneyin the bag,' as Lacob put it Tuesday. 'The bottom line is: Thefinancing is done,' he said.
Lacob joked that it might take 50 years to pay off theconstruction loans, but he didn't mind.
NBA commissioner David Stern, who was on hand to announce themove, said money will be the easy part.
Though Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors endorse theproject in concept, they will need to finish negotiations under a'tight' timeline while still producing what Lacob called 'the mostspectacular arena in the country.'
Lacob conceded that the project was a 'massive gamble.' Parking,access for cars and public-transit service are sure to be headaches,as are the environmental challenges of building next to the water.
Knowing the troubles sports teams have had in building playingfacilities in California and particularly in the Bay Area, Guber,Lacob, Lee and others spent much of Tuesday's news conference tryingto convince the public that the deal wasn't just a dream.
'Take this as a promise we will fulfill,' Guber said. 'We're allin.'
NBA legend Jerry West, a Warriors board member, added: 'You haveto be a dreamer, and they're putting their money behind theirmouths.'
Warriors coach Mark Jackson said that, like the team on thecourt, the ownership can have 'no excuses.'
The specifics of the arena are being worked out, and the team hasyet to submit formal plans to the city for consideration.
A few piers from the proposed site on the Embarcadero is AT&TPark, which Guber and Lacob lauded as a model for a privatelyfinanced sports palace.
Though the Warriors thanked San Francisco Giants President LarryBaer for working with them on a potential site, the Warriorsultimately decided not to build the arena on a parking lot next toAT&T Park as part of a $1.6 billion Giants development.
The Warriors' owners also briefly acknowledged Oakland, wherecity leaders say they feel as if they've been 'slapped in the face.'
But Lacob noted that half the team's fans live on either side ofthe Bay Bridge, while dismissing the notion that they had planned tomove the team all along. In addition, he noted that the team willkeep its name -- unless fans vote for a new one.
Lacob said the team only briefly considered sites in San Jose anddenied a request from San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to meet. He saidSilicon Valley could not compete with San Francisco, where more ofthe team's fans live and which provides a better entertainmentdestination. The team envisions adding restaurants and sports barsnext to the arena, as well as hosting concerts, circuses,conventions and other events during non-game days, with plans for afuture all-star weekend or possible NCAA tournament games.
Stern pointed to the Detroit Pistons, New Jersey Nets (which aremoving to a new arena in Brooklyn, N.Y.) and the Cleveland Cavaliersas examples of franchises that have moved locations to build arenaswhile staying in the same market.
'This is a common occurrence in all of sports,' Stern said,noting that the league left the decision of where to build up to theWarriors.
It's the latest in a growing trend of musical chairs among BayArea sports teams. In addition to the pending moves of the Warriorsand the 49ers, the A's are trying to leave Oakland for a newballpark in San Jose. And the Oakland Raiders are considering othercities in their hunt to build a new stadium.
Lacob said he thought Oakland would keep at least one of itsteams, although he wasn't sure which one.
'We're the first shoe to drop, I guess you could say,' he said.
Over the next two years, the project will be vetted bybureaucrats and politicians. But Lee expressed confidence theprocess would end with a home for the Warriors for the next half-century.
Team President and CEO Rick Welts said: 'This is the mostimportant journey in the history of the Warriors.'
In Oakland, frustrated officials said they would still try toattract concerts and other events to Oracle Arena, saying that theWarriors' departure would open up the calendar. Officials are alsocontinuing to plan for a revamped O.Co Coliseum site, which includesthe Oracle Arena, in hopes of keeping the A's and Raiders with a newstadium, hotels and restaurants.
'The one good thing is we know what the Warriors want to do,'said Nate Miley, a commissioner for the Coliseum Authority, thepublic agency that manages the complex. 'We will embrace them ifthey want to stay -- this is not a divorce. But we have to play itlike they're gone.'
Staff writers Marcus Thompson II, Angela Woodall and Matthew Artzcontributed to this report. Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705.Follow him at Twitter.com/rosenberg17.
