By: Chris Biderman
The Warriors will be abandoning their plans to build a new arena on Piers 30-32 in downtown San Francisco and instead will purchase a lot just south of AT&T Park from Salesforce.com, a high-ranking source within the company told WarriorsWorld confirming the story first reported by SF Weekly Monday.
Despite the Warriors insistence on the viability of a new state-of-the-art venue along the city’s downtown water front along the Embarcadero, public opposition to construction on the dilapidated piers have been fierce, as has the price tag to rebuild the foundation and make the site ready for a new arena. The cost of rebuilding the piers’ foundation has reportedly climbed towards $200 million before construction on the arena could begin.
The new lot is on third street between South St. and 16th St. along the water front in Mission Bay, about a mile south of AT&T Park. Salesforce originally purchased the 14-acre property in 2010 to build its corporate headquarters there, but instead shifted its focus towards building the new Transbay Tower currently under construction at Mission and Fremont Streets downtown. The new tower is slated to become the tallest in the city when completed in 2017.
For the Warriors, the new site might not hold the iconic prestige as the piers, but it will still give them a building on the waterfront that won’t have the same hurdles. Local residents opposing the old plan cited traffic concerns as well issues about the arena obstructing views of the surrounding San Francisco Bay.
The team’s officials have not responded to inquiries nor has any paperwork of the sale been made public by the county. According to the city’s property information map, the lot has a value of $179,756,700. Terms of the sale have not yet been disclosed.
Plans for an arena on the new site would only require approvals from two city commissions and the Board of Supervisors. Because the old plan included building on a pier in the bay, the approval process would have been far more problematic requiring approvals from the Army Corps of Engineers, Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the State Lands Commission and others, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.