May 22, 2012
Warriors kick off campaign for $500m San Francisco arena
The official announcement is in for the Golden State Warriors' arena plan for San Francisco, and we have some more details — a few, anyway — on what it will cost and who it will be paid for:
- Construction will cost $500 million, including $100 million to shore up Piers 30-32 to be able to support an arena.
- The Warriors will get a long-term lease on the city property. The San Francisco Chronicle says "the model for the deal is the 1996 agreement between the city and the Giants"; in that case, the city gave the Giants waterfront property for free while the team paid for all construction costs and pays property taxes.
- The team also, according to the Chronicle, "hopes to recoup the [construction] money eventually in the form of rent credits from the port or other givebacks," as well as from arena revenues. This implies further public subsidies, but with no other details forthcoming, it's hard to say exactly what.
All this would put the public share of the arena cost at somewhere between reasonable (the public ended up putting up about 10% of the Giants' stadium cost, via land subsidies) and, well, we don't know, pending what those "givebacks" might be. As discussed yesterday, an arena operating year-round in the heart of San Francisco is one of the few locations that could conceivably generate enough profit to pay for this kind of hefty private price tag — plus, let's not forget, the $70 million the Warriors would still owe to Oakland on their old lease — but "conceivably" is the key word here.
In any event, this is only the very, very beginning of a planning and political approval process that's expected to take at least two years, with the arena itself not opening until 2017. Oakland city officials have already said they'll issue a counterproposal (though they have no details yet), and the Warriors still have the San Francisco Plan B of building on land controlled by the Giants to consider. At the very least, this being San Francisco, we have years of exciting environmental impact statements and board of supervisors hearings to look forward to — somewhere in there, we should be able to find out exactly who'd be paying for what.
May 21, 2012
Tweet claims Warriors set to announce S.F. arena deal
This is about as thin a rumor as you can get — it's based entirely on a fan blogger's tweet citing unnamed "sources" — but the Golden State Warriors are reportedly set to announce a deal with San Francisco to move to a new waterfront arena near the Giants' AT&T Park. According to blogger Adam Lauridsen, an announcement could come as early as tomorrow for an arena to be built "w/ private $$$."
If so, it's going to be interesting to see how that financing works. The going price tag for an arena these days is around $500 million, and likely more in San Francisco where both land and labor are expensive, and seismic concerns add to engineering requirements. Plus, the Warriors would be on the hook for paying off the remaining debt on their existing Oracle Arena in Oakland — according to Newballpark.org, if they left at the end of the 2017 season (reasonable considering how long it's likely to take to get an arena planned, approved, and built across the bay), they'd have to pay $70 million to Oakland on top of arena costs.
So that's a sizable chunk of change. Could it be paid off entirely with private $$$ and still turn a profit for the team's owners? Certainly, the location is right: An arena in S.F. would be able to fill its schedule with tons of concerts while charging top dollar for tickets — the only real competition would be from the Oracle Arena, which isn't nearly as easy to get to for the moneyed classes in S.F. and the neighboring Peninsula, which could go a long way toward paying off that massive arena debt.
Still, nobody builds an arena just to be able to mostly pay it off; this deal will only go through if the Warriors owners see a guaranteed profit. Until we see the actual financial numbers — something I doubt will happen anywhere near as early as tomorrow — it's going to be tough to say whether talk of an all-private arena is realistic or just a dodge to let Mayor Ed Lee claim he's kept his promise.
May 15, 2012
San Francisco mayor invites Warriors to jump bay
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who last chimed in on a potential Golden State Warriors arena in his city by saying it'd have to be built with private money, kicked off what promises to be an all-out cross-bay arena war yesterday, by issuing an open letter signed by all 11 city supervisors that invites the team to move to San Francisco "in time for the 2017 NBA season" and offers to "work with you to achieve this goal." The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Lee still would want to use "private financing," but that doesn't necessarily rule out the kind of tax breaks that other teams (including the Giants) have gotten to help grease the wheels for new buildings.
For now, with the Warriors ownership still publicly saying they want to remain in Oakland (where they'd be stuck covering $90 million in debt on the 1997 renovations to Oracle Arena if they moved by 2027), the S.F. threat is mostly likely to come into play as a bargaining chip for team owner Joe Lacob in trying to negotiate terms for a new arena in the East Bay. If he's successful, you have to hope he'll have the decency to send Lee a nice campaign contribution for his assistance.
April 10, 2012
Warriors still eyeing S.F. waterfront arena
The headline is that the Golden State Warriors owners are backing away from plans to partner with the San Francisco Giants on a new waterfront arena, but the upshot is that the Warriors are still looking at sites in San Francisco for a new home — this time likely farther north near the Bay Bridge, instead of adjacent to the Giants' stadium.
Of course, how they'd pay for it is still an issue: The San Francisco Chronicle's Matier and Ross report that it would cost at least $50 million to build a foundation on the piers that could hold up an arena, which "has real estate experts questioning whether the arena idea will ultimately pencil out." And that's before considering the cost of building the arena itself, which Newballpark.org estimates at upwards of $700 million.
Really, it's always a bad idea to take sports facility plans too seriously when all they're doing is site selection. Pointing at a plot of land (or water) and saying, "That looks like a good spot" is easy; finding money to build it is the hard part.
February 15, 2012
SF mayor: Warriors arena should use "private investments"
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said yesterday that he still wants to build an arena for the Golden State Warriors, but that it should be funded with private money:
"It's their private investments that have to be laid out there," Lee said of the Warriors. "I'm hopeful sports teams will look at San Francisco, and not just for their sports. ... The venue has to be successful well beyond those games."
That's certainly promising, but also far from a commitment not to use any public money, especially given how mayors have been known to bend the definition of "private investments." (Pay off your construction bonds instead of paying taxes? Sure!) Lee added, "Details to follow," so stay tuned.
December 12, 2011
Oakland plans second vaportecture stadium for A's
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, not content to have one A's stadium plan with no real idea how to pay for it, announced on Friday that "we are sending today a letter to Commissioner Selig to make it pretty clear that Oakland wants the A's, that we have two sites for the A's that are viable that could be delivered by 2014."
Site #2 is, in fact, the current site of the Oakland Coliseum (I can't be bothered to remember its latest corporate name — nice investment, whoever owns naming rights this week!), which would be replaced by a new A's baseball stadium, a new Raiders football stadium, and a new hotel under the latest plan. (Not-very-detailed renderings available at Newballpark.org.) This "Coliseum City" would be paid for by ... okay, Quan didn't actually mention that part, but the city has a Request For Proposals out for the project, which ... actually asks the developers to submit "a description of its approach to developing financing measures." Three guesses how many of the six developers who've reportedly responded to the RFP will be proposing to fund the whole project themselves?
Coliseum City, incidentally, would also include a renovated arena for the Golden State Warriors, which is significant because the Warriors owners last week met with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Giants CEO Larry Baer to discuss a new arena near AT&T Park to open in 2017, the year the Warriors' lease at Oracle Arena — which was completely rebuilt in 1996 for $121 million — runs out.
One more item from the Quan news conference: She said that the Giants claim they can use legal measures to delay any A's move to San Jose for as much as ten years. Which is exactly what they would say, and exactly what she would say, but just passing it along.