Golden State Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob has written to San Jose Mercury News writer Tim Kawakami — who you may recall wrote recently that the Warriors’ plan for a waterfront arena in San Francisco may be running into trouble — to say that it’s not in trouble at all, nuh-uh, no way:
The truth is that Pier 30-32 is going VERY well. The Mayor, the port, the SF planning department, the mayor’s staff, the Board of Supervisor’s, major politicians with influence (you know the big names ) AND the people, our fans and residents of San Francisco, are VERY supportive. That’s what they say and that’s what the polls show. Think about that. How difficult is it to get that kind of confluence of thought in SF and the Bay in this day and age? Without being arrogant or too confident, I would say we are killing it. We have made great progress and are in great position overall to advance this concept to reality. I honestly do not know HOW we could be doing much better.
What does this mean? Absolutely nothing, since Lacob would presumably write the same thing whether 1) things are going great with the arena plan and he’s upset that Kawakami is implying otherwise or 2) things are going lousy with the arena plan and he’s defensive about the fact that Kawakami made it public. Mostly what we’ve learned from this is that somebody needs to take Lacob’s caps lock key away, stat.
Oh, he meant the ‘other’ killing it. Or possibly not.
The estimates are now up to $1B for this arena, which is complete lunacy:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/25/price-tag-grows-for-warriors-basketball-arena-in-san-francisco/
I have a feeling this can’t really be built there. It’s sort of ironic that the three-facility plan Oakland was talking about might actually work out to be the cheaper solution — not that Oakland can afford it. They’d have a facilitator role, not a financial role.