The Warriors and the City of San Francisco are in the early stages in what will be a long, frequently uncertain struggle to get an arena built at Piers 30/32, and yet they’re already well ahead of Oakland in a few key ways. In the Chronicle article jointly written by John Coté and John King, the City/Port has already identified a financing mechanism for refurbishing the piers to the point that they could be used for the Warriors’ arena.
The team in return would build and pay for the arena and other buildings as well as the open spaces. It would be the team’s responsibility to strengthen the dilapidated piers, an endeavor that city officials say would cost an estimated $120 million.
The proposed deal calls for the city to reimburse the team up to that amount for infrastructure upgrades.
The city’s financial liability would be capped there even if the rehabilitation costs exceed that, said Jennifer Matz, the point person for Lee’s administration on the project.
All told, the arena and adjacent development are projected to cost $1 billion, city officials said.
The deal is essentially a reimbursement of the pier rehab costs (free land), while the Warriors sign a lease for up to 66 years. It’s the same kind of deal struck with the Giants. The Giants got development rights to the parking lots across Mission Creek from the ballpark. The Warriors would get dev rights to Seawall Lot 330, the parking lot across the street from the piers. The lot could hold a hotel or high-rise condos. Either way it’s easy to see the return. What’s impressive is that this was put together in less than six months. There’s much left to do: EIR, detailed costs sheet, W’s coming up with the money, state approval, etc. – but this is a significant step forward. It makes the deal easy to communicate and pitch to the public.
As for Oakland? Well, @EastshoreEmpire got to ask Mayor Jean Quan about Howard Terminal and Coliseum City over the weekend, and was nice enough to check with me to supply some Q’s. I said to ask about the two stadium projects, and here is the response:
@newballpark Oh boy, typical Jean Quan answers all meeting. Honestly, what she says is not 100% accurate. I have had conversations …
— Eastshore Empire (@EastshoreEmpire) October 13, 2012
@newballpark … with a person in the MLB and NFL meetings. I have seen some of the work completed and presented. But she says …
— Eastshore Empire (@EastshoreEmpire) October 13, 2012
@newballpark … that no work done on Howard Terminal. (not true) And she just said a Coliseum City EIR is a “couple of months” away (vague)
— Eastshore Empire (@EastshoreEmpire) October 13, 2012
@newballpark And that she has talked with the Port and that they would conduct the EIR. (?)
— Eastshore Empire (@EastshoreEmpire) October 13, 2012
Okay, then. The Port of Oakland will to handle it, from soup to nuts. Makes sense, since they’re a fairly autonomous governmental body. The Port also has some bonding capacity for a Howard Terminal infrastructure project and good bond ratings. How would that infrastructure be paid for? Would it be tacked onto the cost of the ballpark? Is there another development deal whose proceeds could pay it back, such as Seawall Lot 330 in SF? It doesn’t appear that there is.
Well, at least a Coliseum City EIR should be here before the end of the year.
newballpark.org 
LGO should start a petition to JQ to have more transparency on HT/CC, unless it isn’t as important as say the tarps. :X
Oakland sees Frisco getting a free ballpark and now a free arena, and see the A’s willing to give a free ballpark to San Jose, too, and just figures Oakland is entitled to all this stuff for free, too, without regard to the team owners’ ability to finance projects like these in SF and San Jose vs. Oakland.
“Free” ballparks come to cities that have the potential to return that investment money back to the person or groups taking the risk. Unfortunately for many reasons that can be debated, Oakland just dose not have that potential.
Money flows to where Money can be made!
Tarps were an easy target to harp on ownership. Of course LGO won’t pressure Quan about transparency, because that would be hating on Oakland. And it’s not as good of a story for the media so they won’t cover it nearly as much as they did the tarps.
Did LGO just changed their name to “Let’s Go Ownership”?! For a group that supposedly cares and is proud of Oakland, they sure aren’t doing much to help their cause especially if they continue to ignore/forgive the polis pulling the strings. There’s a river called Denial and its running straight through the heart of the East Bay….
OT: Niners got picked as one of the finalist for the 2017 Super Bowl!
http://www.mercurynews.com/southbayfootball/ci_21786096/nfl-picks-santa-clara-finalist-2017-super-bowl
From niners super bowl 50 article…
“Meanwhile, Raiders owner Mark Davis told reporters at the NFL Fall meeting in Chicago that the team has no plans to share the Santa Clara stadium with the 49ers. “I give the 49ers all the credit in the world for getting a shovel in the ground in California,” Davis told NFL.com. “That’s phenomenal. But we’re trying to get our situation right. It’s not easy to do.”
Davis said the team would concentrate on building a new facility at the site of the current Oakland County Coliseum or at another another site in Dublin.”
Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/49ers/archives/2012/10/nifty-50-bay-area-49ers-finalists-for-super-bowl-l.html#storylink=cpy
Again groups like SOS and lgo these ppl see Quan every other day I’m sure she tells them to keep cheerleading and keep making noise as a distraction while her staff bumbels with this stadium issues.
But I will have to say that when it comes to any stadium for Raiders or A’s the city really is pushing this coliseum site so I really look forward to see Oakland’s work or whatever they did when they present to the world how coliseum city can work… But this is sad being an east bay supporter. Only 5 more years of this mess till where done with this.
P.s my apology ML the other day. My girl says I need to check my temper. I’ll be coo on here.
……Now if only San Francisco could have taught Oakland how to get a football stadium done.
Hey guys, just back from Tokyo and catching up here. One dynamic that hasn’t really been discussed but is alluded to in these tweets: Oakland has competing plans with competing backers.
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LGO has no interest in Coliseum City. That’s Jean Quan/Rebecca Kaplan’s thing. LGO is backed by a real estate developer who owns a lot land in the area (ironic that this is the thing so many rail on about Lew Wolff). Read LGOs recent Facebook posts. One includes “we will do this. We will have our own waterfront park.”
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If I had my druthers and the park was built in Oakland, I’d prefer something near downtown. I wonder how others feel about that.
Jeffrey, I think you are partially correct. It may not have come through clearly on Twitter (@EastshoreEmpire on Twitter, slo_town here), but Jean Quan seemed to almost brush aside Howard Terminal. Her comment about not spending any money on Howard Terminal also seemed very odd. As a part of the presentation to MLB (and what looked to be apart of the Coliseum City HKS/JRDV/Forest City study) was a lot of feasibility work on Howard Terminal.
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And then for the Raiders, there is the Quan-backed proposal of a (retractable?) domed stadium to double as part of a convention center. One thought is the city would work with the Raiders, domed stadium or open-air depending on their thoughts. And then there is the Rick Tripp proposal which I honestly do not know much about.
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So really you have:
Howard Terminal (LGO and maybe the city)
Coliseum City baseball (Tripp? and city, but only if MLB supports it)
Coliseum City football (Tripp and the city)