The Warriors anticipate a delay in final site plans for their Pier 30-32 arena, because they are looking to incorporate a cruise ship terminal on the eastern waterfront edge of the site.

Quick refresher: the original site plan looked like this:

Colors denote different site features. Warriors promised to have at least 50% of 15-acre site set as open space

The arena was placed at the southeast corner of the site to create the lowest visual impact from the rest of the city (height of structure notwithstanding for the moment). The inclusion of a cruise ship terminal would push the arena further north or west, while creating additional impact with its own structure, which could be 30,000 square feet or more. When Larry Ellison won the rights to develop Piers 30/32 as part of the America’s Cup deal, a cruise ship terminal was part of the plans. When Ellison backed away from 30/32, those plans were abandoned. Now, there is another cruise ship terminal planned for Pier 27, which is also part of the remaining America’s Cup development plans. The city wants to have at least two berths for such large ships, and Pier 35 is the current, space-limited main terminal.

Such changes are enough to warrant major EIR revisions, which is why we’re hearing the warnings about delays. The W’s may be forced to give up some ancillary development to regain open space. That shouldn’t be a big deal, since they could easily incorporate more square footage in the arena itself or push some of the ancillary stuff across the street to Seawall Lot 330 (the triangle). Adding the cruise ship terminal appears to be a nod towards gaining the acceptance of the ILWU, whose offices are in downtown SF, even though the union is much busier across the bay in Oakland.

Resistance to the arena has been measurable. Yesterday, Chronicle columnist Ann Killion chimed in with her critique of the plan. Killion wants to preserve the waterfront that has been opened up since the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down following Loma Prieta. While that’s admirable, it’s important to keep the arena’s visual impact in perspective. The arena will be about 400 feet long, 1/8th the length of the Embarcadero between the Bay Bridge and AT&T Park. AT&T Park along King Street is roughly twice as long, and not set back far from the street. Snøhetta knows a thing or two about building along the water, so they deserve the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to integrate the arena along the waterfront and minimize the arena’s visual impact.

Killion argues that Lot A across from the ballpark would be a better fit. There is more parking available there and the infrastructure to bring 3,000 or more cars to the area is already in place. That isn’t the case at Piers 30/32. On the other hand, the Pier site is much closer to BART, doesn’t require a transfer, and because I expect very little parking to be made available in the immediate area, cars will be dispersed throughout the Financial District and South Beach areas instead of concentrated around the arena (where there will be no huge garage). Plus the Giants control the land south of AT&T Park, which means the W’s would have to split the revenue pie with the Giants. I’d just as soon not see the Giants’ tentacles in everything, thanks. That brings to mind another problem: with the expectation of reduced parking because of the Giants development plans at Mission Rock, if there’s an arena there as well, how will there be enough parking in that immediate area for simultaneous events at the arena and ballpark? At least with Piers 30/32 it’s spread out over a much larger radius.

This isn’t the first time Killion has come out against a stadium or arena concept. Killion was against the 49ers’ move to Santa Clara, the A’s plans to move to San Jose, and now this. Killion evens holds onto that anti-Niners sentiment even as the war over the 49ers has long been over. There’s an ill-researched jibe about rising tides here and a defense of Oakland there, or the idea that the arena will be obsolete in 20 years (not likely considering that it’ll be privately constructed, owned, and maintained). Change is inevitable. No need to channel Lowell Cohn before your time.

The arena plan will probably undergo at least a few more changes before it’s offered up for approval by the City and BCDC. There is every reason to think that a suitable plan will merge that satisfies vast majority of San Franciscans and Bay Area residents. If not, it should get voted down. Otherwise, Doug Boxer isn’t doing his job, is he?

A month ago I wrote about a solution to the Seattle-Sacramento fight over the Kings. It would’ve involved either keeping the team in town or moving them north, with the loser getting an expansion team. Key to the solution would be to use a portion of the expansion fee (~$500 million) to pay off the Silna brothers, who get a 3/5ths of a team share of the NBA’s national TV money even though they’ve never owned a NBA franchise.

While in Houston for All Star Weekend festivities, David Stern quashed any idea of an expansion-based solution that would provide teams in both cities. That’s not to say that expansion couldn’t be explored in the future. But for Stern, who is retiring just short of a year from now, it won’t happen on his watch.

For now, Stern has his sights set on two dates: March 15 as the deadline for Sacramento interests to submit a bid/plan for the Kings and a downtown arena, and April 18 for the Board of Governors meeting to hear everything out. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is in Houston to try to lobby other owners who are also taking in the festivities. As a former All Star player, KJ has a level of respect within the NBA that no other mayor can match. Whether that will mean anything in the end uncertain. KJ is not meeting with Stern during the weekend.

Stern has set the stage for the other owners to make a very tough decision. On one hand, many of them may want to correct the wrong that was allowing the Sonics to leave, and would love to have big money ownership like Steve Ballmer among their ranks. Yet they may not want to move the Kings from a market that has supported the team well despite the arena’s flaws and poor and mismanaged teams over the past several years.

Does anyone remember a journeyman outfielder named Eugene Kingsale? 4th-5th outfielder type? He started out on the O’s with fellow Aruban Sidney Ponson before going to Seattle. His career ended right about the time the Sacramento Kings stopped being a good NBA team. Kingsale? Seattle? Don’t you dare call it a coincidence.

Let’s try to reset this Kings mess, shall we?

On Saturday, real estate investment firm JMA Ventures expressed in helping the Kings stay in town. Originallly, reports had JMA building an arena on the site of the mostly empty Downtown Plaza shopping mall, which JMA bought from mall giant Westfield last summer. This remains true. What does not is the idea that JMA might also bid on the franchise. That’s not happening, though there are whispers that Ron Burkle may be networked in to buy the team while JMA builds and operates the arena.

If the name JMA Ventures sounds familiar, that’s because it is the company that offered to buy Great America from theme park operator Cedar Fair late in 2011. That deal fell through, as Cedar Fair was granted some parking lot protection and other concessions by the City of Santa Clara in exchanging for dropping a lawsuit. Westfield sold Downtown Plaza because it was a heavily underperforming property. JMA paid $22 million for the mall, partnering with LA firm Downtown Properties to complete the deal.

An arena and associated development on a nice, 14-acre site sounds like a great way to turn $22 million of uncertainty around, and it can’t hurt JMA to get involved, especially since they knew that Downtown Plaza was considered as a potential arena location.

Later Saturday night, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson was seen talking to interested party Mark Mastrov courtside at the Heat-Kings game. Meanwhile, co-owner Gavin Maloof was reportedly selling his area home and everything inside it.

Over the weekend, a Sacramento-based ticket pledge campaign called Here We Buy was launched. As of this writing, the campaign has claimed 1,192 pledges for a combined $3.8 million.

Unfortunately, JMA’s involvement may end up as little more than a footnote in this saga, as Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski today filed a revealing column about the advanced state of Kings-to-Seattle sale talks. The deal points:

• $525 million is the purchase price based on valuation.
• The Hansen-Ballmer group would purchase 65% of the team. That comes to $341.25 million. The team’s minority partners, who are largely Sacramento based, would probably sell their own stakes sooner rather than later to other interested (and probably linked to the Seattle group) parties.
• It remains unclear if the Maloofs will retain any stake in the franchise.

All of this sounds less rather discouraging if you’re a Sacramento Kings fan. Yet, it’s following much the same playbook used by Clay Bennett, Michael Heisley, and George Shinn on their way out of town. Bennett was able to buy out a lease for Sonics I. Heisley ran the Grizzlies into the ground. Shinn did the same with the Hornets. The Maloofs are only bound by debt to the city, but they are about to get that paid off by billionaires.

Sacramento will probably be left with the rights to and history of the Kings, going back to Tiny Archibald and Oscar Robertson. Stern might grant the city first dibs at an expansion franchise after he retires. While Stern and the Maloofs sail off into the sunset, the City drowns in the Sacramento River.

Let this be a lesson for those who seek to play hardball with pro sports franchises: You may think you have leverage. You don’t. You really don’t.

Dueling reports today on the Kings. First, CSN’s Matt Steinmetz reported that the deal to sell the Kings to the Hansen-Ballmer group is all but done, with the price rising to $525 million. That may have been enough to convince the Maloofs to sell and back off any demand for partial control of the team. That was followed up shortly thereafter by a report by CBS Sports NBA reporter Ken Berger, who tweeted that 24 Hour Fitness owner Mark Mastrov has expressed interest in buying the Kings and has met with the Maloofs to boot.

You may remember that a group led by Mastrov ended up as a runner-up to the Lacob-Guber group in bidding for the Warriors (2nd or 3rd depending on where Larry Ellison falls in). Mastrov is only worth $350 million, but his group was vetted by the NBA to participate in the W’s bidding, so there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t be legit if his group were reconstructed to buy the Kings. Sleep Train CEO Dale Carlsen also threw his hat in the ring. It’s unclear at the moment if all of these various rich guys (plus more to come) would put together competing bids or pool their resources.

The Maloofs reportedly own only 53% of the team with controlling interest, with the rest owned by various local limited partners. Joe Benvenuti, who had the largest minority share, died last May. Benvenuti was the developer who built both ARCO Arenas I & II in partnership with Gregg Lukenbill.

To complicate things, David Stern made remarks that seemed to have him leaning towards Sacramento if a “local” group trying to keep the team in town came forward. Of course, Stern and the NBA’s Board of Governors is the final arbiter of the team’s fate, as they would not only approve any relocation effort, but also any incoming ownership group. It’s unlikely that any Sacramento group would be approved unless an arena deal were done first. That would leave Mayor Kevin Johnson with the task of resurrecting the Railyards arena plan, which was scrapped last April when the Maloofs couldn’t come up with their share.

The price to keep the Kings in Sacramento may be up to $107 million lower than the Seattle bid, because there’s the $30 million relocation fee and the $77 million arena purchase-leaseback loan was constructed as a poison pill. Now, if I’m a local bidder and David Stern, I might push KJ hard to forgive the loan for any incoming group. That would allow the debt load to lighten significantly and free up resources to pay for the new arena. There would remain environmental issues with the Railyards arena plan and it would still require a vote, but those can be dealt with.

It’s only going to get more dramatic and difficult for fans in Sacramento and Seattle. Expect nothing to be finalized until we get really close to March 1.

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Update 7:00 PM – Dale Carlsen was interviewed by Grant Napear today. Carlsen clarified that he wants to help keep the Kings in Sacramento, but that won’t be done by him “writing a check”. Instead, he’d work to rally the business community to coalesce around whatever the solution is.

Update 1/12 12:00 AM – Mayor Johnson claims that he can put together $400 million or more so that a local group could buy the Kings.

Update 1/12 2:00 AM – Ric Bucher is bringing up the idea that the Maloofs still want to maintain some level of control over the team and may threaten to take the team to Anaheim, or even file an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA if they don’t get their way.

There’s no done deal. And there probably won’t be one tomorrow, or even by next week. We know that the Maloofs and the Hansen-Ballmer-Nordstrom group are in serious discussions about selling and moving the Kings to Seattle. Everything else is just details.

Here’s what we understand about the situation going in.

• The Seattle group has pitched $500 million at the Maloof family.
• The Seattle group’s combined net worth is at least $17 billion, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s piece being the largest at $14 billion.
• Murmurs of the Maloofs looking to sell started in the last two weeks.
• According to Forbes, the Kings are currently worth only $300 million. The Maloofs paid $156 million for the franchise in 1998.
• The Kings owe $77 million to the City of Sacramento, with the debt secured by Sleep Train Pavilion and the surrounding land.
• The Kings also owe anywhere from $125 million to $217 million to the NBA as part of loans from the league’s $2.3 billion credit facility. The number is fuzzy because the debt limit for an individual team is supposed to be only $125 million, but the team may have been granted a discretionary exception to exceed the limit by Commissioner David Stern.
• A relocation fee of at least $30 million will be assessed to the new ownership group.
• There is no additional territorial compensation cost because there’s no team currently in Seattle. Compensation cost to both the Lakers and Clippers helped sink the Kings-to-Anaheim plan.
• The reborn SuperSonics would play at KeyArena for two full seasons before moving across town to a new arena in SoDo (near Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field).
• Environmental studies for the new arena only started two months ago. From now, that leaves less than 33 months to finish all studies and prep work, acquire all necessary land, and build the arena.
• The new arena will cost $500 million. $200 million will come from public financing to be repaid by revenues from the arena itself. The rest would come from the ownership group.

Got that? Now let’s do a deeper dive.

First, let’s talk about the debt situation. There are two kinds of debt here, the $77 million owed to the City and the ~$200 million owed to the league. The latter debt figure is high, but as is often the case with sports franchises, not unusual. It’s common for debt to be carried and transferred as part of a franchise sale. There are tax advantages to doing this, and given historically low interest rates, it make less sense to buy cash than it is to carry debt and invest one’s cash elsewhere. However, such debt helps inflate the franchise sale price and eats into proceeds for the Maloofs. The $77 million piece consists of a $64 million loan and $14 million exit fee. The loan was part of a purchase-leaseback deal of then-ARCO Arena. The Maloofs did the deal to offload an asset that that had little potential (more on that later). By the terms of the deal, the Kings’ ownership group would have to buy the arena back from the city if the team were relocated. If the team were to default on this debt, the City would assume ownership of Sleep Train Pavilion and sell it on the open market. They’d also go after the Maloofs if there was a shortfall. That’s a big reason why the Maloofs want to get as much as possible. They’d like to escape Sacramento clean and with enough cash to focus on their post-NBA lives, which would be hard to do if Sacramento sued the Maloof family and got a judge to freeze assets. There’s a possibility that a bankruptcy situation could develop, but that’s far more likely with the Maloofs keeping the team instead of selling the team because the family was running very low on cash on a year-to-year basis.

The Game’s Ric Bucher claims that the Maloofs want to get back into the liquor distribution game that they abandoned to keep the Palms casino and the Kings afloat. To do that, they’ll need to clear even more money from the sale of the Kings. Which might explain the tweet from CBS Sacramento’s Steve Large that said that the Maloofs balked at the (presumed) $500 million offer. Removing the two debt obligations, the family would get a pre-tax haul of $225 million, a good amount but not the kind of windfall many team owners have been seeing recently (Chris Cohan, Frank McCourt).

Tweets from Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski appeared in the 10 AM hour. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn held an unrelated press conference at noon where he was asked about the Kings/Sonics and was coy about the whole affair. That was followed by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson holding a presser at 3:30 PM, which was staged to directly address the situation. The big takeaway from the event was that now that KJ officially knows that the team is for sale, he will work hard to get a competing group together that could bid on the Kings.

Already, the name Ron Burkle has come up. Burkle, the billionaire former supermarket magnate, could be a well-heeled backer for the cause. After partnering with Penguins great Mario Lemieux to buy the hockey club in 1999, they steadfastly tried to work the public financing/threaten-to-leave model until the economy collapsed, then got $47 million from Pennsylvania to help fund $321 million Consol Energy Center. Bonds for the arena’s financing were raised by a quasi-governmental arena authority, making the deal similar in structure to the 49ers’ Santa Clara Stadium or HP Pavilion in San Jose. In 2010, Burkle and Lemieux quietly met with Pirates owner Bob Nutting in an effort to buy the struggling baseball team. Nothing came of the talks. Burkle could get involved now at KJ’s behest, but why? Unless Burkle has an overarching sense of charity towards Sacramento, it would be a hard sell for him to play, mostly because he’d be entering (or creating) a bidding war. Burkle didn’t get to $3.2 billion by not driving a hard bargain. His name has been associated with the Kings as a potential buyer for at least two years, and he can’t be pleased with the inflation seen among pro sports properties, or the debt being carried by the Maloofs. Like Larry Ellison, he probably isn’t desperate enough to overpay for the Kings, as the Seattle group appears to be.

One player who has been silent since the news broke this morning is former Kings/Warriors star Chris Webber. C-Webb put together a group of investors in 2011 that included Filipino billionaire Manny “MVP” Pangilinan. There may be renewed interest in getting the band back together. Pangilinan scared the bejeezus out of the Philippine government last fall by threatening to repatriate elsewhere. Perhaps it’s time to resurrect the EB-5 plan.

That plan could come in handy if FEMA lifts the ban on development in the Natomas area where Sleep Train Pavilion is located. Instituted in 2008 after Hurricane Katrina forced changes to levee and floodplain planning, the ban allows for no new development in Natomas and even severely restricts rebuilds of existing properties, including a potential on-site replacement for the arena. Whether an owner that kept the Kings in Sacramento preferred the Natomas site or used the site for redevelopment purposes to help fund a Railyards arena, the inability to do anything with the land cripples any ownership group that owns the property while the ban is in effect. The ban could be lifted even as work to shore up the levees remains incomplete. The task of lifting the ban falls on Congress via legislation, and well, it’s Congress. Don’t hold your breath on that one.

It would not be surprising if the final sale price of the Kings rose above $550 million. The Maloof family has the asset and it’s a seller’s market, so they can play hardball for the next few weeks and allow a real bidding war to happen. Even if a white knight group promised to match whatever the Seattle group offered, the Maloofs aren’t obligated to accept such a bid. If Hansen felt that the Maloofs were trying to rip him off, he might not budge past a certain amount. We’ll see how long it takes to complete the deal. As Kings play-by-play man Grant Napear admitted during his radio show on Wednesday, the franchise is a free agent. With free agents, hometown discounts are the exception, not the rule.