A recent legal ruling has put the Warriors on a clear path towards relocating to San Francisco in the near future.
Superior Court Judge Garrett Wong ruled that reviews of the environmental impacts of the arena were adequate.
The arena is set to be located in the Mission Bay neighborhood and will be called the Chase Center.
The main opponent of the proposal to build the arena in this location was a group called Mission Bay Alliance. They argued that the arena would bring numerous problems to the area.
Warriors statement regarding today's San Francisco Superior Court ruling: pic.twitter.com/kpJiX5d0rt
— Warriors PR (@WarriorsPR) July 18, 2016
They believe that the resulting traffic will impede access to the UCSF Medical Center, which is located nearby.
The court ruled that plans to alleviate traffic in the area through public transportation were acceptable.
The Warriors have agreed to coordinate with the San Francisco Giants to not hold more than 12 events at the arena that coincide with an event at AT&T Park, which is also nearby, should traffic congestion become a serious problem in the area.
Originally the Warriors were seeking to relocate to an area by Piers 30-32, but they abandoned those plans after significant opposition. The legal battles regarding the Mission Bay proposals have set the estimated opening date of the Chase Center to 2019.
Personally, while I understand the economics of sports, I’m somewhat fearful of the seemingly inevitable day when the Warriors leave Oakland for San Francisco.
Oracle Arena is the hardest place for opponents to play because of the energy provided by the raucous fans.
I’m wary that moving the arena to San Francisco will change the atmosphere inside the arena during Warriors games.
Maybe it’s an unfounded concern, but I’ve seen the negative impacts of teams moving to glamorous new stadiums only to find that the new facility lacks the previous grit and energy provided by the old stadium.
When the 49ers moved from Candlestick to Levi’s, I was at first excited. Candlestick was an outdated venue, and not visually appealing. Levi’s looked like it would be a state-of-the-art facility.
It lived up to the hype regarding its technological capabilities and sleekness, but not as a stadium with any character or the ability to harness crowd energy to motivate a team.
Of course, if the 49ers kept up their performance after the move, maybe things would be completely different. It’s amazing how a great team on the field impacts the atmosphere of a sporting event.
Moving to a brand new venue increases ticket prices, and changes the demographic of the crowd at the game. There’s definitely a different vibe when you juxtapose Giants games at AT&T Park with A’s Games at O.Co Coliseum.
At the risk of overgeneralizing, there’s more of a white-collar ambiance within AT&T Park than there is at O.Co, and it’s due to the stadium being nicer.
Where the debate comes in is how this atmosphere effects the crowd’s impact on a game. The Giants have great fans, and wining 3 World Series in recent years indicates that the crowd in San Francisco hasn’t been a lackluster source of energy for them.
A’s fans are also passionate, but the stadium is usually sparse. The Giants rank 3rd in average attendance in the league, while the A’s rank 3rd to last.
Even when the Warriors were bad, fans would still come out to support the team, and made Oracle Arena and electric place to watch a game.
Will Chase Center be able to generate the type of frenzied noise that Oracle Arena can? Assuming that it’s built with the architectural construction to exploit the physics of sound waves, it’s dependent on the fans to provide the source.
There are passionate Warriors fans all around the Bay Area, and any significant reduction in energy from a move to San Francisco seems overly pessimistic.
I became slightly more worried after watching what happened to the 49ers, but it’s a bit of a false equivalency. That’s a dysfunctional franchise going through numerous ordeals that contributed to the poor on-field production.
Conversely, the Warriors are one of the best run franchises in the NBA. Fans should have ultimate faith in this organization to keep putting the team in a position to compete for championships.
The root of the Warriors as an organization won’t change just because they move across the Bay, and the fans will continue to provide the spark that helps this team succeed.