

Another blow was dealt to the deep-pocketed, semi-shadowy coalition that vociferously opposes the new Warriors Arena project in Mission Bay as the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday night to reject their appeal of the project's environmental impact report. How much more money they're willing to spend to fight this thing remains unclear, but it sounds like a lot, and as the Examiner reports, spokesman for the Mission Bay Alliance Sam Singer calls the city's actions "unlawful," and the group plans to scream until they're hoarse about this project and sue everyone they possibly can to stop it and they want to make sure everyone knows this.

Still arguing that the proposed 18,500-seat arena and its surrounding mixed-use complex will create a traffic nightmare of epic proportions and create havoc for the nearby UCSF hospital complex, the Alliance is planning to file "at least two" lawsuits according to Matier & Ross, one of which will challenge the EIR further, and one of which will challenge the state-sanctioned 235-day time limit for deciding on legal challenges.

The problem is, the mayor, the Board, and the public still largely support the project, which will bring both a world-class basketball team  currently undefeated in their season so far and continuing to make history  as well as the first non-outdoor major concert venue to San Francisco. The Alliance naturally did some of their own polling, which naturally came up with different results than earlier polls this week  they found that support for the arena was below 50 percent among the 540 registered voters polled.

Chances are that figure is spurious, and the Board of Supervisors knows that, and Warriors president and COO Rick Welts knows it too, as he told KRON 4. "The series of wins at public agencies, the huge numbers of supporters who came out today  this all represents our strength in numbers. This is the culmination of four years of hard work by our city and community partners."

Earlier polling showed overwhelming support for the arena project, and despite weekly press releases from Singer's office prompting weekly news stories in local media, as well as an angry open letter from a bunch of UCSF scientists, the city appears to have come up with reasonable preparations for the traffic impacts that will be caused, including increasing T-line service four-fold, transit-only lanes, event-night shuttles, and adding traffic cops on event nights. Also, the East Bay and South Bay public has already been trained to use public transit to come into town for Giants games, right? No one wants to be stuck in that traffic.

Prepare for the fight to go on, and for construction on the project, set to begin next year, to be potentially delayed. Because: San Francisco.



All previous coverage of the Warriors Arena on SFist.