More than seven years after the Warriors announced they were building an arena in San Francisco and 959 days after they put a shovel in the ground, the team cut the ribbon on Chase Center.

“Wow,” was the word Joe Lacob, Warriors co-owner and CEO, chose for the day.

“Ow,” was the word that Peter Guber, the team’s other co-owner, selected.

“That’s how close success and failure are,” Guber said. “One letter.”

The “ow” might also reference the cost of the privately financed arena, estimated at about $1.4 billion. But the dream inevitably was going to be a costly one: to build, without taxpayer money, a home for the Warriors and also put a state-of-the-art entertainment venue in San Francisco.

The dream became a reality Tuesday, when sunlight sparkled off the white exterior of the building and over-the-top daytime fireworks burst off the roof into a bright blue sky.

The arena was to be christened later that evening with a gala, featuring a performance by Stevie Wonder. The first official event is Friday night when Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony combine for a concert. A slate of other concerts will be held before the Warriors take on the Lakers in an exhibition game in early October, the first basketball game.

As the speakers on the podium made clear, the process of getting to this point was not easy. San Francisco is a difficult place to get something built. Guber, in more word play, joked that he heard “no” so much he tricked himself into scrambling the letters and changing the word to “on.”

“I thought this might be a long sprint, but it was a grueling marathon,” he said. “I didn’t imagine the length of the journey.”

A lot of things changed on the journey to Tuesday’s ceremony. The original announcement that the owners intended to move to San Francisco was held in May 2012 at Piers 30 and 32, the unwieldy intended site for the arena. Jerry West and Mark Jackson were there that day.

When ground finally broke in January 2017, about 1½ miles south of the original location, the player holding the gold-plated shovel amid dancing cranes was Kevin Durant. He has since taken his talents to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

The city official who shepherded the project and called it his “legacy” is no longer with us: The late mayor Ed Lee was referenced often at Tuesday’s festivities. Mayor London Breed, who inherits his legacy, was on hand. As were former mayors Willie Brown, who had a long-ago vision of developing Mission Bay, and Gavin Newsom, who saw the 49ers leave town on his watch.

Yes, a lot has changed since, as Guber put it, Lacob whispered “What if …” in his ear. In the intervening years, the Warriors went from intriguing to great, played in five straight NBA Finals and won three, became the talk of the league and — in some people’s opinion — the scourge of it.

Oddly, one thing that hasn’t changed since that news conference in 2012 was the presence of Ahmad Rashad. The former NFL player and broadcaster acted as host seven years ago and again Tuesday, despite having virtually zero connection to San Francisco.

That was one discordant note. Another was the opening performance by the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, singing “Oh Happy Day.” The song was beautiful, but onlookers couldn’t help but notice it was not exactly a happy day for Oakland, that the Warriors and all those jobs and all that revenue have moved across the bay.

Another oddity, there was zero mention of Stephen Curry who — when it’s all said and done — might end up being considered the player who “got Chase built.” After all, even privately financed arenas require goodwill and positive feelings on the part of public officials, and Curry provides that more than any other Warriors representative.

As Newsom said, the Warriors have “come back home,” to the city to which they originally moved from Philadelphia. And San Francisco finally has a world-class arena for music and other events. To Lacob and Guber’s credit, from the moment they bought the team, they were honest about their intentions of moving to San Francisco, so none of this comes as some bait and switch, or a surprise.

This is the third ribbon cutting of this century on a major venue in the Bay Area. The others were at Levi’s Stadium and, before that, at the Giants’ ballpark at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. That venue, a wildly critical and popular success, began extending San Francisco’s commercial area south 19 years ago, changing the shape and feel of the city. Chase Center will extend it even farther and perhaps provide an anchor and gathering place to the fast-growing area.

There will be issues, of cost and traffic and parking and access with this new building, the same problems associated with all venues, old and new.

That’s the future. On Tuesday, when the big blue scissors snipped the gold ribbon, what seemed an impossible dream became a reality.

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion