The Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and GSW Arena LLC announced January 3 that the official ground breaking ceremony for the team's new arena will be held on January 17 at the project site in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood.
Named Chase Center, the estimated $1 billion, state-of-the-art sports and entertainment complex is scheduled to open for the start of the 2019–20 NBA season, and will also play host to a variety of events, including concerts, family shows and conventions, in addition to Warriors basketball.
The 18,000-seat Chase Center will anchor a district of 11 acres of restaurants, cafes, offices, public plazas and other amenities the neighborhood currently lacks, along with a new five-and-a half-acre public waterfront park. It will be located on a major Muni Metro rail line with easy links to BART and other transit options.
When complete, the project will be the only privately financed facility of its kind built on private property in the modern era of professional sports, says officials.
Kansas City-based MANICA Architecture is the designer for the exterior of the project, and San Francisco-based Gensler will design the interior, which includes concourses, clubs, suites, administrative offices, home and visiting locker rooms, as well as other visitor facilities such as concession areas, sponsor zones, a team store, and retail spaces.
Joint Venture partners Clark Construction Group and Mortenson Construction have been selected to build the new arena.
Joe Lacob, the Warriors' co-executive chairman and CEO, says the location is a perfect fit. "It is an incredibly beautiful site near the Bay, in a dynamic part of the city that is convenient for fans from all over the Bay Area,” he said in a recent news release.
Chase Center will be built on a vacant lot that has been slated for development since 1998. The team entered into an agreement to purchase the property at Third and 16th Streets in Mission Bay in 2014, and has spent two years participating in a public planning process. The project won approval from all regulatory agencies and city commissions, including a unanimous vote at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Superior Court and, most recently, the California State Court of Appeals upheld the project, paving the way for breaking ground this month.
“The Warriors have been the Bay Area’s NBA team for more than half a century,” said Warriors president and chief operating officer Rick Welts. “With the construction of this new venue, we’re making sure the Warriors will be the Bay Area’s team for the next 50 years and beyond.”
The Mortenson/Clark construction team says that local business and worker participation will be a priority. The JV is looking to meet San Francisco’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure’s (OCII) goals during the construction phase, which include 50 percent SBE firm participation and 50 percent local workforce construction-hiring.
“The Warriors are committed to using local businesses and local workers to design, build and operate Chase Center," said Steve Collins, chief operating officer of the new facility in a press release. “Already, through the design phase, we’ve awarded 40 architectural and engineering contracts with credits for SBE participation at approximately 50 percent, meeting OCII’s overall SBE goal. The actual SBE participation totals over $8 million, of which nearly 90 percent are committed to San Francisco based SBEs.”
