by Jerry Feitelberg

SAN FRANCISCO–The Golden State Warriors are out of the waterfront restricted zone redlined by proposition B limits to height limitations as they will be housed on Third, South and 16th Streets, and Terry Francois Boulevard. The Warriors who purchased Mission Bay property from salesforce.com will discuss their ideas for the new arena with local Mission Bay residents. The Warriors who had planned since 2012 to move from Oakland to San Francisco’s Piers 30-32 was not able to move to the Embarcadero because of Prop B which was designed to restrict height limits.

The Warriors want to make nice with their neighbors and not try and bogart their way into the nieghborhood and want to see what the local residents concerns are. Traffic conditions and access in and out of residents homes is one of the concerns. Unlike Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara where some residents are almost a prisioner to their own home during this month’s Earthquakes game they couldn’t leave or come home because of the traffic tie ups near the new stadium.

This is something that the Warriors want to address and qualify with residents and assure them that they would have access in and out of their resdience before,during and after basketball contests. The residents are going to ask about access streets and where they stand versus where game night traffic would be like. Public transit is another concern that coincides with traffic conditions and San Francisco Muni plans to run light rail from Mission Bay to Powell Street station that should lighten the load for traffic.

The Port of San Francisco wanted to see development for the waterfront but with proposition B giving teeth to development any design that seeks anything over the height limit will have to be put in front of the voters for approval. One example is that Forest City developers want to start a project at Pier 70 that is 28 acres and that would ask San Francisco voters for a 40-90 foot raise for their retail and condo project in the City’s Dogpatch District that currently has old wherehouses that were built in the early 20th Century sitting on it’s foundation.

While the Warriors won’t have to deal with the height limits they still have to glad hand their neighbors as they don’t want to run into any turmoil such as they had with the waterfront residents when they planned to move to Piers 30-32. The Warriors intention of the Thursday meeting is to see what the neighborhood concerns are. There are no blueprints or designs of the new arena to present to the residents on Thursday but the Warriors plan to devulge more detail of their arena project they have a design of the look of the arena but blueprints and street access is expected to follow.

Jerry Feitelberg is covering the new arena developments for the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings for http://www.sportsradioservice.com