Ballot Measure Will Shame City Hall for New Warriors Stadium

The initial design for the new Warriors arena. Not sure if this is still the design but it looks like toilet.

I’m not the biggest sports fan, but I love watching the Warriors play. They are dynamic, full of personality, and really really good. That said, bringing them to San Francisco is absolutely absurd. Besides the fact that we’re stealing the team from Oakland – their home for 46 years – the stupidity and greed behind building the new arena across from a Benioff Children’s Hospital is mind-boggling.

Imagine an emergency where a child with heart problems needs to be rushed to the hospital and it happens at the same time  a Warriors game is being let out. That is a distinct possibility. The public has been assured that the planners have figured out the details so that it won’t be a problem, but these are the same people who gave the green light to the Millennium Tower being built on unsafe land. It’s all just a shortsighted ploy so Mayor Ed Lee can be remembered as the guy who brought the Warriors to San Francisco instead of the guy who presided over the ruining of one of the finest cities in the world. It’s also a ploy to help his big money friends get even richer.

We covered all of this in 2015, before the new area got approved. Read the article, it will show you what a joke the whole thing is. Unfortunately the arena has already being built.

That said a new group called the Good Neighbor Coalition has come together with hopes of ultimately stopping the construction and keeping the Warriors in Oakland. Their slogan is “A world-class city helps its neighbors; it does not help itself to its neighbors jewels.” What’s impressive is that they’ve managed to get 14,766 signatures to put a measure on the ballot that would publicly shame City Hall for, among other things, stealing the Warriors from Oakland.

image from artist Duane Lawrence 

Good Neighbor Coalition founder Allen Jones believes that the Warriors being taken from Oakland is political racism. He argues that it was the poor black community of Oakland supporting the Warriors for the past 46 years, but now that they are champions, richer, whiter San Francisco wants to steal them.

Jones also believes that if enough people learn about the absurdness of the move they will come together to stop it. He’s been in San Francisco since 1960 and has been a Warriors fan since 1975. He says, “I know San Franciscans. Getting 14,766 signatures is a sign that the Warriors move is not in the spirit of San Francisco. It is in the spirit of City Hall though.”

The new Warriors stadium has already broken ground. (image from Dale Napier)

He continues, “If JP Morgan Chase and the NBA can survive stories of political racism that brought this project together, then be my guest, but I’m saying they will not.”

You can learn more about the cause and the ballot measure at the Good Neighbor Coalition. I for one hope they are successful.