San Francisco: 49ers tell SF they're moving

[Ronin]

As mentioned earlier, the only time the 49ers have anything to do with San Francisco itself is on those eight Sundays a year. Other than that, all operations are in Santa Clara, and most of the players live in the South Bay. As a matter of fact, a good chunk of them reside in everybody's favorite place, Santana Row.

[BTinSF]

John King says, "Let 'em go." Have JChurch and John been conspiring because this article reminds me of some posts here by "J"?

Note to mayor on Candlestick - cut your losses, try another plan
- John King
Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Perhaps I'm unduly influenced by memories of Thanksgiving dinner, but here's my First Rule of City Planning: Don't stuff too much into one place.

Especially if the "too much" includes a football team that has no desire to stay put.

[Podcast: C.W. Nevius and John King talk about housing in Hunters Point and more]

So here's my advice to the Newsom administration. Don't waste time trying to revive a plan for Candlestick Point that the San Francisco 49ers already have rejected. Instead, count the would-be anchor tenant's departure as a blessing -- and get serious about using 80 acres in the south corner of San Francisco to create a new neighborhood that will help revive nearby Bayview-Hunters Point.

Neighborhoods work best when they make sense, when they have an internal logic -- even if it's the crazed logic of Manhattan's verticality. That's why cramming a football stadium and parking garages alongside 6,500 housing units is not the best way to bring life to this odd but promising spit of land.

For those of you who had better things to do last Tuesday than attend the weekly meeting of the Board of Supervisors, here's what transpired: A crew representing Mayor Gavin Newsom and would-be developer Lennar Corp. unveiled the plans they've been working on for Candlestick Point.

There were watercolor images and a site plan and brave talk about starting the community review process. There'd be an expanded state park! A high-rise hotel! An indoor arena and an outdoor retail promenade! Apartments and condominiums for 12,000 residents!

Oh, and an enormous football complex discreetly tucked in back.

All of which is fine and dandy -- "utopia by the bay" is the pertinent phrase from Chronicle reporter Cecilia Vega's story -- but it felt like an exercise in either a) futility or b) finger-pointing. The reason being that two weeks earlier, 49ers co-owner John York announced that the team had decided it can't make the plan work to its satisfaction.

Which means the 49ers say they're moving to Santa Clara -- and the Newsom administration is showing off a plan it says the team should have liked.

I can understand the fury of a mayor scorned by York's last-minute "Dear Gavin" phone call. And when the 49ers pulled the plug on the stadium they also short-circuited the region's bid for the 2016 Olympics.

But that's the way it is. Which leaves Newsom with two options. Hand York his helmet as you show him the door, or find another site that suits the team's desires.

Under either scenario, the city can admit the fact everyone has chosen to ignore: It's ludicrous to try to build a fine-grained urban neighborhood around a tub-shaped behemoth. Especially one accompanied by beefy parking garages.

Sports and cities can be a good fit. The Giants' ballpark, for instance, slides comfortably between South Beach and Mission Bay. But ballparks are a lot smaller than stadiums, and fans don't turn every game into a daylong event.

Looking at the plans unveiled last Tuesday, it's as if everyone is playing a game of Hide the Elephant. The street grid for the neighborhood is arranged like a partly opened fan -- oriented toward the bay and Candlestick Point State Park and away from the stadium.

The most blatant barrier comes when the residential district nears the stadium along the water. Planners insert a canal and erect a curved mid-rise office building as a screen.

Another problem is that because of all the land needed for football and parking, everything else is jammed together with more force than imagination. There's a generic layout of dull-looking blocks, each one with heights stepping up to allow as many bay views as possible.

This is planning by economic spreadsheet. Development is layered onto the site until there's enough (theoretically) to generate the profits needed to make the stadium pencil out.

Lennar's team knows better, I'm sure, and Newsom's staff is bright. They've been working on a political problem -- keep the team here without asking the voters for $$$ -- and they've done the best they can.

When you get rid of the stadium, though, things get exciting.

Anyone who ever suffered through a night game at Candlestick Park knows this corner of San Francisco can be windswept and bleak. It's still a great location. There's a bay on three sides and a state park with a small peninsula. At the back there's even a dramatic hilltop.

You can't get more San Francisco than that.

Within this setting, you could take the amount of development that's proposed and spread it out in imaginative ways. There could be terraced condos against the hillside and single-family homes cradling part of the bay. There could be a handful of elegant towers, and environmentally friendly light industrial space to create job opportunities for the adjoining neighborhood.

All this is vague, I know. But that's how the best urban districts evolve. They start with a strong reason for being; they also have loose ends and voids where the unexpected -- and memorable -- can take root.

Back to the 49ers.

If Newsom and other San Francisco leaders see a value in keeping the team, the best location may be at the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard: the challenge of clearing environmental detritus from part of the site becomes easier when the land is going to be used only a dozen days a year.

The challenge at Candlestick Point is to come up with a new game plan that will be one for the highlight reels. Don't dwell on a game that's already lost.









Place appears on Tuesdays. E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...DGPVMKRON1.DTL

[sf_eddo]

Really don't like the renderings, looks like a 49ers-themed Bay Street or South Beach/SoMa. Blech. Why must we ALWAYS build with the same bland materials?!?! BAH!

[coyotetrickster]

Originally Posted by sf_eddo

Really don't like the renderings, looks like a 49ers-themed Bay Street or South Beach/SoMa. Blech. Why must we ALWAYS build with the same bland materials?!?! BAH!

Candlestick is cold. Those lame-ass canary/date palms will brown in no time. It does look like Pier 39 East... or Fisherman's Wharf II. No wonder the 49'ers bailed

[WonderlandPark]

Originally Posted by sf_eddo

Really don't like the renderings, looks like a 49ers-themed Bay Street or South Beach/SoMa. Blech. Why must we ALWAYS build with the same bland materials?!?! BAH!

Wow, EXACTLY what I thought when I saw the renderings. How about some vision, not a 1992 "sports" neighborhood themed version of a 49ers "neighborhood." bleh.

[twinpeaks]

the plan is better than whatever is there now. I would love to see the area devoloped and the ugly public housing replaced.

[coyotetrickster]

Originally Posted by twinpeaks

the plan is better than whatever is there now. I would love to see the area devoloped and the ugly public housing replaced.

It's not the redevelopment, it's the look....

[Ronin]

Haha... and you guys thought Santana Row was bad.

[coyotetrickster]

Originally Posted by Ronin

Haha... and you guys thought Santana Row was bad.

Yeah, but Santana Row is built. I don't think this will get built, not as configured.

[Ronin]

Here's another recent article from the Mercury.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...s/16137751.htm

Purdy: Stadium gets S.F. off high horse
By Mark Purdy
Mercury News

I suppose you would call it typical small-town behavior.

But my goodness, are the politicians in San Francisco living up to their status as representatives of the Bay Area's Second-Largest City.

And for a guy with a Santa Clara University diploma, Mayor Gavin Newsom is behaving very much like a dropout from Hissy Fit Backwater Community College.

He has been exhibiting this behavior since Nov. 9, when the 49ers revealed they were abandoning their stadium plans in San Francisco. Instead, the team said it was pursuing a site in the 408 area code, on a prime piece of Santa Clara property adjoining the Great America amusement park.

From that moment, Newsom and his staff have launched a public-relations assault to distort the fact that they basically blew it in their negotiations with the 49ers by taking the franchise for granted, reading the tea leaves wrong, and failing to return phone calls promptly.

Nope. That wasn't what happened at all. Instead, the Newsomites are claiming they were duped -- duped! -- by that well-known genius and master of savvy negotiations, 49ers owner John York.

Give me a break. If York has proved anything since taking control of the 49ers, it is that he can be maneuvered by crafty agents into signing bad contracts for mediocre players. His impulsive moves, his stilted way with words and the team's lack of recent success have made York the punching bag for every Bay Area sports fan.

Yet in the Newsomites' latest spin attempt, York is the Einstein of duplicity. This week, the San Francisco City Attorney's office released to the San Francisco Chronicle documents it had obtained through legal channels.

These documents, mostly correspondence between the 49ers and Santa Clara officials over the past few years, supposedly ``prove'' that the franchise was secretly sabotaging its discussions about the Candlestick Point stadium plan.

Oh, really? Here's my suggestion: The San Francisco folks should subscribe to the Mercury News. As far back as July, we carried stories that said the 49ers had been talking with Santa Clara about a backup stadium site. I was briefed on the whole thing last summer at 49ers headquarters. The information subsequently appeared here as well as elsewhere in this newspaper.

Did I report everything I knew? To be honest, no. More than a year ago, I became aware that San Jose was also in the potential stadium picture. In fact, one or more meetings took place between 49ers front-office personnel and some ex-officio representatives of San Jose -- former city employees or those with strong connections to those in charge.

Those talks centered on city property along Highway 237, near the sewage plant. Preliminary numbers were tossed about, to see if it would work financially. I confirmed this with 49ers executives and others familiar with the proposal. But I didn't see the point of writing about it, because nothing came of the discussions and because San Francisco was still the top choice. Plus, I figured not even the 49ers were silly enough to build a stadium near a sewage plant.

The Newsomites contend these dealings with South Bay figures, in San Jose and Santa Clara, were dishonest and unethical. As if everything in San Francisco politics is totally pristine and above-board.

Again, I have a better suggestion for our smaller neighbors to the north: Come up with a better stadium plan. You might try one that makes sense.

The San Francisco proposal, when finally revealed last week, turned out to be a bloated, unwieldy mess. It hinged, more or less, on building an entire new city of about 10,000 people on the Candlestick site. To pay for the stadium cost, the developer would need to build multiple high- to mid-rise condominiums or apartment buildings, plus numerous retail outlets.

And the football fans? On Sundays, they would have to park inside an immense garage or be bused in from remote lots along Highway 101. Not to mention that improving the access roads to the stadium would also be problematic.

The truth is, if York had announced his support for the Candlestick plan -- and said he just loved the idea of the parking garage and having his fans fight traffic to the Home Depot next door -- he would have been heaped with ridicule. I guess because Newsom has a better haircut, we are supposed to believe the Candlestick proposal was a fabulous idea.

Is the Santa Clara plan any better? Don't know yet. The plan has not been released. But the site is better. Far better. Why shouldn't the 49ers be able to examine both options?

And yet Newsom and his partner in municipal rage, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, are so insular that they actually believe the 49ers should not be allowed to take their name elsewhere. Swell. If they move to Santa Clara, we can call them the 408ers.

The Newsomites are indeed correct in one sense. In the past, some politicians have conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations with sports teams. And these secret discussions have involved stealing away a major franchise from another city, provoking anger and accusations of immoral civic behavior.

I mean, how else do you think the Giants got to San Francisco?

[J Church]

If they move to Santa Clara, we can call them the 408ers.

I like it.

[munkyman]

Wow, writers of the San Jose Mercury News really don't like San Francisco do they. They certainly seem to be enjoying the A's and the Niners making their move.

[tech12]

^yeah, their huge inferiority complex makes 'em pretty nasty, I guess.

small town-behavior eh?

Of course they parrot one of their only "Advantages" over SF. More people.

[northbay]

let the niners go. as long as the raiders stay in oakland... im

[sf_eddo]

Originally Posted by munkyman

Wow, writers of the San Jose Mercury News really don't like San Francisco do they. They certainly seem to be enjoying the A's and the Niners making their move.

its kind of similar to the norcal socal rivalry - norcal hates socal, socal doesn't care.

san jose hates san francisco, san francisco doesn't care.

[craeg]

Oh god the rivalry discussion.
I think the many SoCal posters on this board amply demonstrate that they could care less about San Francisco.
Having said that, that article from the merc is a bit over the top even for San Jose. They never do miss an opp to point out how small town we are.

[BTinSF]

The Mercury News obviously can't get over the fact that the 49ers want to relocate in the South Bay and still call themselves the SAN FRANCISCO 49ers because SAN FRANCISCO is the only part of the Bay Area people from other parts of the country take seriously or can find on a map.

It is not "small town" for San Franciscans like Feinstein and Newsom to flex their clout over any issue that suits them. What is small town is for the Merc to have so much trouble acknowledging where the clout lies.

[Ronin]

I think the whole thing is a joke. Purdy is an award winning journalist, so this should be taken lightly. His line about Newson getting a degree from Hissy Fit Backwater Community College is an indication of that.

[sf_eddo]

It might be a joke but it really does show how some people from the burbs, I suspect even you Ronin, might feel about San Francisco.

[WonderlandPark]

San Francisco has had soooooooo long to deal with the the Candlestick "problem." Loma Prieta was in 1989 for heaven's sake, its their own damn fault that the Niners are finally bolting.