The Golden State Warriors are now one step closer to moving to the San Francisco waterfront. The team announced that a Northern California court of appeals has upheld an environmental impact study that the Warriors and those close to the organization conducted on a site in the Mission Bay district of San Francisco.
This means that one of the biggest hurdles for the Warriors moving from Oakland to the more famous San Francisco area has been cleared.
Warriors president and COO Rick Welts announced the news Tuesday evening.
“We’re very pleased by the Appellate Court’s ruling. We engaged in an extensive public planning process and we were approved by every board, agency and regulatory body we went before,” Welts said, via a local FOX affiliate. “Now our project has been upheld by the trial court and the court of appeals. This decision clears the path for us to build a new state-of-the-art sports and entertainment venue and bring the Warriors back home to San Francisco.”
There had been some opposition to the Warriors moving to a new waterfront arena in the San Francisco area. Though, those in opposition of this project have been rejected at every turn by the courts.
One of the hottest tickets in the professional sports world, the Warriors continue to play at a run-down complex that includes MLB’s Oakland Athletics and one of the oldest baseball stadiums in existence.
Should this project continue to move along swimmingly, the Warriors hope to open up their new digs by the 2019-2020 season. And in reality, that would only add more value to a franchise that’s right up there among the most profitable in the entire professional sports world.
It would also give the likes of Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson a brand new arena to call home. If nothing else, Tuesday’s news just adds to what has been a spectacular past four-plus years for this once downtrodden organization.