Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors may have waved the pom-poms for the Warriors’ every move so far in their push for a huge new arena on the city’s highly-prized waterfront, but now, says Chronicle columnist Ann Killion, comes the “‘what the heck are you thinking?’ stage of the process.” She’s talking about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of throwing up a view-blocking 13-story edifice that will be obsolete in two decades. An excerpt:
This is not a dissertation on whether it's morally right for the Warriors to abandon the city of Oakland and the denizens of Oracle Arena who have supported them through all the terrible times. The Warriors' new ownership made it clear from the moment they bought the team - from their debut press conference at a restaurant on the Embarcadero to their insistence on holding most team functions at a San Francisco hotel - that they want to move across the bay.
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Rather, this is a simple thought about the thing that makes San Francisco uniquely San Francisco: our beautiful waterfront. Why - on so many environmental and aesthetic levels - would you want to build an enormous structure directly in the bay?