Warriors one step closer to new arena

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Garrett Wong ruled that the city’s environmental review of the proposed arena was adequate, effectively rejecting the notions of opponents who said it had failed to consider environmental impacts, including alternative sites for the $1 billion, 18,000-seat arena/entertainment complex. It has been named the Chase Center.

The ruling came exactly two weeks after Golden State signed free-agent superstar Kevin Durant.

In a statement, Warriors President Rick Welts said the ruling “brings us a huge step closer to building a new state-of-the-art sports and entertainment venue, which will add needed vitality to the Mission Bay neighborhood and serve the entire Bay Area extremely well.”

“We look forward to breaking ground soon,” he added.

Soon, indeed. As a result, the Warriors could potentially have shovels in the ground as early as the end of the year.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has portrayed the new arena as his legacy project, and called Monday’s decision by the judge “an important milestone in the process of bringing the Golden State Warriors back to San Francisco and to building a state-of-the-art entertainment venue the entire San Francisco Bay Area can be proud of.”

The Warriors have sought to relocate the team back to its original home for four years now — the organization’s original plan of moving the team to Piers 30-32 was ultimately dropped because of ferocious opposition. This year, the team said the opening of the Chase Center became further delayed until 2019 because of the lawsuits.

The ruling is just the latest in what has now been a 15-month battle between the Warriors and the Mission Bay Alliance, a group which is funded by a group of donors to the University of California, San Francisco. The group had argued that construction of such a complex would create traffic chaos, slowing down access to the nearby UCSF Medical Center, which sits just across the street from the proposed arena site.

The group added that a basketball arena would kill the neighborhoods character of life science and medical research.

The project received a stamp of endorsement from the UCSF Chancellor, the Alliance argued the Chancellor overstepped his authority when doing so before obtaining approval from the University of California regents.

Dennis Herrera, a San Francisco City Attorney, told the San Francisco Chronicle every aspect of the Chase Center has “has been thoroughly scrutinized under the law, and it has won overwhelming support every step of the way, from all parts of San Francisco — including its neighbors.”

“I hope that the decision becomes final soon, so that the much-awaited construction of the project can begin,” he added.