| New 49ers Stadium | |
|---|---|
| Location | 4701 Great America Parkway Santa Clara, CA 95052 |
| Broke ground | Spring 2012 (estimated) |
| Opened | August 2014 (estimated)[1] |
| Owner | Santa Clara Stadium Authority |
| Operator | Santa Clara Stadium Authority |
| Surface | Grass |
| Construction cost | 1.02 billion (est)[2] |
| Architect | HNTB |
| General Contractor | Turner/Devcon JV[3] |
| Capacity | 68,500 |
| Website | [1] |
| Tenants | |
| San Francisco 49ers (NFL) (2014–)(estimated) | |
The New 49ers stadium refers to a stadium to be built in Santa Clara, California in time for the 2014 National Football League (NFL) season.
On June 8, 2010, voters in Santa Clara, a suburban city just northwest of San Jose, voted to adopt Measure J, which allows the City of Santa Clara to lease land, currently occupied by Great America theme park's overflow parking lot, to the 49ers Stadium Authority in order to construct a new 68,500-seat football stadium, where the San Francisco 49ers will be the primary tenant. The necessary funds were secured on December 13, 2011, allowing construction to start sometime within the next year.[1]
The 49ers initially presented a plan on July 18, 2006, to construct a new 68,500-seat, open-air stadium to be built in time for the 2014 NFL Season at Candlestick Point in San Francisco. Originally, part of the area surrounding the current 49ers venue, Candlestick Park, was to be zoned for retail space and housing; the new 49ers stadium was to be combined with such elements, bringing much-needed attractions to the historically blighted neighborhood of Hunters Point.[4] Currently, after failed attempts by the 49ers and the city of San Francisco to come to an agreement on the location of the new stadium, the 49ers have focused their attention on the Santa Clara stadium site, where the 49ers' administrative offices and training facility have been located since 1987.
There are also ongoing discussions for the Oakland Raiders to possibly share the stadium with the 49ers.[5]
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When the stadium plans were still set in San Francisco, the new 68,500 seat stadium was to be built at Candlestick Point on land just southeast of Candlestick Park. The cost of the stadium would be $916 million. Lennar Corporation would build housing, retail, and office space around the stadium area.[6] The stadium would be stocked with 150 luxury suites, 7,500 premium club seats, and an increased amount of seats lower and closer to the field, called "bowl seating," potentially raising the 49ers franchise value up as much as $250 million and offering at least $300 million in advertising and concession deals, the majority of which from paid corporate naming.[7] The architectural design would be reminiscent of San Francisco buildings and offer a view of the San Francisco skyline to the north.
The current proposed Santa Clara stadium is being designed by HNTB, an internationally renowned architecture firm focused on creating a multi-purpose stadium, with the fan experience and green technology as top priorities. Civil design is being designed by the non-minority firm Winzler & Kelly, recently bought by GHD.
The Santa Clara stadium will be an open stadium with a natural grass field. It will have a seating capacity of 68,500, expandable to approximately 75,000 to host premier events like the Super Bowl and the FIFA World Cup. The seating design of the stadium puts approximately two‐thirds of the fans in the lower bowl. It will be one of the largest lower bowls in the entire NFL. The design features significantly improved accessibility and seating options for fans with special needs and disabilities when compared to Candlestick Park.
Multi-use facility: The stadium can be configured for special touring events including concerts, motocross events, and other community events. The stadium is also designed to meet the FIFA field geometry requirements for international soccer, which will allow it to host international friendly matches and premier tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup. The stadium will also feature over 109,000 square feet (10,100 m2) of flexible premium meeting space in the club areas.[8]
The stadium is currently one of the largest buildings registered with the US Green Building Council; it is also believed to be the first stadium that will have both a green roof and solar panels. The 49ers are exploring collaborative opportunities with the Environmental Protection Agency to explore environmentally friendly components including:[8]
The San Francisco 49ers have played at Candlestick Park since 1971. The stadium is a sentimental fan-favorite and has housed all 5 Super Bowl Championship teams. It is however the oldest unrenovated stadium in the NFL and is beginning to show its age. The 49ers have been pursuing a new stadium since 1997, when a plan for a stadium and a mall at Candlestick Point passed a public vote. When the plans failed to move forward, the San Francisco 49ers presented an alternative plan on July 18, 2006, to construct a new 68,500-seat, open air stadium as part of a mixed use development featuring housing, commercial and retail space. In November 2006 the team announced that plans for a new stadium at Candlestick Point was not feasible, “citing extensive costs for infrastructure, parking accommodations and other changes that would cost more than the stadium itself”.[9] The 49ers are now focused on making Santa Clara the home to their new stadium. The 49ers’ headquarters and training facility have been located in the city of Santa Clara since 1988.
San Francisco voters in 1997 approved $100 million in city spending to build a new stadium and an attached shopping mall at Candlestick Point. However, even after voter approval to grant economic help for the project, the stadium was not constructed as the project failed to get off the ground. Mills Corporation, the company tapped by the 49ers, was unable to put together a plan to successfully construct a new stadium for the team.[6] NFL owners had gone as far as awarding the new stadium the rights to host Super Bowl XXXVII. When the stadium plans stalled, the game went to Qualcomm Stadium instead.
For years, the city and team ownership were embattled over attempts to gain funding and a green-light for construction of a new stadium. None of these attempts proved to be successful.
The city of San Francisco received a new incentive to get a new stadium built. Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city, and a new stadium would sweeten the city's proposal for selection by the United States Olympic Committee as the official US submission to the IOC. The announcement came in November 2006, with the new 49ers stadium as the centerpiece of an Olympics bid, and the construction of the Olympic village would be converted into low-income housing after the games were over.[10]
The project planning did not get off to a good start, however, with contention between the 49ers and the city of San Francisco over viable locations for the new stadium. Initially, the idea was to build a stadium in the parking lot of Candlestick Park and later demolish the aging stadium. Team ownership feared that construction of the village and the stadium would severely limit the amount of land available in Candlestick Point, creating a parking problem for fans and increasing traffic along the only two-lane road that links the stadium to the freeway. Moreover, with residents in the low-income housing by 2016, traffic would be increased indefinitely, further damaging the already-limited methods of transportation to the park.[11]
With San Francisco slow to come up with better locations for the stadium or ways to circumvent the problems posed by a construction at Candlestick Point, team owners Denise DeBartolo York and John York announced on November 9, 2006, that the 49ers were shifting its efforts to create a new stadium to the city of Santa Clara, approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of San Francisco (and existing home to the team offices and training facility).
The sudden removal of the planned stadium forced the San Francisco Olympics bid group to cancel its proposal,[12] which engendered great anger not only from Mayor Newsom, but also from such 49ers legends as Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott who were part of the effort to bring the Olympics to the Bay Area. In addition, many fans were outraged at the suggestion to move the 49ers out of the city that it had shared history with for decades. The Yorks insisted that the legacy of the franchise would be respected in the sense that the 49ers would not be renamed nor moved out of the Bay Area. This was met with much opposition from Mayor Newsom and Senator Dianne Feinstein (who was mayor of San Francisco between 1978 and 1988); the senator stated that the team should be unable to use the San Francisco name if its operations were not based in the city.[13] On January 3, 2007, California State Senator Carole Migden introduced a bill, entitled SB49, that would bar the 49ers from building a new stadium within a 100-mile (160 km) radius of San Francisco, if they were to leave the city. The 49ers organization announced its strong opposition to the legislation and retorted that passing such a bill would only encourage the team to move out of the Bay Area altogether.[14]
Measure J is a binding, voter-initiated measure that was put on the June 8, 2010 ballot with signatures from over 15% of Santa Clara registered voters. All documents cited below are publicly available on the City of Santa Clara’s official website.
Measure J was approved by the voters; the 49ers and County of Santa Clara then needed to raise $937 million for the stadium, construction of which is scheduled to begin in 2012. If construction proceeds on time, the stadium is scheduled to be ready in 2015.
The Santa Clara stadium project has been in the works since 2007 with negotiations beginning in 2008. Two years have produced the following documents that were key to understanding the stadium deal that went before the voters of Santa Clara on June 8, 2010. All documents cited below are publicly available on the City of Santa Clara’s website.
Most city council members in Santa Clara were extremely receptive to the possibility of a new stadium being constructed there for the 49ers. In 2009, the Santa Clara City Council and city employees began negotiating in earnest with the team, who presented the city with stadium plans. On June 2, 2009, by a 5 to 2 vote, the Santa Clara city council agreed to preliminary terms (as detailed in a term sheet[21]). Team officials have said that the team's name will not change; the team will continue to be called the San Francisco 49ers even when the move to Santa Clara is complete.[22][23]
The Santa Clara stadium plan currently calls for the new stadium to be located on a city-owned parking lot on Tasman Drive, located adjacent, to the north of California's Great America theme park and leased to Great America for overflow parking. In December 2009, the owner of the theme park filed a lawsuit to stop the project from proceeding.[24] However, this lawsuit has not deterred the plans for a Santa Clara stadium. On December 15, 2009 the Santa Clara City Council voted 5 to 2 to withdraw their city-sponsored ballot measure[25] on the stadium issue in favor of a ballot initiative from a 49ers-backed[26] group. The ballot initiative was voted on on June 8, 2010 and passed election.[27] The ballot measure was designated Measure J.[28] Santa Clara City Council members William Kennedy and Jamie McLeod had opposed the stadium project and worked (unsuccessfully) to get Measure J defeated.[29]
Recently, the 49ers and the city of Santa Clara announced that financing for the new stadium has been secured, with a $850 million loan from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and U.S. Bank. This will cover most of the construction costs, with the remainder to be made up via funding from the NFL, a hotel tax and city redevelopment funds. With confirmation of stadium funding in place, construction is expected to begin soon.[30][31]
There is a possibility that the 49ers Bay Area rivals, the Oakland Raiders, might share the stadium. This would be due to cost reasons, as both teams would split the costs of the stadium.[5] The 49ers[5] and Raiders[32] have publicly said it would be an option if possible, while NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is strongly in favor of the two sharing a stadium.[33] Along with the New York metropolitan area (where both the New York Giants and New York Jets shared Giants Stadium from 1984–2009 and currently share its successor, MetLife Stadium, which both teams financed), the Bay Area is one of two NFL markets with two teams.
The 49ers and Raiders sharing a stadium would not be unprecedented, as the two shared Kezar Stadium in 1960. It would also fulfill the late Raiders owner Al Davis' elusive goal of a new stadium, something he had strongly desired since moving the team from Los Angeles back to Oakland in 1995.[34]
In the wake of Davis' death, the possibility of the 49ers and Raiders sharing the stadium became a stronger possibility, as the Raiders would be more receptive to the idea. However, as of October 2011 the 49ers were far enough along on the stadium to have reportedly already sold over a quarter of the luxury suites, which means the Raiders would be forced to be secondary tenants. This is not unlike the Jets being the tenants of the Giants after they moved into Giants Stadium from Shea Stadium in 1984.[35]
Originally the 49ers had thought if they did not succeed in building a stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area, the team would be headed to Los Angeles. Edward P. Roski, a part-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings, announced plans for a new stadium, tentatively titled Los Angeles Stadium, on the northern side of the interchange of State Routes 57 and 60 (almost 22 miles (35 km) east of downtown LA) with the purpose of attracting a team to the Los Angeles region. Roski, who built the Staples Center, stated that the new 75,000 seat stadium would be privately financed and would be the centerpiece of a new entertainment complex in City of Industry.[36][37] A competing planned stadium, near the Staples Center, called Farmers Field also is aimed at luring an NFL team to Los Angeles.
| Preceded by Candlestick Park 1971–present |
Home of the San Francisco 49ers Planned 2014 |
Succeeded by none |
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