Diamonds go in the rough

California’s SBC Park shows success of siting in developing area

By Cliff Pfenning

The Portland Tribune, May 21, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO Ñ It’s four hours before game time at SBC Park, and Franz Peter Meis doesn’t look anything like the proprietor of a failing business. That’s because the hard times are over.

The future of the Park, a restaurant and bar located across the street from the home of the San Francisco Giants, is based on profits, not debts, which he accumulated in the first four years SBC Park was open.

Meis only has to point out what’s going on in the neighborhood. Borders Books & Music is set to open a store on the ground floor of a new apartment complex located 50 feet from the Park. Safeway Inc. also will open a store in the apartment complex.

“Borders and Safeway É those are two businesses that don’t move into failing neighborhoods,” says Meis, who brought in investors to pay off his restaurant’s debts before this season. “Finding investors was easy because of what’s going on in the neighborhood.”

Buildings are going up everywhere around SBC Park, which was PacBell Park until last year. Most of the buildings are part of the Mission Bay development, a planned community that eventually will include 6,000 apartments, 5 million square feet of office space and a 43-acre research campus for the University of California at San Francisco. It’s all music to the ears of Meis.

He says his business was sour despite the Giants attracting more than 40,000 fans per game since 2000.

“For the first four years, it’s just been baseball in this area, but the baseball season only lasts six months,” Meis says. “With all the building going on, the area around the stadium is finally starting to catch up with the stadium. And that’s great for business.”

In Portland, proponents of major league baseball look at SBC Park as an example of what might happen if the Montreal Expos relocated from Canada to the Rose City. Last week, Portland’s baseball leaders released a funding plan that would support constructing a $340 million stadium.

SBC Park is an example of how to site and build a stadium correctly, something to which Portland’s baseball backers are paying significant attention.

“There certainly are critical components to the success of a stadium,” says Steve Kanter, president of the Portland Baseball Group. “It has to be put in exactly the right location, fit comfortably into the area around it and be part of a vibrant ballpark district.

“The good news for Portland is, we think we have three really world-class locations that are every bit as good as where SBC Park is in San Francisco.”

SBC Park came to life in 1996 when San Franciscans approved Proposition B, which gave the Giants a $15 million tax abatement. Otherwise, the team paid for the stadium itself, the only option left after voters rejected two propositions, P and W, in the previous decade.

Owner coughs up big bucks

The Giants possibly were headed for Tampa Bay before the current owner, Peter Magowan, bought the franchise and ponied up the money for the stadium. The stadium cost $357 million to build, $102 million more than the projected cost at the time Proposition B passed. Magowan financed $170 million of the total.

Even with the public bill at $15 million, opposition to the stadium was plentiful. Residents opposed everything from the height of the stadium, which exceeded local building codes for structures on the waterfront, to the displacement of endangered birds living off the shoreline.

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