With safeguards, UCSF now solidly behind Warriors' SF arena

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Editor's Note: The above video is a segment from an episode of But Seriously featuring Warriors president and COO Rick Welts

Not long after the Warriors were honored Monday at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in San Francisco, the office of Mayor Ed Lee announced a partnership that it believes will clear a major hurdle to the team building a new arena in the city.

The mayor, the Warriors and the University of California, San Francisco, have reached agreement on several issues related to the billion-dollar sports and entertainment complex arena the Warriors propose in the Mission Bay district.

[RELATED: Mayor Lee, UCSF, Warriors reach preliminary deal on SF arena]

Insofar as Mayor Lee and the Warriors have been driving the deal from the start, the most notable aspect of this accord is an official endorsement from UCSF.

“Our focus from Day 1 has been to protect hospital access and patient safety,” UCSF president Sam Hawgood said in a statement. “Together, these agreements – one creating a dedicated transportation improvement fund, the other a ‘special circumstances cap’ requiring last-resort limitations on certain dual events should traffic reach unmanageable levels – will provides the safeguards UCSF needs to fully endorse the Warriors’ Arena project.

“We believe they represent a win-win.”

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That is significant because the team’s desire to build so close to a UCSF medical center – across the street – has prompted at least one citizen’s group, the Mission Bay Alliance, to reject the project on the grounds that it would create traffic conditions that endanger patients entering the hospital.

“I’m happy to announce that we’ve reached a consensus on the most critical issues, and now we’re ready to move forward – together,” Mayor Lee said in a statement.

The Mission Bay Alliance, which has vowed to fight the project with a phalanx of litigators, can be expected to respond. The group last week issued a statement in which 20 scientists and researchers panned the project as harmful not only to UCSF but also to the city’s growth in biotech and related industries.

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