Warriors President & COO Rick Welts said in light of the recent litigation filed by the Mission Bay Alliance in opposition to the team's planned 18,000-seat arena in S.F., "the arena will open in 2019 rather than 2018." Welts said, "We bought into this process three years ago, this is part of the process. Anybody has the right to sue so we accept that. We're going to win, but we do have every confidence that 2019 is going to happen. The project is in great shape right now on all fronts, and we have a lawsuit we have to win." Welts said of Mission Bay Alliance, "Their strategy from day one has been clear, 'We're going to litigate until the cows come home,' which they said before they saw our (Environmental Impact Report). ... We got unanimous votes from the planning commission, unanimous vote from OCII that has jurisdiction over the EIR, unanimous vote from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Really unprecedented in San Francisco to get the broad range of support that we have, so this isn't reflective of what the city wants. It's reflective of what the individuals behind the Mission Bay Alliance want, and we're pretty confident that in the courts that will be recognized and we'll be able to move forward on the project." Welts added, "While it's frustrating, as I said, we've been planning for it for a long time because the strategy from the Mission Bay Alliance has been pretty clear from the beginning that delay, delay, delay as much as possible and hopefully kill the project. Now that the project can't be killed ... the only hope is that they can find a judge that somehow agrees with them there's some fatal flaw in the EIR that would do nothing but send us back to try to correct that." The San Jose Mercury News' Tim Kawakami asked, "Once if and when the lawsuit goes away, are you ready to put a shovel in the ground?" Welts said, "We are, we'll be ready" ("The TK Show," MERCURYNEWS.com, 1/15).
