I'm still hoping that the America's Cup will be contested on San Francisco Bay come 2013 or 2014. Larry Ellison's BMW Oracle Racing won the right to host the next America's Cup in a place and manner of it's own choosing when it won the America's Cup this February in Valencia, Spain.
Ellison wants to bring the Cup Races to the Bay, but there's trouble in Paradise it seems. I found this story at the San Francisco Chronicle this morning: "America's Cup may need environmental exemption"
Typical of what passes for newspaper writing these days, the story doesn't identify who "some environmental groups" are, and San Francisco is overrun with hyperventilating "environmental groups", if by groups you mean somebody with a website, a blog, and a fax machine.
Sure, there's a preponderance of Enviros in San Francisco, some of them biggies, but Green is a Cottage Industry in the Bay Area.
I'm not sure from the Chronicle story what the enviros are worried about. Piers 30 and 32 aren't pristine wilderness...nothing on San Francisco Bay is. There's every likelihood that these piers are built on bayfill. Most of the SF Waterfront is fill. I could understand if the Organizers were trying to put up a Wal*Mart for the Cup Races, but you'd think a new, public transit served entertainment infrastructure this close to downtown would be favored by the greenies.
These piers have been home to music festivals and a few sporting events over the years, hosting the Van's Warped Tour in 2009, the Summer X-Games in 1999/2000. Now reduced to fading parking lots, the piers would be the ideal place to build new taxpaying infrastructure in The City's South Beach near the SF Giants' AT&T Park.
Folks, the State of California is broke. (or broken, really) Should the A/C Regatta go forward, the State would rake in $140 Million in tax revenue for starters. Californians, drop your State Legislators a letter of support for whatever it takes to get the Regatta to happen on California waters.
No comments:
Post a Comment