Dive Brief:

• The Golden State Warriors NBA franchise has selected the joint venture of Clark Construction Co. and M.A. Mortenson Co. to build its new $1 billion, 18,000-seat arena, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
• The new facility, financed by a Warriors' ownership group and an unnamed financial institution will also include 580,000 square feet of office space and a plaza with retail and restaurants.
• The team expects the project to take two years, allowing the Warriors to start the 2018-19 season in their new home if construction stays on schedule, the Times reported.

Dive Insight:

The use of private financing for the entire project sets the new Warriors arena apart from many other professional arenas. In other major league sports venue construction projects, the franchise often relies on a share of taxpayer money — as is the case of the new Milwaukee Bucks arena — to fund the project, which serves as sort of an advance payment on the proposed benefit the project will bring to the local area.

However, a San Francisco group is vocally opposing the project. The Mission Bay Alliance, the Business Times reported, wants the 12-acre site chosen for the future basketball complex to be set aside for biotech research and is insisting the city, which has the final word on site approval, consider an alternate site a mile away.

The Alliance has one important card left: The city’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, and then the Board of Supervisors, must approve the project’s environmental impact report before the project can go forward. The Alliance promises to fight any approval of the site's EIR.

The Warriors chose the contractors for the project several months ago, but only made the announcement public this week.

Both Clark and Mortenson have extensive experience with major publicity-drawing projects. Mortenson is currently building the $1.1 billion U.S. Bank Stadium for the Minnesota Vikings — which has been in the spotlight recently for a worker's death and cost disputes. The contractor also built the Xcel Energy Center for the Minnesota Wild NHL team, the Target Center for the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA team, and Target Field for the Minnesota Twins MLB team.

Clark is currently part of the team building the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, and it constructed a $200 million neurosciences center on the Mission Bay Campus of the University of California, San Francisco.​ It also built the Nationals Park MLB stadium in Washington, DC, and FedExField for the Washington Redskins NFL team.