Just a year after its opening, San Francisco’s Chase Center, home to the NBA Golden State Warriors, has some good news to share: it has achieved the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification for Building Design and Construction: New Construction.
This is a rare achievement; according to the Chase Center: “To date, just 10 NBA arenas have achieved a LEED certification with only six having reached a Gold or higher level. Across the four major U.S. sports, just 31 venues have achieved a LEED certification.”
Within weeks of this certification, the arena also achieved the Global Biorisk Advisory Council’s STAR facility accreditation. Not only was it built with sustainability in mind, the arena has also been adhering to stringent cleaning and disinfecting protocols. It is the first arena to receive both certifications.
Like all other NBA arenas owned or operated by NBA teams, the Warriors will open the Chase Center as a polling place to increase voting access for the November 3 general election. It is noteworthy that other ESA clients, including the Sacramento Kings (Golden 1 Center) and the LA Clippers (The Forum), are opening venues under their control as voting centers.
ESA is proud to have been a key member of the team that’s bringing this project to fruition. ESA, working with the San Francisco Office of Investment and Infrastructure and Planning Department, completed the CEQA review for the project at the new site in just over one year—unprecedented for a project of this size and type in San Francisco—to enable the Warriors to meet their schedule to open for the 2019/2020 NBA season. The Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that we prepared (tiered from the 1998 Mission Bay Final EIR) pioneered the use of air quality offsets as mitigation to minimize effects of project construction and operational air emissions in the Bay Area air basin.
If you would like to learn more about the Chase Center project, please reach out to Paul Mitchell; if you want more information about ESA’s established portfolio with major league sports arenas and stadiums, including the Golden 1 Center in downtown Sacramento (the first LEED Platinum arena in the US), please reach out to Brian Boxer or Christina Erwin.
