Bay FC, the women’s professional soccer team, went to a packed room in City Hall Wednesday seeking to advance its plan to build a three-field training complex over 8.5 acres on Treasure Island.
The team had little trouble winning the budget and finance committee’s unanimous support for a 25-year lease of the property. The deal now heads to a vote by the full Board of Supervisors next week, and then onto Mayor London Breed for final approval. Board President Aaron Peskin told Gazetteer SF he expects the lease will be approved. Breed, in an emailed statement from her office, was more effusive.
The Mayor said she’s the “city’s champion” of Bay FC’s project. Its approval is “a major moment” for the city “and the many communities from across the Bay Area and everywhere who will travel to San Francisco for the love of soccer,” she wrote.
But the biggest buzz, surely unusual for a committee hearing, emanated from Bay FC co-founder and soccer celeb Brandi Chastain, who appealed directly for the lease approval. Chastain played for the U.S. national team between 1988 and 2004, winning two World Cups during that period. Also present at City Hall were teen and adult members of the San Francisco Glens Soccer Club, several of whom also spoke in support of the project.
I learned about the hearing, and Chastain’s appearance, through a Glens email; my kids play for the club, which already operates its own training facility on Treasure Island, and plans to build a stadium there soon. Several middle and high-school-age players surrounded Chastain after the hearing. My daughter did not skip math class to go to City Hall. (Editor's note: He didn't let her go.)
“It was cool to see how everything worked,” Jordyn Bernabe, 13, said of the hearing. “It was really impactful, seeing the new training facility for Bay FC and how together everyone was for the same goal.”
“I was that girl,” Chastain told Gazetteer, referring to the players. “I didn’t have anybody that looked like me, who was playing in a professional environment,” she said, adding that she absorbed a life lesson from her mother, who fought through noes to get to yes.
“They need to know that they have supporters in somebody like myself, who believes that what they’re doing is important,” she said.
It’s a bit odd to think of athletes training on Treasure Island, a name that belies its dark environmental legacy. The man-made island, created for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition (not quite a World Fair), was transformed a few years later into a Naval station, which produced toxins and radioactivity. While skepticism about the Navy’s cleanup persists, Bay FC is all-in.
“We are absolutely confident that Treasure Island has been fully remediated and it's very safe,” Bay FC Chief Executive Office Brady Stewart told Gazetteer.
The club’s project is situated on 40 acres of Treasure Island that are already zoned for sports development. Bay FC matches will continue to be played at PayPal Park in San Jose, though some team practices at the Treasure Island facility will be open to the public, Stewart said. The club plans to operate youth clinics at the facility, allowing participants to interact with Bay FC athletes, she said.
The project will require both demolition and environmental cleanup before the training fields can be built; the club plans to move in at the end of 2026, before its 2027 season, according to Stewart. Under the lease approved Wednesday, Bay FC will pay $1 per month until the facility is ready, and then $27,751 monthly when it’s operational.
Stewart said once the training facility lease is approved, the team will press forward with a search for its own stadium.
“We definitely want to build a stadium,” she said. “We want our team to be an iconic, global sports franchise like so many of the sports franchises here in the Bay area. And we believe in order to do that, we need a stadium.”
In the meantime, even a budget committee hearing — albeit with Chastain present — managed to turn out team fans. Aya Moore, 14, a Glens player who spoke at the hearing, was pleased with the vote.
“I’m really, really happy with it, I’m excited to be involved in it, and I’m glad I had a say in it,” Moore told Gazetteer. “I can’t even fathom that I got a picture with her.” But the hearing was as important as meeting the pro, she said.
“I love soccer and I want another facility,” Moore said.
