Bay FC won’t say if stadium follows ‘heart and soul’ to SF

Bay FC CEO Brady Stewart said the professional women’s soccer team’s “heart and soul” will be in San Francisco when the club’s new Treasure Island training facility is completed in 2027 — but it remains to be seen whether its future stadium will be, too.

The Bay Area’s highest-level women’s soccer club, which said Tuesday it would begin construction in 2025 on a privately financed practice center at Treasure Island, remained mum on where it is seeking to build a permanent playing field. Bay FC, which is chasing a playoff spot in its inaugural National Women’s Soccer League season , agreed to play for five years at San Jose’s PayPal Park, home of Major League Soccer’s Earthquakes.

When The Examiner asked whether the decision to build a training facility will have any impact on where the team chooses to build a new stadium, Stewart was tight-lipped.

“Our priority right now is getting this training facility done because it is the most important element of our athletes’ experience,” she said. “In terms of a stadium, we’re a team for the full Bay Area, for all nine counties of the bay. When we think about our stadium, we’ll consider the full bay in our exploration.”

The club’s players currently practice at San Jose State University. Stewart said most of them currently live in San Jose, which is about 50 miles away from Treasure Island.

But Bay FC’s business offices are already in The City. The Treasure Island facility will house three soccer pitches, a locker room, weight room, recovery room, video room and offices for the team’s sporting operations.

“It will be no less than the heart and soul of the club,” Stewart said.

Mayor London Breed joined several high-ranking Bay FC executives — including Stewart and U.S. soccer legend and club co-owner Brandi Chastain — to announce the facility in a ceremony on the seventh floor of Isle House Apartments, a 22-story waterfront tower overlooking the San Francisco skyline.

The training facility will be built on a 8.5-acre plot of land a few blocks behind the apartment complex on top of what is now a large hill of dirt partially marked with a blue Bay FC banner.

“Treasure Island is one of the newest, hippest, coolest neighborhoods that is happening right before our eyes, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Bay FC to Treasure Island as their new home for their training facility,” Breed said amid swirling winds on the building’s balcony. “This is going to be extraordinary.”

But it’s still unclear whether or not the training facility will have any bearing on where the team will build its permanent stadium.

Bay FC’s five-season lease at PayPal Par k would conclude at the end of the 2028 season. Assuming the training facility opens on time in 2027 and the team does not break its agreement to play in San Jose, that would leave at least one season in which players would have to commute between the South Bay and The City for games and training, respectively.

Stewart said the NWSL does have parameters restricting how far a team’s stadium can be from its training facility. However, all nine Bay Area counties fit within those requirements relative to Treasure Island. She maintained that all nine Bay Area counties remain on the table for the site of a new stadium.

The Examiner reported a year ago that The City had met not only with an architecture firm it commissioned to conduct a feasibility assessment on a soccer stadium near Union Square, but also Sixth Street Partners — the primary investment firm backing Bay FC — before Breed publicly floated the possibility last summer of a San Francisco soccer stadium at the current site of Emporium Centre San Francisco. The San Francisco Standard had previously obtained the stadium renderings.

On Tuesday, Breed and Supervisor Matt Dorsey — whose district includes Treasure Island — were both outwardly hopeful that Bay FC would choose San Francisco for its new stadium, while neither revealed where discussion currently stood.

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the future of where their final stadium will be,” Breed said. “But it has to be at close proximity to wherever the practice field is, so who knows what might happen?”

“As the mayor said, there’s going to be some decisions made about where that stadium may be and you can bet that I’m going to be fighting hard to make sure that’s a downtown stadium in my district,” Dorsey said, which drew applause from Breed.

Stewart touted that the site will be one of the few training facilities in the world dedicated solely to a professional women’s soccer team.

“We will be a world-class destination both for the players of Bay FC, our current players and as we continue to attract and bring in national and international talent here to the Bay,” she said.

Chastain, a Bay Area native and member of the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame, had to pause briefly at the start of her remarks to gather herself emotionally, recalling that as a little girl in the community she did not have many female role models to look up to.

“Our game of soccer is unique — it came to the U.S. as a non-traditional sport, and it speaks every language and it embraces every community,” Chastain said. “We feel that that is why being here on Treasure Island makes perfect sense, because we will speak to every community , and we will play the game in a way that everybody feels welcome. Our space will be open for teams to come from around the world to see this beautiful community that we live in, to share in all of its delights and its bright, shiny gems and the beauty of the bridges that surround it.”