Cow Palace compromise lets arena stay, allows parking lot to be sold

The landmark Cow Palace got a new lease on life Tuesday when state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, dropped efforts to put the aging arena in Daly City up for sale and settled on a compromise measure that would allow only an adjoining parking lot to be sold.

The state Senate's Agriculture Committee, meeting in Sacramento, approved legislation that would allow the state to begin negotiating the sale of a 13-acre parking lot along Geneva Avenue to Daly City, which wants to put a supermarket on the site.

Directors of the state-owned facility, along with groups that have used the arena over the years, fought Yee's original plan to declare the entire facility surplus, which would have allowed the land to be sold and the Cow Palace to be razed.

Cow Palace officials had been negotiating with Daly City over use of the parking lot, arguing that the land should be leased, with the ongoing flow of cash going to upgrade the arena.

Yee's compromise measure calls for the state Department of Food and Agriculture to negotiate a sale price for the parking lot. Money from the sale would go to the state fair system, which oversees the Cow Palace, and could be used for improvements there, a spokesman for Yee said.

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