National Football League

New billion-dollar 49ers' stadium may have huge problem

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 9:37 p.m. ET

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Sam Gardner

The San Francisco 49ers will move into their billion-dollar Mecca in Santa Clara next season, but a lack of parking in the area around Levi’s Stadium will reportedly keep the team from hosting weeknight games in the immediate — and potentially foreseeable — future.

According to SFGate.com, the Niners are prepared to handle 21,000 cars for Sunday home games, relying mostly on local businesses and garages to supply the parking.

But it’s still unknown what the team would do to accommodate a game day crowd on a Monday or Thursday night, when games kick off at 5:30 p.m. ET, while many employees in nearby businesses are still at work. As a result, there will be no weeknight games in San Francisco in 2014, and potentially longer.

"It's a busy area. We are still formulating all of our parking," Santa Clara city councilwoman Lisa Gillmor told the site, noting that the team has approached local businesses about changing employees’ hours on game days in an effort to clear parking lots. “… We are going to have to do some creative work with our local employers.”

Such a proposition might not be so easy to execute, however.

For example, Nearby Mission Community College is said to be renting the team 2,200 parking spaces on Sundays but said it can’t make that commitment during the week. And there’s a thought that the Niners might face similar pushback from other businesses in the area, as well.

Perhaps everyone will have a better idea how a weekday game will pan out (and how to best plan for one) after Cal hosts Oregon at Levi’s Stadium next season in a Friday night game that was scheduled in Santa Clara because of — what else? — parking issues at Cal’s home stadium in Berkeley.

For now, however, the team has remained mum on the issue, other than to tell SFGate.com the parking conundrum is an “ongoing process.”

Now, for some links:

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