Read Allen Carr ' s book , made all the difference for me . We were 100 % addicted from our first cigarette . <| sep |> This is the biggest myth of all , and it exists because people forget that correlation does not equal causation . That neighborhood was already transforming from parking lots and warehouses to livework lofts and office buildings years before PacBell opened , and would have continued down its exact same path without the stadium for several reasons . 1 the City has seen dramatic growth since 2000 , both economically and in population , 2 the tech industry moved beyond large companies occupying campuses in the South Bay , to thousands of small startups renting in old warehouseswarehouses that exist South of Market , 3 the restaurants , lofts , office buildings , etc are all the result of zoning changes made years before PacBell was even a twinkle in anyone ' s eye , 4 proximity to 280 , Caltrain , BART , and Muni . Basically , that neighborhood was going to be what it is now , with or without the Giants , but the changes happened right around the same time the Giants moved in , so people mistakenly give them credit for it . But do we then also credit the Giants for the simultaneous and parallel changes in Mission Bay ? How about Rincon Hill ? Or South of Market , Potrero Hill , Dogpatch , the Mission ? All of those neighborhoods also experienced dramatic changes since 2000 Rincon Hill and Mission Bay , especially . Was it the Giants , or maybe it was a combination of population growth , zoning changes made in the 1990 s , economic growth , a couple real estate bubbles , a couple tech bubbles , and the general rebirth of American cities in the last two decades ? I live in the areatrust me , no one moved here because a baseball team plays in the neighborhood for three hours a day , 81 days a year . People live here because it is close to the Financial District and it has easy access to the Peninsula and Silicon Valley . People live here because the housing stock is newer and because there are tens of thousands of jobs right outside the front door . PacBell is a nice feature of the neighborhood , yes , but it did not create it .