Rohnert Park’s San Francisco Giants tribute a swing and a miss

Rohnert Park has backed off a plan to name a pair of streets after San Francisco Giants announcers Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper. It turns out, not everyone is a fan.

As the city builds a 1,450-unit ?housing development to be known as “K” Section, it needed 33 street names that start with “K.” In November, a week after the team claimed its third World Series title in five years, then-Mayor Joe Callinan and Councilwoman Gina Belforte, both Giants fans, met to come up with street names.

With Giants mania on the brain, the street naming committee proposed Krukow Place and Kuiper Place, said Callinan, who still is a councilman.

But Brookfield Homes, the Canada-based developer of the University District subdivision just north of the Green Music Center, objected. The Brookfield marketing team said potential homebuyers might not want to live on streets named after “Kruk and Kuip,” the former major leaguers who have been calling Giants games together for 20 years on KNBR and Comcast SportsNet.

“Their marketing team felt it may be offensive to some of the buyers,” Marilyn Ponton, the city’s development services director, told the City Council on Tuesday. “They might not be Giants fans.”

Callinan, who travels to Arizona each year to watch Giants spring training games, said he understands Brookfield’s logic.

“You may have a Dodgers fan who wants to move in,” said Callinan, a home builder himself. “We thought, ‘Who’s not going to be a Giants fan around here?’ It would have been cool to honor them. But if you’re selling $500,000 homes, you don’t want to give people any reason not to buy them.”

On Tuesday, the City Council settled on less controversial replacement names: Kendra Place and Kaitlyn Place.

You can reach Staff Writer Matt Brown at 521-5206 or matt.brown@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MattBrownPD.