Comments

1
I think the problem with the OMSI site is that OHSU owns that property and there is little to no public transport access. I don't know if the planned street car could handle game day traffic.

The Lloyd Center is fine. I have no problems with any of that.

I think the big issue is the money. In both cases you're adding millions on top of what is already planned. The city owns the MC and can do with it as they please. They don't own Lloyd Cinemas and they don't own the Water Ave. property.

Trust me. Architects can fight all day but the MC is coming down at some point. Architects don't have money and Paul Allen wants the MC to go away. Last time I checked he had about $10.5 billion. The MC property will either be for the baseball park or a Paul Allen development.

The city isn't going to spend the tens of millions it will cost to fix up the Memorial Coliseum all so they can rent the thing to a hockey team that barely averages 3,000 fans.
2
Garrett, look at the illustrations again.

The new MAX line runs right past it on the way to Milwaukie.
3
Got it Chunty...missed that bit.

Also...I'd like to point out that these architects are delusional. Many of them think Portland is going to get a MLB team in the near future. The OMSI site is drawn to be a MLB stadium not a AAA field. The arguments they're making against the MC site because it can't be expanded into a MLB stadium are doing nothing but showing a potential owner of a MLB franchise in Portland how things work here. i.e. you have to pull teeth to get anything done.

Portland isn't getting a MLB team now or in the next 20 years. It would be nice if everyone got that in their heads at some point.
4
thank you for the first, of what I hope is many, level-headed approaches to this issue. I, for one, am a proponent of letting go of MC, but not necessarily one who feels a baseball stadium is the best fit there. I do like the idea of at least the chance of expansion, be it 10, 20 or even 30 years.

The Lloyd site does nothing to help this and the OMSI site is a traffic nightmare (sorry to say, people will still drive). Not to mention, private land ownership means extra cost for the project.

Your connection to the NYC stadiums are good for us to look at. I feel that if they can get over the preservationist mindset of two (actually one) stadia that have more history and associated memories than our own, then I think it is time to move on from the MC...which does not do our veterans any favors (the last inscriptions, I believe, were for those serving in the war in Korea).

All things being equal, the MC site is still the lowest cost, most prudent site in terms of traffic, than any other proposed. It is also a URD, which provides additional incentives.
5
Actually, the Lents site was the lowest cost, most prudent site from a traffic and construction timeline standpoint. It's also in a Urban Renewal Area.
6
Unfortunately, Lents suffers from the same growth potential issues and has restrictions being in a neighborhood (parking comes to mind). One other issue that has arisen out of the Lents proposal is proximity to westsiders. I am not against Lents, but that proposal, for whatever reason, seems to be dead.
7
I love how people that were completely uninvolved in the stadium planning and public process that took place in Lents over the course of 8 months offhandedly dismiss the Lents site based on the same two lame and easily rebutted arguments.

The parking plan was worked out to meet PCL requirements and additional parking opportunities were identified outside the PCL requirements.

Over 25% of the population of Portland lives in the neighborhoods East of 82nd. There's also easy access to the Vancouver market, Gresham and Clackamas County. The new Green line light rail stop at Holgate and 92nd will open in September...just 1/2 block from the proposed Lents Park site.

It was a better site the whole time. The only thing that killed it is the apathetic, ill informed opinions of people that have rarely, if ever set foot in Lents and have no concept of the potential of the site.
8
Yes, they would have had to construct parking garages in Lents Park that would have cost several million more. The parking garages at the Rose Quarter are already built.
9
Actually, no. The parking would have been accommodated at the nearby park and ride lot, a additional lot next to the freeway that is on unusable right-of-way and at Marshall High School, resulting in some revenue sharing for PPS.

500 spaces would have been built in a surface lot in Lents park just south of the stadium. The lot itself could have been designed to function more as a hardscaped plaza, only serving as parking during games, and providing an area for recreation when not in use for game parking.

No parking garage was ever in the Lents plan. It wasn't necessary.
10
Well, at least if they stick it in the Rose Quarter, they won't be destroying one of the last few affordable neighborhoods in this town.

I could maybe someday afford to buy a house out by 82nd. Too late to buy anything else for under $300k, it seems.
11
Brilliant....the keep the slums because somebody will need the someday argument.

You're more likely to get more affordable housing built in Lents if the Tax Increment is generated for the Urban Renewal area. More Tax Increment means more TIF set-aside means more affordable housing.

12
We can't all live in subsidized public housing. And believe it or not, we can't all afford to live in overpriced LEED-certified yuppie sardine cans either. Gimme an old house into which I can invest sweat equity.

I'd rather see a neighborhood stay honest and working class (your "slum") than see it gentrified out of reach by "entertainment districts" and trendy condos for the latest wave of wealthy transplants.

Lifestyle tourism sucks.
13
Um...yeah. What about the working class people that already live in the neighborhood that would like to see a grocery store and a more vibrant town center to complement all their sweat equity put into fixing up their homes...that would like to have something to do in the evening other than watch cable...say like go to a reasonably priced minor league baseball game with their family?

The stadium in Lents wouldn't have been part of a lame Kansas City style "entertainment district". It would have been more of a project to provide entertainment to working class folks like myself and my neighbors.

I love how the single-issue crowd in Portland prevents social equity by crying "gentrification" at every attempt to make an investment in an area that suffers from disinvestment.

Uniformed clinging to social theories that have been shown to be incorrect sucks.
14
Don't argue with Chunty. It is like wrestling a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

(FWIW: There is a 2 year old, $250k, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, for sale, right next to my bus stop in North Portland.)
15
Yeah...a 6 bedroom 2.5 bath 3750 sq ft really sweet mid-century house just sold for 209k just a couple blocks from me. If I didn't love my house so much and not need that much house to clean/space, I would have made the move.

Seriously...neighbors welcome over here. I'm happy to give the tour of where and what is a good buy and what to do in the 'hood. I know real estate agents who know the neighborhood really well too.
16
Where were have all these architects been in the past 15 years when the Memorial Colesium has been falling apart and the teams that stayed behind to occupy it have struggled mightlily at the gate?

How many of these architects have actually attended a Winterhawks game in the past 15 years?

Or even a cat fancier show?

Have they ever even held their convention in one of the side rooms or downstairs?

Nope. They admire it from their Pearl condos as the sun sets and never step foot inside that building cause if they did they would know that it smells like crap, it's falling apart and it is time to let the old girl go or invest $150 million in fixing her up (not gonna happen - Architects how about you hold a bake sale?).

Since when has "pissing off a bunch of architects" not a reason to do something?
17
Let me consult my cynicism ball:

a)Paulson wants to walk to his soccer games and bike to his baseball games from his nest in the Pearl or Council Crest or wherever he lives. Manipulator in chief agrees to go along with the idea initially, because...read on...

b)Manipulator in chief can let the URD/MC drama play out, so that he can look like a hero when the final decision is made to leave MC intact and site a stadium in....Lents. In the end it will be easy to explain to Paulson that the process has revealed (surprise!) that Portlanders don't like a master plan of....renovating one perfectly usable stadium for the purpose of changing the sport that is played there....tearing down MC instead of a few parking garages....building a new stadium on the MC site.... when they could just..build a new stadium...in Lents!
Poor mr Paulson will actually have to take his family to Lents to take me out to the ballgame...

c)Manipulator in chief thinks that embroiling everyone in the whole controversy will distract us from the fact that he will be recalled,
and if everyone gets distracted enough, well, maybe he won't be recalled after all. Dream on, dear gremlin, because you are so history.
18
Finnegan, i'm an architect and have been to quite a few Winterhawks games - they're pretty fun (I'll have to keep my eye out for a cat fancier show). I also saw the Davis Cup Finals and Obama in the MC - two events I'll never forget. I love the transparent box with a teacup floating inside, and if I'm not mistaken the glass curtain wall is supported by wood columns - pretty rare and a classy regional touch on the international style. The building is a little worse for wear, but it does not need $150 million to upgrade. That's absurd. Maybe $20 million. Demolishing it for a AAA ballpark that can't be expanded for major league is shortsighted and foolish when there are better (albeit more time conusming) alternatives on the table.

Also, the MC really does look nice from my pearl condo. What's so wrong with that?
19
@ben

If you can find an owner with about $300-$400 million to buy a baseball team and another $300-$400 million to spend on a new MLB stadium of their personal money and be willing to work with the City of Portland to secure another $200-$400 million of public money to build the MLB stadium then you can complain about a AAA park in the Rose Quarter.

MLB is a pipe dream kids. It's not coming here anytime soon. The league has been on the verge of contraction very recently and expansion is not going to happen anytime soon. The two teams really struggling (Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay) have solved their problems (Marlins just got a stadium deal and Tampa Bay figured out how to win) and aren't moving anywhere.

In the event of MLB expansion Portland wouldn't be considered because:

A: There aren't enough big corporations here to support a team.

B: Did you see what just happened trying to secure $85 million for 2 stadiums? Now replace $85 million with $200-$800 million depending on what the potential owner is willing to spend of his personal wealth and that owner will not be willing to issue a personal guarantee on paying back the public money spent on the stadiums like Paulson is doing.

Read: MLB ain't happening in Portland. Get over it.

Please wait...

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