This’ll teach a Mercury reporter to spend 48 hours coming up with all the economic reasons why a major league soccer deal is a bad idea…it turns out the deal to bring the sport to Portland may be on the verge of falling apart because of a personality clash between the two principle brokers.

City Commissioner Randy Leonard told the Portland Business Journal Friday that Timbers and Beavers owner Merritt Paulson had “stormed out” of a meeting with Leonard and the mayor on Thursday night, after refusing to insulate the city from cost overruns on the planned renovation of PGE park.

So I asked Leonard to clarify what he meant by “storming out,” when he talked to the PBJ, and got the following response by email, earlier this afternoon:

Sam announced at the beginning of our negotiations Thursday evening that he had to leave at 6:15. I said I would stay as long as it took Thursday night to get a deal.

So first off, the comment by Merritt that he thought we had a previous engagement was disingenuous.

After negotiating for a while, Merritt and his team went into a another room as Steve Janik went between each side, us in the Mayor’s conference room and they in a different conference room on the 2nd floor of city hall.

Sam had left and Steve came back into our conference room and said that the other side had decided, after our last offer, to leave. As soon as he said that, they walked through the Mayor’s conference room door unannounced, looked at or talked to no one, grabbed their coats and left without saying a word. Not a “see ya”, “thanks, Randy, for missing dinner with your family once again for us”, “good night” or even a “screw off you jack asses”.

I called that storming out…what would you call it?

Randy

Paulson told the PBJ Friday that he’s still optimistic about striking a deal, but Commissioner Leonard has a pretty long memory when crossed. Having said that, he might be persuaded to forget the snub, I guess, if Paulson would just write a large enough check.

Jack Bogdanski thinks the spat’s all for show. “The only safe assumption is that the Paulson stadiums deal is still very much on track, regardless of how utterly insane it is,” he writes.

Meanwhile Jeremy Wright at MLS to PDX has a guest column at Blue Oregon about why progressives should support the deal.

There’ll be a vitriolic rebuttal of Wright’s guest column on Blogtown by a house representative, Monday morning. Not to mention more numbers and financial projections than you can shake a hand of god at. Still, I swear: This is getting tenser than the penalties in the England/Germany match at the world cup in 1990!

Matt Davis was news editor of the Mercury from 2009 to May 2010.

14 replies on “Is Soccer Deal Headed To Sudden Death?”

  1. Until you take the time to ask the question “What is the consequence of a ‘no’ vote,” you are only pretending to do your job well.

  3. I don’t agree GLV. Most analysts believe that the Vancouver Whitecaps MLS bid will succeed. That means that the nearest team in the USL for the Timbers to play is either in Austin, TX or Blaine, Minnesota. No minor league franchise with player salaries in the $12-20,000 range can survive if *all* of its road games are so distant. Conversely, the other teams in the league, all of them two whole time zones away, would find it burdensome to travel to Portland for a single game three times a season. I sincerely believe that unless both Portland and Vancouver are absorbed by MLS or both are passed over, the one left behind in USL will cease to exist. We will have *amateur* soccer at PGE Park. Or, more likely, at Lincoln HS or Delta Park. And the city’s revenue stream from PGE Park — which is a profit-maker — would shrink decidedly.

  5. An advocate of the theft of Lent’s park for this private enterprise claims a survey of nearby residents supports putting a new baseball stadium there, along with the 5,000 parking spaces. Does the Merc have that survey? What did they really ask, who did they ask, etc? These things are proven to create economic and social vacuums around them, except for the actual times of the events. I can’t believe people who actually live around there want that. It makes no sense.

  6. Katie —

    At the task force meetings, a Lents community organization presented the results of a household survey that received more than 1000 responses and favored the proposal 2-to-1. Sorry, but I don’t have the details of who exactly they were or where their numbers live on the City of Portland web site.

  7. Katie,

    Vic was close. It was the President of the Lents neighborhood association that presented those figures. It’s not really a theft either since they’re just replacing Paul Walker stadium…

  8. Katies question still needs an answer. What was the actual survey? What was actually asked? That area needs more parks not fewer. It is hard to beleive that a valid survey would say otherwise.

  9. I’m interested in exactly what Paulson’s team is/was expecting in this economic climate. He should talk to his dad, or at least read the paper, maybe check his own portfolio?

    Why don’t we invest some of this public money into keeping the buses running so the dwindling pool of employed people can still make it to work?

  11. 43% agreeing that a baseball stadium in Lents park would be good for the neighborhood, or would help create jobs or would attract people to the area isn’t two to one. Add that it was a survey by mail out of 9,233 surveys sent, 1,001 were returned. People responding “somewat agree” are then counted as “very much agree.” That was’t a great survey.

  12. Smiley,

    Speaking as someone that works in research and analytics I can tell you right now you’re dead wrong and are making a stupid argument. 68.6% of the responders are in favor. 6.6% don’t care either way and 24.7% are against. 2 X 24.7% is less than 68.6%. For my clients favorable vs. unfavorable numbers like this would be a huge win.

    For any kind of mailed response about 10% is normal. Of course you probably won’t believe me since you’re such a genius on the matter.

  13. If you don’t vote/respond, *that’s* your vote/response.

    The people motivated to respond = the electorate. You don’t vote/respond, you have forfeited your right to whine. Or at least to have your whining carry weight.

  14. BTW, Garrett, I work in research too, and the Q’s seem kinda not neutral and a tad loaded, as they don’t give specifics as to trade-offs and costs. But then again, whats 85 mil between friends, right?

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