Before council started talking about building a baseball stadium in Lents, you may remember a huge argument over demolishing/saving Memorial Coliseum. Randy Leonard said it was “ugly.” Portland Architecture blogger Brian Libby challenged him to tour the place. Then Mayor Sam Adams said he’d save the Coliseum.
Well, not so fast…
Adams didn’t actually promise to save the Coliseum, per se. He said he’d look at other options. And yesterday’s news that a consultant’s report suggests Lents is a bad location for the stadium has the friends of Memorial Coliseum nervous that council may try to pull a bait and switch on the deal. They’ve even gone and got a logo together to express their nervousness:
“Nobody in the story, from the City Council to Merritt Paulson, is yet suggesting that attention be turned back to demolishing the Coliseum,” writes Libby, on his blog today. “But that is the clear logical extension.”
“The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck,” says Libby. “And Carmina Burana is playing in the back of my head for the first time in weeks. When my cat sees something outside that makes her alarmed, she gets all fluffy, and I’m fluffy right now.”
What’s wrong? Doesn’t Libby trust Adams, Leonard, and Paulson?
“I would never trust any leader completely in that situation,” he says.
“Mr. Libby has been in touch with our office today, and we’ve assured him that there is no interest in re-opening the Memorial Coliseum/Baseball discussion,” says Adams’ spokesman, Roy Kaufmann. “Fluffing up sounds unpleasant.”
Took me a minute to sort out that logo. The curved part, which I take it represents the inner bowl (and maybe also an infinity symbol?), looks a lot like the Rose Garden roof, and the box around it is not obviously the glass box, sort of looks like just a background.
> she gets all fluffy, and I’m fluffy right now.
OMFG. These are the people that we are allowing to dictate what we do with one of the most significant parcels of property in the city? Oh HELL no.
Raze the Coliseum, and do it NOW. It is a money pit that will never be economically viable again. The Rose Quarter neighborhood needs something useful to go in there, not a deteriorating relic from the 50s.
Useful like a fucking AAA baseball stadium? Fuck you.
Oh Mr. Voluptuous, thank goodness you are around to entertain us all with your hijinks.
Why do people like mr. voluptuous insist on making shit up?
Memorial Coliseum doesn’t lose money, despite being operated by the same group that operates the Rose Garden. You don’t think there is a conflict of interest there?
According to the Portland Tribune http://portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?…,
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Although the city owns the coliseum, it is operated by the Oregon Arena Corp., which also operates the Rose Garden.
David Logsdon, Portland’s spectator facilities manager, said the city collects 6 percent of all ticket revenue for coliseum events and parking in city garages during the events.
During the past few years, the city’s annual revenue from the coliseum has averaged $475,000, Logsdon said. Annual expenses for the building have averaged $380,000, he said.
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The Memorial Coliseum, as is, generates revenue for the city. Contrast this with a scenario where a new baseball stadium is built.
First, we would have to demolish Memorial Coliseum which is appraised north of $50 million. Then we would have to spend another $50 million to build the baseball stadium.
The Beavers at PGE Park already bring in 5,500 people per game over 72 games. The tickets for these games are already taxed and go into the city’s spectator fund. For the city to see any increase in revenue, the Beavers would have to increase their attendance.
Would this hoped-for increase in attendance generate enough revenue to pay for the debt plus INTEREST incurred by the $50 million for the new baseball stadium?
Essentially, mr. voluptuous is asking people to believe it is more “useful” to go into debt to build a new baseball stadium while demolishing a profitable building that could be even more profitable were it to be operated by a more interested operator.
I have no strongly held feelings either way, but I find it strange, in Portland of all places, that we’d rather cut down 40 trees in Lents than knock down a building. Welcome to bizarro Portland.
That old boring building is a place holder for a lovely baseball park. Bring on the bulldozers, create a new war memorial and move on. That squat black box party ended long ago.
Can’t we just cut a series of gigantic holes in the roof of the MC, install solar shingles fuelling grow-lights on the rest of the roof, maybe even remove one of the walls so that the view of the river would be unobstructed, and play soccer in there?
Then there would be no need to squander 30 million on renovating PGE, the baseball fans get to stay put, the soccer people get a great venue, and we’re fucking done, end of story, amen.
Also, veterans would not turn in their graves.
Architects might demur over the lack of purity and preservation, but I bet some of them would get a real hard-on about making the world’s sexiest, most sustainable, coolest looking, most historic-preservation oriented soccer stadium in the world.