MAYOR SAM ADAMS’ office appears to have sat on an economic
study showing that the construction of a Beavers ballpark in Lents
would create a “net job loss” for the city. The news comes as Lents
neighbors furiously debate whether to delay $42 million in local urban
renewal projects to pay for the stadium.
A neighborhood meeting last Wednesday night, May 20, ended with many
neighbors frustrated over lack of hard data about the economic impact
of the proposed investment. But as it turns out, the city received a
jobs study on the stadium two weeks ago.
Mayor Adams’ office asked consulting firm ECONorthwest on Monday,
May 11, to figure out the number of jobs the Beavers stadium
construction would create in Portland. The mayor gave ECONorthwest only
one working day to turn around the study, but its results were not good
news for the mayor’s office or the stadium plan: While the ballpark
construction would create 453 jobs during construction, the $49 million
total investment would actually create a net loss of 182 jobs
citywide.
“If those individuals who put their money into baseball via taxes
are allowed to put that money into the private market, that same amount
of money would actually yield more jobs,” explains ECONorthwest
number-cruncher Abe Farkas. The study also showed that 67 percent of
the construction jobs would go to people who do not live in the City of
Portland.
No one from the city mentioned the study results at neighborhood
meetings about the stadium on May 12 or May 20. When one Lents resident
at the May 20 meeting pressed for “concrete details,” Commissioner
Randy Leonard deferred to Beavers representative Greg Peden, who
responded that stadium construction would produce 300 union jobs over
two years.
Mayor Adams’ spokesman Roy Kaufmann says the mayor’s office did not
release the numbers right away because conversations needed to happen
within the mayor’s office.
“We don’t sit on anything because we don’t like the findings,” says
Kaufmann. “Once the mayor’s office received the report we had to vet it
and discuss its implications. But the report is based on some seriously
faulty underlying assumptions.”
For example, the report compares building the stadium to not
collecting urban renewal tax dollars to fund the construction, where in
fact, urban renewal taxes will continue to be collected in Lents
regardless of whether the stadium is built, Kaufmann says.
“The basic assumptions of this study are fine, given its context,”
responds Farkas. “We were asked to look at one small
slice—jobs—and there’s no way we could have taken into
account all that other stuff given the one or two days we were given to
complete the study.”