Nice job today by The Oregonian summarizing the mess that is Memorial Coliseum. I especially loved our fine mayor’s contributions to the story, including this gem, in reaction to The Trail Blazers’ “Jumptown” concept:

“Terrible,” Adams said of early Jumptown drawings. “The most un-Portland-like, significantly un-Portland like, renderings of what it would be.”

Now I wasn’t pleased with the role the Trail Blazers played in this whole thing. Most people I know believe they were the ones — not a band of architects — who torpedoed the idea of tearing MC down and building a ballpark. But I was intrigued by “Jumptown” and more than that, I fell on the floor laughing at Sam Adams’ idea that it was “un-Portland-like.”

What does that mean, Mr. Mayor? That it might actually be successful? Gawd, isn’t it time to go with something un-Portland-like? The whole idea that people can’t come to grips with the fact that the building is old, worn out and in serious need of a demolition is still something this city doesn’t want to face up to.

So, just as Portland has done with PGE Park, it will keep pumping taxpayer dollars into it, chasing good money after bad, trying to save something that deserves to be discarded — recycling gone wild. This city won’t come to grips with the idea that sports arenas have a distinct shelf life. Of course, this city won’t come to grips with the idea that every other major city in the world builds new arenas.

I’m warning you, Portland, you follow Adams’ idiotic plans for this site — basically just an overgrown community center — you’re going to be subsidizing that white elephant for decades.

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When Portland lost the Beavers a couple of other times, I figured it wouldn’t be long before the city got another PCL team. But this time, I don’t expect Triple-A baseball back soon, or maybe ever.

But at least now it’s out in the open that this city is finished with this go-round in the Pacific Coast League. So if you’re nostalgic at all about the Beavers, you better find a game or two to attend in the next few weeks.

I can’t get too worked up about the team leaving this time, either. Man, PGE Park stinks to high heaven as a baseball facility and pretty much always has, especially so since the city chose the wrong plan for the latest renovation.

Latest rumor on the future of professional baseball in Portland: The University of Portland is making plans to move Joe Etzel Field from its current on-campus location next to the Chiles Center to a spot down the bluff near the Willamette River. The idea being floated around is that the city of Portland could share the cost of construction of that new ballpark, which would then be used in the summer as the home for a Class A, short-season, Northwest League team for Portland.

While the Mavericks and the Rockies both had successful runs in the NWL in previous times when the PCL was jerked out of Portland, I can’t say I’d be too excited by another Class A run. Been there and done that.

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What’s worse than losing the Beavers? Watching a little town of 137,000 people build a Triple-A ballpark while this city cannot get anything together for stadiums other than once again renovating an old barn for soccer.

This is from a recent Sports Business Daily:

An ownership group led by Padres Vice Chair & CEO Jeff Moorad is “close to signing a deal that calls for the team to move” the Triple-A Pacific Coast League Portland Beavers, a Padres affiliate, to a 9,000-seat ballpark in Escondido, Calif., to be built by the city for $45M, according to J. Harry Jones of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE. If the memorandum of understanding is finalized, Escondido “would agree in principle to build the ballpark on city-owned property — mostly vacant land used partly as a public-works yard — just east of Interstate 15 and just south of state Route 78.” The city “would hand over to the Padres all money from concession sales and naming rights for the facility.” Jones notes negotiations “could hinge on how the ballpark is financed.” One proposal calls for Escondido to “sell bonds that would be repaid with property-tax revenues that the city’s redevelopment agency is expected to generate over the next 26 years.” Interest payments on the project “could push the final bill” to $90M. Moorad as part of the deal “would buy” the Beavers franchise (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 7/21). Moorad said, “We’re in the process of putting together a deal to acquire the Portland franchise. And we’ve had talks with several municipalities, including Escondido. But I need to clarify one thing. The Padres are not trying to purchase the Portland franchise. Jeff Moorad and his ownership group are. I know it sounds like the same thing, but it’s not.” Moorad added that the cost of the franchise is “expected to be from” $20-25M (NORTH COUNTY TIMES, 7/21).

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This from outside our studio during the show this morning. Is he in season?

This little guy was a long way from home

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In the comments section of a recent post I heard a lot of people whining about Allen.

You can say what you want about how he’s run the team — and I’ve been critical of his management style — and you can even stay all paranoid about him moving the team to Seattle, which he isn’t going to do.

But I remain firmly convinced of one thing — without Allen as the team’s owner, the Trail Blazers would have moved out of Portland a long time ago.

Huh?

Well, here’s the thing — Allen’s most lasting contribution to Portland sports isn’t just his ownership of the team, it’s that he built the Rose Garden. And I will maintain forever that he’s the only one who would have done it.

I mean, seriously — you think the city of Portland would have done it? There is NO WAY. In the 90s, this team would have still been trying to make it playing in Memorial Coliseum and our city would have slipped into its usual “if you want an arena, you better build it yourself” mode and any other rational owner in sports would have looked elsewhere.

I mean, plenty of other cities would have been willing to build an NBA owner a new arena. The Trail Blazers would have moved to Kansas City or Las Vegas a decade ago without Paul Allen deciding just to build his own venue, which ended up costing him a lot of money and heartache.

The fact is, the price you pay for major-league teams these days — which most progressive cities believe is important — is building the venue.

Portland doesn’t do sports venues. We re-do them. Which is a bit of a joke in most cases.

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It’s certainly the last time Oregon and Oregon State will meet in baseball in the Portland area for quite a while. As you know, PGE Park becomes a soccer/football-only venue after this summer and it’s not likely either school would give up a home game to come to Portland to play in a venue that doesn’t seat way more people than their own ballparks.

And I don’t see any ballpark plans on the horizon anytime soon for this city. Baseball was the last Civil War sport being played outside Eugene or Corvallis and is a major attraction here. It should be even bigger this time with the Ducks seemingly already having nailed down an NCAA tournament berth and the Beavers still having a shot at one.

My big regret for tonight is that the weather is probably going to be a pain. It will certainly hold the attendance down a little, along with the game being telecast locally on Comcast Sportsnet. If you can’t make it to the ballpark, catch Joe Giansante and me on the broadcast at 6:30.

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It’s no secret. There’s no place for them to play next season. They have to go somewhere else next summer — for at least one summer. I would guess that it would be Tucson.

Now that could be one summer or forever. Most likely forever. My guess would be that if the team isn’t for sale now it soon will be. And not a day goes by that some old-time baseball fan doesn’t send me an email or call me, begging me to help keep the team here. And to complain about “Merritt Paulson moving the team out of town.”

Sorry, I’m not going to go there. For one thing, all Paulson has tried to do is get this community to build a long-overdue ballpark. And he’s offered to put $10 million of his own money to help do it — way more than most minor-league team owners would do.

The place the Beavers have been playing since the mid-1950s was never a ballpark. It’s a stadium, always best fit for football rather than baseball — from that first day in 1956, when as a little kid I watched the team try to shoehorn itself into a configuration that for fans and players, never did make much sense.

There have been a couple of tries to make it a better facility for baseball but the wrong plan was always chosen and always failed. I have no nostalgic feelings about PGE Park, Civic Stadium or Multnomah Stadium — whatever you want to call it — and I have spent more time in that facility than just about anyone in this area. I worked there for years, from the time I was 13 years old picking up bats, all the way through college as a front-office employee and then as a writer covering teams.

It’s a cold, uncomfortable venue that in and of itself has done more to turn people off to baseball than any promoter or team that has ever played there. I wish those attempting to convert it into yet another type of stadium the best of luck. I hope it works. But it was never going to work as a ballpark.

And this city’s continued failure to recognize the need for even a medium-sized home for a professional baseball team no longer bothers me, either. I mean, at a certain point you just accept the fact that this is what we are as a city — a place unlike just about any other major city in the world.

Believe it or not, other cities everywhere recognize the value of pro sports to a community and what they bring. Not just monetarily but culturally. I don’t think we ever will get that here — we think, as a city, we’re too smart for that. We ask the Paulsons of the world to build their own arenas and stadiums. And they don’t. We got lucky when Paul Allen did it and we aren’t going to get that lucky again. Nobody else is that rich or that stupid.

There are too many other places who will build arenas or stadiums for these owners. Is that the right thing for a city? Who is to say. It’s just the way it’s done, folks. You want to be in the game, you spend the money. All other cities do it and don’t look back.

The price, really, is so inconsequential compared to the money thrown away on other stuff that you don’t even notice it. Or maybe you do. Fact is, at a certain point of living here all your life, you just lose patience with the whole concept.

I’ve pretty much given up on Portland ever realizing its potential as a city. Not just as a sports town but as a major city. The lack of understanding about what it takes to keep a city healthy and vibrant business-wise is appalling. The misplaced faith in our politicians has betrayed us over and over. There’s been a leadership vacuum here for decades.

And what’s always bothered me is not that we’re lost, it’s that most people here don’t even realize how lacking in direction we are. We have no leaders and no plan.

Bike paths are not a destination, folks. They’re a distraction on the way to one. Trolleys are an expensive and very slow ride to nowhere. But in this city, it’s always seemed that the journey matters more than the destination. That’s the way it works when you have no idea where you’re going.

Welcome to Portland, the city that doesn’t work. And hasn’t for years.

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And as one commenter pointed out, if there truly is a hotel problem in Portland, just bring a cruise ship up the river, dock it right there downtown and take care of everyone. It would be kind of fun.

And if it was good enough for the Super Bowl in Jacksonville it would certainly take care of the All-Star Game in Portland.

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I’m sure you saw this story about Orlando landing the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. It’s the second time the Magic have played host to the game since it came into the league.

Meanwhile, Portland remains one of the few teams in the league to never have played host to the game — which sticks in the craw of a lot of long-time Portlanders. Oh, I know, when you talk to the Trail Blazers they’ll tell you that the lack of hotel space, or the lack of a huge headquarters hotel in the vicinity of the arena, means Portland CANNOT host it.

That’s an impediment, but seriously — it’s just the easy excuse for the league and the team. The simple fact is, the Blazers quit bidding for the game years ago. They really haven’t wanted it. Many NBA teams have no interest in staging the game. It is a major pain in the backside.

I don’t think the Blazers have had any interest in messing around with all the details and distractions that the All-Star Weekend can bring to a franchise. The only entity that really benefits from the event is the city itself, with all the visitors and attention in can bring to a community.

There are two real reasons for a team to chase that game. The first is that you’re having trouble selling season tickets and you need the game to spark interest in your NBA team. You can even include tickets to the game or the Saturday circus of events as part of a season-ticket package. This reason is much less common than it used to be, mainly because the hosting teams just don’t get all that many tickets anymore. The league sucks most of them up for its bigwigs and VIPs.

The best reason to want the game now is that it’s major leverage in your community. If you need some juice with the mayor or city council in getting a new arena built or renovated, you can promise the All-Star Game — and often the local political hacks will fall all over themselves to help you. The game does bring major revenue into town and also brings plenty of attention to a community.

For politicians, it doesn’t get any better than that.

OK, so let’s fast-forward to our situation in Portland. Right now in the Rose Quarter, three different groups are trying to win the right to develop the area — including the Trail Blazers’ Jumptown proposal. The basketball team is the favorite in the process, by the way. The Blazers usually get what they want around here, as all of us who wanted to see Memorial Coliseum turned into a showplace for a beautiful minor-league baseball stadium know by now.

But if you’re the City Council and the mayor’s office, the least you can do is extract a commitment from the Trail Blazers that they’ll do ALL they can to get an All-Star Game in Portland in return for the rights to developing Jumptown. It would be a nice way to open that neighborhood when and if it ever does get built.

And honestly, hotel rooms or not — and with all the damn trolleys and trains running around this town, our hotels are all accessible from the Rose Quarter — this town DESERVES an NBA All-Star Game. And the Blazers damn well ought to start bidding for it again.

The league owes us one and so does the team. I cannot believe our “city fathers” — and in the case of Portland even using that old term is pretty hilarious — haven’t pressured the team to make it happen by now. Well, I CAN believe it because the level of naivete around City Hall when it comes to sports has never been higher.

But the mayor, city council and everyone else in a position to have a say about developing that Rose Quarter area should make sure they do all they can to get past the BS and hold the Trail Blazers accountable for bringing the game here.

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No.

I’m taking some heat from a few long-time friends that I’m not in the middle of the fight to keep PGE Park as a combination baseball/football/soccer venue. But really, it’s not worth fighting for.

It’s never been a ballpark. It’s been a stadium. And I’m just not going to settle for a stadium any longer. If we have to lose baseball yet another time, in order to get a real ballpark built, I’m all for it.

The University of Oregon, for $21 million, has built PK Park, a gem of a ballpark — a facility that may be the best ballpark anywhere between Seattle and San Francisco. And Portland, in like 100 years, can’t build a new ballpark? Ridiculous.

And I sit back and watch politicians criticize Randy Leonard and Sam Adams for what they’re doing with PGE Park, well — at least it’s SOMETHING. I mean, if you’re against the current plan for PGE Park, what exactly is your plan for professional sports in Portland? That’s what I thought — you really don’t care. You have no plan.

Am I big soccer fan? Obviously not. But for me, it is serving a purpose. It’s forcing this city to face up to its sports future. Will we ever build that ballpark, that gem, here? Maybe not. Probably not. At least not in my lifetime.

But at least we’re no longer fooling ourselves into thinking PGE Park is a real ballpark. It’s a stadium. And if you don’t know the difference, well, that’s maybe why we’re in the fix we’re in.

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