Here it is, Portland — the long-awaited vision for the Rose Quarter area: JumpTown
Here’s your link to the website. The plan also includes “a bright future for Memorial Coliseum.” That promise right there might be enough to make the project difficult to pull off.
Trail Blazers, Worthwhile endeavors, arenas, small-town Portland | Dwight Jaynes | November 2, 2009
Dwight Jaynes, JumpTown, Portland, Rose Quarter, Trail Blazers
Mark my words. This will make tearing down the Coliseum and putting a AAA ballpark seem like a cheap alternative.
Hope everyone likes Buffalo Wild Wings.
Noooooooooooooooo !!!! The area must be preserved as an architectual showpiece….. Gee…. a potential fun destination for everyone… Nah… can’t have that here in podunk hipster Portland…
So what’s the problem?
I’m not excited about the idea of restaurant/bars and crap, but in order for that to get fully developed, you have to have interested tenants… And i don’t think they’ll get many of those. I think that part of the “vision” will get scaled back.
Having a renovated MC (if done CORRECTLY) makes the most long-term sense to me. If it is actually gutted and re-configured into a 5,000-8,000 seat arena there would be a decent alternative for smaller event/concerts, etc as well as a home for the Winterhawks (who hopefully will get back in shape and draw crowds).
My big beef with building a(nother) ballpark (aside from the fact that our current one isn’t paid for) is that it’s good during baseball season. The Beavers would play there (assuming they aren’t moved or dismantled by San Diego, which is always a possibility) you could host some High School/Babe Ruth games… and then nothing. From November to March (or April) the place would be worthless.
Add:
A commenter on the O’s website mentioned the possibility of PSU getting in on the action for their needed arena as well.
If Paul Allen, Bill Gallacher and PSU can all play nicely, we’d be talking about alot of serious money that can be thrown at this project… and two fairly decent tenants in place as well.
Great news for Dwight, more to complain about.
Sorry Larry, I like you but this looks like a colossal failure to me. You said all the right things like Sustainable and named it after the history of the neighborhood which is great, but I can see them putting some really corporate restaurants in here that don’t fit Portland.
Wow… This makes tearing down the MC and building a new baseball stadium look like a great idea!
Yup saw this one coming months and miles ago….this is why the blazers hated the baseball parl being built…glitz and spam. yawn. Glitz is so midwest….btw the midwest sucks.
you see libby and his bunch were in these glitzer’s pockets….all the way up the underwear.
Why don’t Portland just sell the MC to Paul Allen via Vulcan and they can develop it all on their own. Take the money and build the baseball venue and both can win!
Right on David.
Dwight, I expected you to have a lot more to say about this subject. More to follow I’m sure….
This is so stupid. Indeed – as others have mentioned, for starters, it’ll cost way way way more than it would to bulldoze the MC, and build a 3A baseball stadium. Secondly – what the hell is it? Sports? And music? And retail. And restaurants. Oh yeah – even though there’s a plethora of retail and restaurants just over the river in the Pearl, and just to the east at Lloyd Center, they’ll build more here, even though it’s not entirely clear what the actual draw to this area will actually be. So there’s no place to play music in Portland? Hm. Other than the Schnitz, PCPA, the Armory, and oh yeah – the Rose Garden, which is right FREAKIN’ NEXT DOOR! If the concerts at the Rose Garden can’t draw folks into the restaurants that used to be in the Rose Quarter, how is this going to change things? That Nike “interactive experience” (whatever the heck that means) better be one hell of a show. Oy – you’ve got to be freaking kidding me.
Great idea! Lets build stuff we already have too much of in an area no one wants to hang out in. Brilliant! Portland city counsel if you have a clue, sell it to the casinos for $350 or $450 million. Let the Casino invest another $250/$350 making it into a world class casino. This would most definitely lead to one or two major world class hotels being built near the Rose Garden & Convention Center which they badly need to help draw big events to the city. The city would have the money in hand to renovate PGE Park and build a new ballpark for the Beavers and inject about 1 billion in construction work in the city. Who looses with this one? Oh I forgot, we don’t approve of gambling in our city. Only video poker, card rooms, lotto, ect, ect, ect!
Well, I hope it succeeds. I think it is a risky proposition given the history of that area, the economy, and the probable bad mix of tenants that they will try to bring in…
that said, let’s hope it works, becuase if it does, the city will look better, feel better, and have another nice place to stamp into the culture.