Really, you care that much about the Beavers?
Geesh, if everyone who is suddenly screaming now about the Portland Beavers moving out of town actually went to games, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
I’m not that concerned about this fuss. If Vancouver, Hillsboro or anywhere else around here stepped up and built a beautiful ballpark, I’d like that better than PGE Park for minor-league baseball. And believe me, PGE Park is a very short ride from where I live.
It’s just that it’s time for us to have a real ballpark. Not a stadium. A ballpark — built for baseball. And if it’s done right, I repeat, it’s going to work even if it’s on Sauvie Island.
Baseball, Fans, small-town Portland | Dwight Jaynes | June 21, 2009
Yes, I care and I go. Vancouver is only allright as a last resort. Hillsboro would be my choice if not Portland, Beaverton or Gresham. What about the Dog Track?
Skavone Field at Westmoreland Park seems to have a similar footprint as Lents. It’s a little tighter but could work. Light rail is due to be completed along Mcloughlin in 2015. Just a thought.
Hillsboro Stadium, just off the freeway. You’d have people from the coast to Portland all taking one main road to the game. Being so close to Intel and Nike would also help in a variety of ways.
and btw, you were great on the radio this week. You and CIP have totally different styles and it mixes really well. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up on the local air full time.
So long as the PGE Park renovations are decoupled from the new baseball stadium all will be well. No reason for one to hold up the other. Hillsboro would be more of a trek but more pleasant and navigable than getting Lents. As it is now, I only go to one baseball game per year. A smaller, more intimate stadium would really add to the experience and may get me to attend two games per year. If you build it they will come.
Hillsboro Stadium is a terrible idea because it’s in Hillsboro. Nothing against the city, it’s just not Portland. There is no light rail or major bus lines to Hillsboro Stadium from the rest of Metro area, plus it’s 15 miles west of downtown Portland. The PORTLAND Beavers need to stay in the city limits of Portland.
Last summer, I saw a game at Raley Field in Sacramento. It was a far superior experience to PGE Park. With a new, state of the art facility, the Beavers will probably be a much bigger draw than they are now.
Why do you have to go to games to want the Beavers to stay in the city? I went to a lot of games as a young baseball player growing up in Portland. It was a great experience that I want other kids to have. It got me and my friends out of the suburbs and into the city and helped me fall in love with the city of Portland. I see it as an extremely valuable investment for the city.
Here are 10 reasons why you should care about the city abandoning the plans to move the Beavers to the Rose Quarter:
1. Attendance – Minor league baseball teams draw 50% more fans in a downtown ballpark than a nondowntown ballpark.
2. Redevelopment – Downtown minor league ballparks have a good (though not perfect) track record at helping to spur development in the immediate vicinity, whereas nondowntown parks have a unanimously horrible track record at spurring redevelopment.
3. Obsolescence – Over the past two decades, most AAA teams outside of the downtown core draw poorly and have attempted to move their ballparks downtown… i.e., there is a high probability that a ballpark built in the boondocks will be obsolete within a decade or two.
4. Financial viability – Looking closely at the funding mechanisms, the Memorial Coliseum proposal was much closer to being a self-funding proposal compared to the Lents proposal – i.e., MC had a lower cost to the city (especially when factoring in getting rid of maintenance costs at MC) and higher revenue (especially with the city-owned parking garages in the Rose Quarter).
5. The MC’s present situation – The Memorial Coliseum is not economically viable despite a decade of efforts by the city to try and repurpose it.
6. The MC’s future – The Memorial Coliseum will not be economically viable in the next 50 years as long as the nearby Rose Garden exists. Metros that are up to twice the size of Portland are demolishing their redundant facilities due to lack of events to fill both the new and the old facilities.
7. Infrastructure – A ballpark is the ideal fit to pair with the Rose Garden because the infrastructure (two city-owned parking garages, two highways, onramps/offramps, four light rail lines, and soon, a streetcar line) is already there sitting unused to accommodate fans outside of basketball season. Any other site, especially as you get further outside the downtown core, will have significant system development charges for infrastructure that is likely to be underutilized (wasted) outside of game nights.
8. Rose Quarter as an attraction – A ballpark attracting 5k-10k fans on 72 days during the summer months is the best way to lure additional patrons to the Rose Quarter outside of basketball season.
9. Rose Quarter synergy – A ballpark would enhance, not inhibit, the Blazers’ plans to create a viable entertainment district in the Rose Quarter. The space taken by the ballpark should not be a problem since there are other tracts of land that are available for redevelopment nearby, either now or in the near future as the Quarter takes shape.
10. MLS and the future of pro sports in Portland – after the PFE fiasco at PGE Park, the city cannot afford to screw this up again. It is important to put together a plan that gives both the teams and the city the best chance at success (both in terms of financial viability and fan attendance). If they don’t, it will be much more difficult politically in the coming decades when new opportunities arise for sports teams, and old teams come back asking for help with upgrades, remodels, or new facilities.
As always, CL nails it. Look, a ballpark in Lents, Vancouver, or any other locale out of the central city core is not a good idea.
Lets build smart.
@Greg – Why don’t you send that in a letter to the mayor and city council. If enough people start to drown out the noise of the vocal minority about the MC then maybe they will be moved to do something.
Greg,
I second what david1978pdx wrote about you sending what you wrote in a letter to the city council or the Oregonian, seriously.
Your arguments are more thorough and viable than anything I’ve read from Randy Leonard or Sam Adams and I think your ideas could potentially catch an eye or two.
Still need convincing? Here are 10 more reasons why you should care about the city abandoning the plans to move the Beavers into the Rose Quarter:
1. Portland State’s arena – PSU is planning to build a new 3,000-5,000 seat arena to replace the woefully inadequate Stott Center. This arena, while beneficial to PSU, is likely to have many open dates available and is likely to match the post-WWII modernist architecture found at many other PSU campus buildings as well as, you guessed it, the Memorial Coliseum. It makes no sense for the city to rehabilitate the MC just so that it can compete with PSU’s new arena, the privately-owned (and recently struggling) Rose Garden, and the underutilized Convention Center across the street.
2. Portland State’s future – The new arena (which will host many academic events as well as sports and entertainment) is a crucial element to help cement PSU as a world-class urban university. Rehabbing the MC will make it that much more difficult to get the new PSU arena off the ground and will thus hurt the university, and thus higher education in Portland generally, moving forward.
3. Carbon footprint – By far, the most “green” option would be for the city to demolish the energy-hogging MC and replace it with a LEED-certified, energy-sipping ballpark which also adds more carbon-soaking grass and offers the best option for encouraging alternative transit. The Lents proposal, by contrast, leaves the MC intact, eliminates park space, and makes it more difficult for most of the metro area to get there using alternative transit.
4. Convention Center Hotel – Converting the Rose Quarter into a year round facilities-based destination will create the largest demand for hotel usage within the immediate vicinity. This will help to increase private sector support for a much need convention center hotel.
5. Eastside streetcar support – There are rumors floating at City Hall and Trimet expressing deep concern over how successful the new eastside streetcar line will be. If it is less successful at spurring development than the initial line, this will hurt the city’s chances at developing an inner-city streetcar network. A ballpark at the Rose Quarter will create private investment and a much-needed summertime destination point for the eastside streetcar line which will help increase usage and, hopefully, spur further adjacent development at the Rose Quarter and the adjacent eastside stops.
6. Major League Baseball expansion – Major League Baseball may or may not expand to Portland in the next decade or two. Retaining a space in the Rose Quarter which could someday be used for an MLB stadium would be an important factor in helping to lure an MLB franchise if and when the time comes. For those who think that the Memorial Coliseum site would be too small, keep in mind that the proposal is to use 12 acres… the new 40,000 seat stadium for the Minnesota Twins will only take up eight acres, and it is likely that future MLB stadiums will have even smaller seating capacities.
7. The “Historical Register” moniker at the MC – Local interest groups are attempting to fast track the labeling of the 49 year old Memorial Coliseum with the “historical register” moniker. An unelected, unaccountable board will be voting on a proposal later this month for this designation which has been worked on behind closed doors for several months by some dedicated architects who are committed to its preservation. If this proposal moves forward, it will become very difficult to demolish the Memorial Coliseum because it will be forever labeled as historically significant. While it is fair to debate the architectural significance of the Memorial Coliseum, it is unfair to prohibit its demolition through a closed-door process which ignores economic realities.
8. Rose Quarter as an investment – the fact is, some people love the hustle and bustle of the city, and others don’t. By turning the Rose Quarter into a thriving year round facilities-based destination instead of a “busy during the winter on some days, dead the rest of the year” spot, the city will create a market for people who prefer to live, work, and/or play in such a location. This is likely to drive more mixed use development and the possibility of more ballpark/stadium high rise housing nearby.
9. River views – the Memorial Coliseum enjoys spectacular views which are almost never seen nor appreciated because of the very nature of the facility (nighttime events, closed curtains, people watching the action inside the bowl). A Rose Quarter ballpark with open views and a casual game time atmosphere has the potential to create a supreme in-game attraction and a destination of its own for fans. Anyone who has stood outside on the upper level of Safeco Field overlooking Puget Sound can imagine the potentially superior experience that would accompany a Rose Quarter ballpark.
10. Following through on your commitments – after five months of debate along with open, public task force meetings, the city council voted in March to approve the MLS/AAA proposal with the ballpark to be located in the Rose Quarter. For the city to go back on its word and its resolution now (without any meaningful or logical explanation why) is sending a chilling message to anyone who wants to do business with the city in the future. Is Portland truly the “city that works”?
Dwight, the short answer is no…
And now that Uncle Sam has been cleared, neither will he.
Greg: Your comments HAVE to get in the hands of the papers, and the politicos. Can you send all of your points to Sam/Randy/Dan as well as Kerry Eggers and John Canzano? Also, send to KFXX and 95.5.
Greg,
Any interest in re-formatting your 20 points into an opinion piece and submitting it to the Oregonian as a guest opinion piece?
Who cares
I said before in an earlier blog entry of Dwight’s that the smartest thing the Blazers could do is reverse themselves and allow the ballpark to be built in order to ensure the success of their mich ballyhooed “live entertainment district”. Greg made some epic points as well in this post.
As much people may SAY that public opposition was the cause of the City deciding not to build there, and all the architects armed to the teeth with their pocket protectors and protractors and Lord knows what else, why would the City shy away from doing something with a building that, technically, THEY own??? It HAS to be because of the Blazers. But I predict that they will not succeed in being the ONLY game in town. MLB will never come to Portland, and neither will the NFL, but someone will bring the NHL to town, and more than likely it wll be someone building a whole other arena for them since ol’ Paulie won’t bring in an NHL team.
But I’m getting off-topic.
What better place to build the new park than the MC site?? Wherever else the thing gets built, it damn well better be successful. You only get to get it right once.