This franchise can take injuries and defections at just about every position but one — at the very top. There is no other owner out there like Paul Allen.

I remember telling someone this summer, every time this man sets foot in the Rose Garden he ought to get a standing ovation. He’s been that important not only to this franchise but this city. Do you really think Portland would have built a new arena unless he paid for it? Really? I don’t. No way.

The city of Portland would either be still trying to tweak and “renovate” Memorial Coliseum — or the team would be long gone to Memphis or somewhere else by now.

Do you think any other owner would be willing to lose the millions and millions of dollars Paul Allen has lost on the Trail Blazers? I don’t think so. The realities of owning a team in a small market haven’t been a problem here for years. We’re so spoiled here that fans and media take it for granted. I have for years.

Allen treats this franchise as if it’s located in New York or Los Angeles, spending what it takes to win and knowing the bottom line is going to be scary. He’s tightened his belt at times, but who doesn’t? It still hasn’t deterred him from trying to make this the best franchise in the NBA.

He just wants to win. God love him for that. And God bless him in his fight against non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

My first reaction upon hearing the news that he’s fighting cancer again was pretty much what I wrote at the start of this post. I worry about who would own this team if he doesn’t. I can’t imagine the next owner being willing to subsidize the franchise the way he has.

I think that’s a natural knee-jerk reaction a lot of us had. But what I’m thinking about now is the man I’ve now been acquainted with for nearly two decades. A quiet, hard-to-get-to-know guy who keeps to himself and doesn’t reveal much. I’ve tweaked him in print and on the air countless times, without him ever complaining or whining or even acknowledging it.

But to watch, through his tenure as the team’s owner, what he’s put in to this town, both financially and emotionally, has been amazing.  He doesn’t ask for kudos or credit, but there ought to be a statue of him in the courtyard of the Rose Quarter.  Someday, the arena should bear his name.

I’m reminding you, he’s a special guy. Sure, he’s made mistakes and we’ve criticized him for them. But I also think we’ve taken him for granted for too long in Portland. Without him, I just don’t know where we’d be as a sports town — but it would be a lot less than what we are now.

Good luck, Paul. Beat this thing. Your team has a long run ahead but for it to reach its potential, you’ve really gotta be here running the show.

Tweet This Post

Tags: city of Portland, Memorial Coliseum, Paul Allen, Portland Trail Blazers, Rose Garden, Rose Quarter

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.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Dwight Jaynes, JumpTown, Portland, Rose Quarter, Trail Blazers

Our politicians have always been well behind on this issue. The people of Portland would love to have a casino centrally located where they can go a couple of times a month to watch big-time entertainment and dump a whole lot of money onto some table, never to be seen again.

I’ve always been for it. Been for legalized gambling of all sorts, actually. Doesn’t offend me in any way and has always appealed to me as a way to let others pay my taxes for me. Legalize it, tax it and I’m cool with it.

But the big thing — let’s allow that casino but leverage it. Get something big in return. Talk about some life for the Rose Quarter, a plush casino on the waterfront on the old hotel property Paul Allen owns, with a boat dock so you could also get there by water. And for the right to put it there, whoever is the owner of that casino must do the rest of the Rose Quarter up real nice. Level Memorial Coliseum, build that ballpark, put in a few other nice restaurants and clubs.

Oh, never mind. Makes too much sense for Portland to ever even think about.

Tweet This Post

Tags: ballpark, Casino, Dwight Jaynes, gambling, Portland, Rose Quarter

. . . the idea this city is probably most in love with: The idea of turning it into some sort of athletic club. This, from our comments section:

Now we can pick up the pieces , starting with recalling sammy , and fix up a fine work of Architecture. The idea of turning it into a Community Sports Center is STILL a great idea.

I could puke. I mean, there aren’t enough athletic clubs and community centers in Portland as it is? They’re everywhere — plush ones, too. There are rock-climbing gyms, weight-lifting gyms, basketball-court gyms and several places with a combination of all things necessary to a fitness center. There are so many a lot of them are losing money. To even imagine what it would take to convert that old rat-infested barn into some sort of “community athletic center” and keep it running is mind-boggling.

But typically Portland. Again, an idea fostered by people who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

I love the premise, too, that there’s no point in building a new Triple-A ballpark because the Beavers “only draw 5,000 a game.” Seriously? Man, if PGE Park were any worse for baseball, the Beavers wouldn’t draw that many.

The whole point of a new ballpark is to make the experience of going to games more rewarding. PGE Park has been rejected as a baseball stadium at this point. Just as Civic Stadium and Multnomah Stadium were rejected in previous years. It’s NEVER really been a ballpark — yes, Portlanders, there is a huge difference between a ballpark and a stadium — and the previous renovation did not address the problems with access, concessions, rest rooms and sightlines. PGE Park is still just a football stadium you can play soccer in.

If you’ve seen any of the modern Triple-A ballparks around the country, you’d know why one here would be a roaring success. The one in Sacramento has been a huge attraction for the community.

I used to get upset about how this town didn’t think big. But nowdays, it doesn’t even think medium. It thinks small. An athletic center? Seriously? The old idea of building a roller coaster is better than that. Especially if that coaster is the world’s biggest, or fastest, or the only one that’s covered to protect it from rain — ANYTHING that’s unique and fun.

Not in my city, though. Our big dreamers here would rather put up one more athletic club or just leave it as it is. Let someone else worry about it, is really what they’re saying. Put it off. Think about it sometime in the future.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Memorial Coliseum, PGE Park, roller coaster, Rose Quarter, Triple-A baseball

I get tired of beating this old dead horse-barn to death but seriously — you want the new ballpark to be built in Lents Park? Really? It was going to be in the Rose Quarter, where those seventy-some nights a year of games would feed the entertainment district along with the mostly fall/winter/spring stuff in the Rose Garden.

You want to bail out on all that just because a few very misguided guys with T-squares and pocket protectors think the MC must be saved? I certainly wouldn’t believe you’d pull back on it due to pressure from the Trail Blazers — they’ve had more than a decade to do something about the Rose Quarter and their efforts have been met with nothing but crickets and empty storefronts.

Ask around. Go find ANYBODY who actually goes inside the coliseum for events who thinks it ought to be saved. Who thinks that building has a future. Real citizens, real people — not the ones with a vested interest or an axe to grind — think the arena was good for its time but that its time is long gone. It’s now a dump — one that would be a whole lot cheaper to tear down than to upgrade. And upgrade for what reason? You’re trying to get people to bed down on a cot when they’re accustomed to the king-sized bed next door.

Once people saw the amenities of a new arena the day the Rose Garden opened, MC was doomed. Frankly, we didn’t know how outdated it was until we saw the next big thing. The old black-and-white television was great until you saw the color ones, right?

What, exactly, is going on? Seriously. I don’t get it. It’s time for all of you on the Council to realize this is a moment when you can actually make your mark. Time when you can actually be responsible for doing something that matters to people.

Come on, folks. Step up to the plate for once in your lives.

Tweet This Post

Tags: City Council, Dwight Jaynes, Memorial Coliseum, Rose Garden, Rose Quarter

But from what?

I hope everyone who had a hand in keeping the wrecking ball away from the old dump will be made to attend an event there real soon. I hope they enjoy the broken seats, stained ceiling, cracked cement, dingy atmosphere and stinky bathrooms. And they can sit back and ponder the amount of money it’s going to take to make it a functional building. But of course, that won’t happen. None of those people will do that and no money will be found to do anything with the old barn. It will just sit. And sit. And sit.

The building will be there empty most of the time, as it is now, a memorial to Portland’s inability to recognize that time marches on and it would be a good idea to get in step with that march just once in a while.

Meanwhile, we’ll entrust the Trail Blazers to develop the Rose Quarter. They’re the same people who built it and brought in three hotshot places to make it lively and successful in the first place — Friday’s Front Row, Jody Maroni’s and Cucina! Cucina! — Remember that?

Yeah, those places worked real well. It’s been pretty much a ghost town over there for years. Obviously, I’m very optimistic about the future of that little part of our world.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Memorial Coliseum, Portland Trail Blazers, Rose Quarter

Yes, it appears a roving gang of angry, torch-wielding men with pocket protectors and T-squares is standing in front of plans to tear down the stinky old rat hotel known as Memorial Coliseum:

That brought the discussion back to tearing down the coliseum, an idea that has created an uproar in the city’s architecture community.

Basically, what the story says is that now the city is again contemplating putting the new baseball stadium in Lents, rather than at the Rose Quarter, because, uh, you know you just can’t tear down that timeless architectural symbol, the Great Pyramids, the Taj Mahal… oops, Memorial Coliseum — hereafter known as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

My goodness, when you start getting an “uproar” in this city’s architecture community, it’s time to nail the windows shut, run to the bomb shelter, put on the hard hat and crawl under the bed. But really, judging from the rather uninspired look of everything that’s been built around here for the last 30 years, who knew the city even had an architectural “community”?

The Angry Architects, if they are this powerful, ought to forget about silly coliseum issues and get to work on figuring out how to save their jobs. With the economy nipping away at them, I’m stunned there were enough of them left to form an opinion on this issue.

Actually, maybe it is a jobs issue. It’s certainly going to take hundreds of architects to figure out a way to make that old dump Eighth Wonder of the World functional again.

Tweet This Post

Tags: architects, baseball stadium, Dwight Jaynes, Lents, Memorial Coliseum, Rose Quarter

Ben at Blazers Edge has photos, taken around 3 a.m. and word now from the guys at the MSP is that the line may be 1,000 people strong at this point.

I think it’s great that people who are willing to stand in line all night could be rewarded with playoff tickets. But I have to confess, my biggest worry is that in today’s reality all the people in the front of the line are professional ticket scalpers, who are ready to gobble up those tickets and resell them at huge profits — perhaps even to fans of the Houston Rockets.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Rose Quarter, scalpers, Trail Blazer playoff tickets

Now there is a blog for all the well-meaning but misguided people who want to “save” Memorial Coliseum.

Look, you can be opposed to everything Merritt Paulson or Sam Adams has proposed. You can hate soccer and minor-league baseball and you can be against baseball evacuating PGE Park. But I’m telling you this right now: If you think Memorial Coliseum hasn’t outlived its usefulness to the city of Portland you simply don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You obviously haven’t been inside it for an event in the past 10 years.

The old barn was fine for its time, a half century ago. In today’s world, nobody wants to be a tenant there — even the Winter Hawks, who are smartly just working this thing to try to get the best possible lease at the Rose Garden. The coliseum is empty most of the time — with good reason — because it’s inadequate as a spectator facility.

The concourses are too small, the bathrooms too few and the concession stands too outdated.

Don’t talk to me, either, about somebody’s ridiculous plan to turn it into some sort of athletic club on steroids. There are athletic clubs all over town and a good portion of them are losing money. We don’t need another one.

And please, don’t talk about it as being sacred because it’s a memorial to fallen veterans. The “memorial” part of Memorial Coliseum is a dank, usually empty pool on the northeast corner of the building, located below ground where nobody ever sees it and it’s been in disrepair for decades. It’s an insult, rather than a memorial.

Hey, nobody has better memories of that building than I do. I was at the first Portland Buckaroo game. The first Blazer game. Watched the Dream Team’s every game there. Saw the Blazers win a title and play for two others there.

But it’s over, folks. I don’t care what plan you choose for that area, the building has got to come down. Its time has come and gone and don’t insult its proud heritage by using it as a hostage because you don’t like the Paulsons, or the mayor or soccer.

Just let it go.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Memorial Coliseum, Merritt Paulson, PGE Park, Rose Garden, Rose Quarter, Sam Adams

Would someone please tell me what the Trail Blazers have done over the last dozen years or so to give them the right to dictate what happens in the Rose Quarter?

They’ve had a long time to get that district up and running, to create a prosperous, thriving neighborhood. But they’ve failed so miserably that every tenant who was there when it opened is gone and their own arena was once in bankruptcy. Whatever they’ve tried, it’s just not worked.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with allowing them input. They’re part of the mix. But I think it’s time for new ideas and a fresh approach.

Look — putting a ballpark in the Rose Quarter is going to bring thousands of people into that neighborhood for about 75 nights a year, counting some college games along with the Portland Beaver games. That’s going to do more to help businesses, from the Willamette River to the Lloyd Center, from the Burnside Bridgehead to the Mississippi district, than anything else anyone has come up with over the last decade and a half.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Lloyd Center, Portland Beavers, Portland Trail Blazers, Rose Quarter