Expect an announcement on this in the next few days. Beavers moving to Tucson, United Soccer Leagues folding, MLS no longer a viable option. Excellent work, NIMBYs. You killed another deal in Portland, put more people out of work, and slid us further down the national relevance scale. It's seriously only a matter of time before all business is chased out of Portland and we are reduced to a city of bike paths surrounded by food carts. Oh, and the Memorial Coliseum.
Most of Portland will consider this a great deal, because they "chased a blue blood out of Portland." If there's one thing citizens of Portland abhor, it's success.
LOL! Come on dude, MLS is far from dead in Portland. All that has happened is Paulsen is throwing a tantrum because the of Beaverton hasn't fallen all over themselves and given him everything he wants RIGHT NOW! The guy is actually pissed that the city of Beaverton hasn't gotten a site and secured financing in 3 months?!? Paulsen went to the city of Beaverton and said the stadium project would cost $30mill, in only three months that price has now jumped to $59mill. We had an exchange of posts about this very subject just a few weeks ago, like I said then, I'm all for getting MLS here in Portland but the 2011 time table is not going to work. We are not being given enough time to look at every option and to get solid details and information.
I don't have all the details, but after Portland and Beaverton became out of the question for a home for the Beavers, there weren't any viable opportunities to keep the Beavers in Portland. And Merritt Paulson has always said the Beavers and Timbers are linked. If the Beavers leave, the MLS deal is dead. Barring an 11th hour deal, there will be no home for the Beavers. They'll play in PGE Park in 2010, but they'll be moved to another location after next season. Tucson is the hottest rumor. Also a group in Texas interested in buying the team.
No, none of that is true. Soda is just overreacting to this article - http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/10/beavers_owner_suspends_talks_w.html This has nothing to do "chasing a blue blood out of Portland", this is about taking the time and doing something that makes sense for everyone.
What part of "representative government" doesn't make sense to you? It's the job of our elected representatives to make informed decisions on our behalf. We get to decide whether or not those decisions mean they keep their job when their terms are up. "We are not being given enough time" is ridiculous. If you want every impacted citizen to review the proposals, we literally would be in stalemate for 50 years. That's exactly why we elect leaders to make executive decisions. If I tried to solicit input from every stakeholder in my job, I'd be out of work in about two days, since it would grind any progress to a complete stop.
Except for the most viable opportunity which is to keep the Beavers in the baseball stadium that they are in now and build a soccer stadium that would open up in 2012 or 2013.
So you think the city of Beaverton should have been able to find a site large enough to hold a stadium, figure out what it's actually going to cost (not the figures that Paulsen threw out there) and find a way to pay for it all in under 3 months?!? And if the citizens of Beaverton don't like it they can just vote the people out of office. Ummmm, right....
How is that a viable opportunity? The Timbers franchise starts in 2011. New soccer stadium in the burbs is not going to work financially. The numbers have been crunched by Paulson's team for a lot longer than you've thought about it. We've had this conversation before. 1) PGE Park is the best home for MLS Timbers. They have a history there, dating back to the NASL days, they outdraw the Beavers 5-to-1, and a centrally located stadium along transit lines is essential. 2) Keeping PGE Park as a single-tenant operation with just the Beavers is financial suicide. They don't draw nearly enough interest from a gameday ticket or corporate sponsorship or luxury box perspective to make revenues exceed expenses. 3) Building a new soccer stadium is more expensive than a new AAA baseball stadium. Pretty simple math here. 20,000 seat soccer stadium is going to cost more than a 8500 seat AAA baseball stadium. And if you accept the logic in #2 above, you aren't going to want to spend more to move the more viable tenant to a less desirable location.
Guess what - this is the life of an elected officials. Ask Hillsboro how quickly they had to get their shit together to woo Genentech and SolarWorld. Ask Portland how quickly they had to get their shit together to clear hurdles for a new Vestas America headquarters in South Waterfront. Business deals require the ability to move swiftly. If you want to put everything to a vote, you'll kill more deals than you could ever imagine.
1) The Blazers had a history in the MC, that doesn't mean PA should have remodeled it. 2) Again, how will the Beavers be able to pay for a new $60mill home if they can't (as you say) pay for the home they are in currently? 3) No, I want to move a viable tenant into a facility that will be their permanent long term home. A converted baseball stadium is always going to be a crap facility for a soccer team. Dude, these are the numbers we were talking about last month, You said at the time a $70million stadium for soccer makes no sense yet you're telling me $60million for a minor league baseball team does?!?
So the City of Beaverton is suppose to green light a project that has doubled in price in under 3 months? The city of officials aren't suppose to try and see if a minor league baseball team can support a $60million stadium? So the city of Beaverton is just suppose to agree to what Paulsen wants and not try and investigate if this deal makes any sense to the citizens that elected them, again, and all of this is suppose to happen in under 3 months.
The City didn't want more time to research the costs. They wanted to refer it to the voters because they were scared of making a decision.
... is not and will not be in Portland in the forseeable future. Talk to me when we have two or three more Fortune 500 type companies HQ'd here and 5-10 more companies that employ 250+ in the PMA. Then perhaps the numbers will pencil out to fill luxury boxes and buy corproate sponsorships to make a professional baseball team financially viable in this market. I have no doubt you could regularly draw 30,000+ to a beautiful MLB stadium on a wonderful Portland summer day, which would put us in the upper half of the league in terms of attendance, but unless you can sell those luxury boxes at six-figures-per-year and corporate sponsorships at six-or-seven-figures-per-year, you aren't going to bring in nearly enough revenue to run a team and a stadium.
Thanks SPD. Along with the talks from the other thread on this, I saw on wikipedia a list of the soccer only stadiums in MLS. The most recent ones built are definitely pretty spendy. Not sure how viable a brand new stadium would be, or would have been. 85 million in Houston, 115 in Philly, 115 in Utah.
