This article is from Portland tv station KGW's webiste-02/04/03

Portland studying baseball options

By ABE ESTIMADA
KGW.com staff

Six sites in downtown and east Portland are candidates for a new stadium, which city officials and baseball proponents say they hope will deliver major league baseball to Oregon.

Mayor Vera Katz and baseball supporters unveiled for the first time preliminary plans to locate, finance and build a stadium. The proposals come less than week after Katz and a delegation from Portland went to New York City to make their case with baseball officials for bringing the Montreal Expos to the Rose City.

Major League Baseball invited Portland, Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia to bid for the Expos. Katz and delegate members stressed that the process of bringing the team to Portland is very early.

"No decision has been made on anything right now," Katz said. "All we're doing is putting information together."

With the Expos planning to move out of Montreal before the end of the summer, drawing a team to Portland is on the fast track.

City officials working with the Oregon Sports Authority, the Oregon Baseball Group and an architecture firm want to narrow the list of six possible stadium sites to two or three by mid March.

The six possible sites are the Blanchard Building site in the Rose Quarter area; the U.S. Post Office site in the Pearl District; Union Station in the Old Town area; Burnsides and I-405 in the Pearl District; Lincoln High School in the Goose Hollow neighborhood; and in Lents in east Portland.

The Portland delegation is scheduled to go back to New York and present more details to baseball officials in late March on where and how to finance a stadium.

Late February or early March, a member of Major League Baseball's relocation committee will be in Portland to "talk about (what) Major League Baseball's needs are in this process and try to give us some signposts about where we go next," said David Kahn, the former general manager of the Indiana Pacers, a National Basketball Association team located in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Baseball proponents are also helping craft legislation that will be presented to state lawmakers in Salem. The legislation will use income taxes from players and owners of the team to help pay for stadium financing.