Link to Oregonlive.com article (please use the link, thx)

Beavers shouldn't move to Lents
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The Hillsboro Argus
by Nick Christensen

Bad news, Washington County baseball fans.

Merritt Paulson wants a new bauble or two, and in the process, he wants to leave you out in the cold, stuck on the wobbly Sellwood Bridge on your way to a baseball game.

Some of you may have seen the story in The Oregonian on Sunday, talking about the Beavers owner's plan to bring Major League Soccer to the city by booting Pacific Coast League baseball to the suburbs.

Paulson's idea is to turn beautiful, historic PGE Park into a soccer-only stadium, building a new ballpark for the Beavers in southeast Portland, closer to cookie-cutter Happy Valley than charming Goose Hollow. Sadly, Portland's Hipster Doofus Mayor-Elect Sam Adams seems to be warm to the plan.

The Oregonian reporter charged with the story sagely asked Paulson about us Washington County residents, since we comprise about a quarter of the population of greater Portland.

But apparently we're only about 20 percent of Beavers fans, so who cares if they move the team to a stadium that's closer to Molalla than Hillsboro, closer to Welches than Forest Grove?

Fans, after all, can take The MAX, right?

A trip from downtown Hillsboro to the planned ballpark site, via the new Green Line, would only take about two hours, so a fan leaving Hillsboro at 5 p.m. could make it to the park in time for the first pitch. If that same fan left at 10 p.m., they could plan on being home sometime around midnight.

But transit's only part of the problem with this plan.

Portland is a major league city. It came quite close to landing the Montreal Expos in 2004 - and probably would have been the front-runner if the competition wasn't the nation's capital.

The cities that are hoping to land the next major league relocator, be it Tampa Bay, Florida or Oakland, are thinking upgrades. They're building minor league baseball parks that they plan, one day, on being major league facilities.

Even the cities that are simply content to be home to Triple-A are keeping their parks in the city center. Sacramento, Fresno, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City and Memphis all have gleaming stadiums in or near their downtown areas.

Reno's downtown park opens next year.

The team moving to that new stadium is coming from Tucson, Ariz., which 10 years ago built its new ballpark along a freeway in the suburbs. Clearly, that didn't work out so well.

The move to Lents is not only bad news for Washington County - it's bad news for the whole metro area. I'm just surprised that Portland's enlightened leaders haven't discovered this out yet.

Of all the places in Portland to build a stadium, why choose an isolated corner of the city for a stadium to be surrounded by parking lots?

Why not try to move the U.S. Postal Service out of its Pearl District home, or use a new stadium as a catalyst for development on the Central Eastside, or even building a stadium in scenic Delta Park?

Why not build on the South Waterfront, or Hollywood, or downtown Beaverton for that matter?

And why on earth are we doing this for Major League Soccer, which has yet to prove itself as a top-tier sport and, for that matter, is much more interested in Vancouver and Montreal than Portland for its next expansion?

Paulson, who as recently as 2005 was working for the marketing arm of the NBA in Manhattan, would do well to pause and think about the long-term prospects for the city. There's a reason why 21 of 23 NBA arenas, 17 of 20 MLB ballparks, 17 of 21 Triple-A fields and 13 of 19 NFL stadiums to have been built in the last 20 years are in their cities' downtown core.

It's not because fans want to watch ball games in the middle of a parking lot.

The Beavers are not the Mets, and Lents is not Flushing. Baseball in Portland belongs in Portland, if not for the Beavers in 2011, then for the Marlins in 2020.

Readers can reach Nick Christensen at 503-214-1129, or nickc@hillsboroargus.com.

He said well what all forward-looking, visionary baseball fans in this area are thinking - Keep the long-range goal in mind when building any new baseball park in Portland!

Just tell me where this imaginary expandable baseball stadium will go. This is the thing about MLBtoPDX, there is no leadership.

No one, and I mean no one can put together the gameplan to get us to a expandable stadium.

Everyone on this site knows what I have been saying to do. Work toward the Blanchard site. Until the MLBtoPDX crowd gets its act together, the act will never happen. Pick a site, for the right reasons, and push for the only baseball team to play there.

I have a suggestion: Help the PPS district in a serious process of getting a new facility(s) for maintanence and food services that makes sense for the kids and the parents (tax base). We then have another partner in some of our wishes to bring an expandable stadium location that is close enough to the West Side that even they will support.

Until that happens (one year from now?), I will support MP in his work to bring MLS and a SSS stadium. I noticed that no one commented on my comments in another thread that mentioned the possibility of designing the baseball stadium at Lents to be a outdoor concert venue also.

Maybe after one year, Portland says "Lets still work toward a update to the baseball stadium at Lents but make sure it can be used for concerts. And lets look at the PPS Blanchard site instead for a true downtown baseball venue that could some day give us the inside tract for a MLB team.

In other words, work the levers that you have and move the levers in a certain way at a certain time to eventually get to the "promised land".

Twenty years from now I could see an outdoor concert venue at Lents and talk of a football stadium at the SE corner of Foster and I-205 because Lents has turned into a party/night life district and is starting to see even some hotel talk (there is already talk of hotels in Gateway). There are hotels already up and down I-205 from the airport to Clackamas Town Center. There will also be a streetcar or light rail on Foster that is planned to continue to Damascus (as a extension).

Bank on Lents growing up, it has to because Gateway and Clackamas TC developments will have to meet at Lents in the future. The Green Line will make this happen folks. If you on the Westside haven't been aware of it: Gateway, Gresham, and Clackamas and everywhere in between is growing up (many four story apartments and condo developments).

We are even building a plaza in Downtown Gresham for the Arts. Many good thing are happening and folks outside our area still think there are nothing but meth houses. Breaking news folks: meth houses in Oregon are not really an issue for the last few years after the state government restricted access to the raw materials. Now it's Mexico that is supplying the meth.


BB

Hey Boomer, My "meth house" comments were said largely in jest, poking some fun at Lents itself, not the entire outer Eastside. I was in Gresham yesterday and things are looking very cool, especially in the downtown. Westsiders can sometimes sound like snobs, but the real issue for me is the city placing a ballpark in a struggling neighborhood for the seeming purpose of gentrification. Gentrification and redevelopment are secondary benefits derived from a new ballpark. They should not be the primary reason why said ballpark is there in the first place.

By the way, if we can't have the USPS site. (and we can't). I'll take PPS. Good location, good freeway and light rail access. At such a location, gentrification and redevelopment would naturally occur as added benefits.

(IMO) the Blanchard/PPS site is the most logical site for a minor league stadium that could be expanded for MLB when the time comes. While the Lents property is close to the Interstate and the upcoming Clackamas MAX line, my concern is that, if the city of Portland antes up some money to help build a AAA park there, they aren't going to be willing to invest additional funds for a new stadium in or near the downtown later on. If there was some guarantee that the city would be willing to help with a major league stadium later, even after building a park in Lents, I wouldn't be opposed to it - but I have my doubts.

And I know there are a lot of people who think we are NEVER going to get MLB here, so why not just be the best AAA city we can? Maybe they're right, but one thing's for sure - if we don't even TRY to keep the dream alive, it for sure won't happen!

Everyone in here knows that I am gung-ho for an expandable AAA facility at Blanchard/PPS. But the reality is that it is an impossible sell when there are no current prospects for MLB. That's why my focus (and research) has been simply on what's best for AAA baseball, regardless of MLB. Make it a great facility in a great spot like Autozone Park in Memphis, and we (along with the Rose Quarter area) are set up for the next 50 years whether MLB comes or not.

Paul Schmidt is pretty much correct - land is too expensive downtown. That's why the focus is on city-owned lots alone... and my guess is that the school district is banking on selling the Blanchard site to a developer so that they can raise the coin needed to build a replacement building elsewhere.

Boomer - the I-5 getting worse, and access on the Westside being terrible (with zero prospects for improvement, it's natural that the I-205 corridor will build up. I'm not sure if it will be Lents necessarily (you mentioned Gateway and CTC, I was also thinking about Cascade Station), but it's inevitable.

BUT (and I know you aren't arguing this point) it would take mega-development and mega-population growth along the eastide before Lents becomes a feasible stadium location, and that won't happen within the next 10-15 years unless we have Phoenix-like growth there.

Oh, and regarding you concert suggestion. The only reason I didn't comment was because I assume that will part of the equation regardless of site location.