Sports Business Journal July 5-11, 1999

Rebuffed in his attempt to land the NHL Pittsburgh Penguins, multimedia magnate Paul Allen has turned his attention to Major League Baseball, Portland government sources say.

The Microsoft Corp. co-founder has been in talks with top city officials about building a 42,000-seat ballpark and concert venue on the site of the vacant Memorial Coliseum next door to Allen's Rose Garden.

Allen, who owns the nation's fourth-largest cable franchise, also owns the NBA Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL Seattle Seahawks, who move to a new stadium this season to which Allen contributed more than $100 million.

The two sources speculated that -- like Walt Disney Co., Time Warner Inc. and Fox Entertainment Group Inc. -- Allen would use his growing sports empire as valuable cable programming.

Mayor Vera Katz, who supports efforts to bring Major League Baseball to Portland, said she is unaware of ongoing discussions with Allen but said the city would soon need to decide what to do with the Coliseum.

Allen aide Harry Hutt denied the discussions had taken place. He said Portland is too small a market for the majors and that he did not believe a new ballpark would fit in the Coliseum footprint.

Hutt added that Allen had no intention of paying as much as $400 million to buy a team and build a stadium and that he did not expect an anti-tax Oregon state Legislature to step up to the plate to help, despite a proposal that is working its way through committee to put as much as $200 million toward a ballpark.

"A snowball has a better chance you know where than Major League Baseball has in Portland," Hutt said.

But Allen also denied interest in purchasing the Pittsburgh Penguins and moving the NHL franchise to the Rose Garden, only to have another top lieutenant, Bob Whitsitt, acknowledge last week that Allen was indeed the "anonymous" bidder before the team was sold to former star Mario Lemieux.

"That has always been the way he does things," said G. Lynn Lashbrook, a member of the Portland Baseball Group. "Deny, deny, deny. But I'm telling you, it makes sense."

Lashbrook is leading a drive to identify 20,000 Oregonians who would be interested in purchasing season tickets if a team were to move to the city, either to the Rose Quarter or to a renovated Civic Coliseum on the west side of town.

Lashbrook contends that Portland is no smaller than several other markets supporting more than one professional franchise.

"For three years, we have been hoping either Paul Allen or [Nike Inc. Chairman] Phil Knight would step up to the plate for Portland," Lashbrook said. The window of opportunity is now to attract a major league team."