Portland MLS deal dead

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SodaPopinski said:
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.
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By blue blood do you mean son of the biggest bag man in US History? I have nothing against blue bloods, unless they are fucking people over in a massive way. I don't know about Merrit, but his father is certainly scum.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
Except now the city of Beaverton is now saying that $50million number is now $59mill.

The proposed cost to remodel PGE Park is $31mill. Now this is only the proposed cost. There has been no architectural plans drawn up. Only an artists rendition of how the final renovation with look. Because of the 2011 time line the contract to renovate PGE Park has been awarded to an out of state company in a no bid process. So we have given a blank check to an out of state company. There is no hard cap to the expense of renovation and no promise of by Paulsen to cover any cost overruns. The $31mill figure is thrown out by Paulsen, remember Paulsen also told the city of Beaverton that the cost of a new baseball park would be $30mill. I'm not believing for a second that the $31mill is anywhere close to being an accurate cost projection of what it would take to renovate PGE Park.

Even if $31mill gets it done add that to the $59mill and you have $90million spent on a new stadium for a struggling minor league baseball team and a renovated old baseball stadium that will be turned into a substandard soccer stadium. This does not make sense to me at all.

Now if PGE Park renovations go over the proposed $31mill to $40 or $50mill the deal gets even crazier.
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Well said. The whole process has been shady in the extreme. I've wanted MLS here since I played High School soccer, just not like this. I'd rather try it again with a better thought out, more concrete plan around the stadium and more transparency on the financial end. That just seems common sense to me. The word NIMBY is thrown out to a rather ridiculous degree. The Lents Park thing would have been a travesty and I'm glad it didn't happen like that. Realistically we need to build a new soccer stadium from scratch and that's spendy. If we can't afford it then we can't afford it. It would take decades to pay back the cost with tax revenue generated by the stadium, the soccer team and related businesses.

This is hardly what's killing the economy locally. It's an international problem, something people like Merrit's father know all about. Merrit may very well be an honest man who just wanted to push things through and get his way while externalizing as much of the costs of putting a team in Portland as he possibly could. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but there's also nothing wrong with the citizens not wanting to shoulder those kind of costs. I want MLS here, but perhaps we should wait until we come out of this recession before we blow several tens of millions of dollars on something that won't be paid off for decades.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
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?!?
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I just think that our mayor and Leonard don't have a clue as to what they are doing
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No, they know exactly what they are doing. Whether it's campaign contributions or consulting jobs down the line or something else, don't think for a minute these two weren't getting something out of this proposal. Probably not now that the deal fell through, but I guarantee they were gonna get something. I'm convinced that Adams main job as Mayor was to push this one through.

I remember when the Breedlove thing first broke and it looked like Adams might resign. I told my wife at the time. "Well if Adams has enough political capital still to push something huge through, then he will stay in. If his backers think he's been too badly damaged by this he'll resign." Shortly thereafter the stadium was on the fast track. I'm really disappointed that he wasn't recalled. Adam's scares the beejezus out of me. He makes Vera Katz look like Laguardia.
 
I don't mind this. There is obviously a market in Portland for MLS. It will be successful here.

There is also a market for MLB in Portland. Hell, the city has better tv ratings for baseball than some cities with their own MLB team.

Minor League baseball is not a big deal. Building a minor league stadium in a suburb would have been a waste of time. When the city lands an MLB team the stadium should be somewhere in the core of the city. The Pearl would be an awesome location.
 
Timbers have already set up some international exhibition matches for the 2009-2010 season. The management is making things happen. We will see more activity in the next few months on a time table of remodeling PGE park.

An interesting note.....

A co-worker brought up the fact that we have 72 AAA baseball games. Those are 72 days that downtown businesses get customers before and after the game. MLS only has 30 games. That will hurt businesses. However if the fan base of the timbers constantly grows then bars and restaurants will pick up on those other days that are missed because AAA baseball isn't here anymore.
 
I won't say "I told you so" to anyone, but I've been very pessimistic about this deal on this board since it was announced. A lot of the financials made absolutely zero sense, and they still make no sense.
 
We're so freaking small time. AAA baseball and the MLS have our city leadership paralyzed with fear. :biglaugh:
 
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