In Portland you can’t even propose a Major League Baseball stadium without putting bikes front and center.
Yesterday a consortium of financiers, celebrities, and fans made a big splash with an announcement about a potential location and a series of renderings of what the 32,000 seat stadium might look like.
“We absolutely do take transportation seriously. We expect a lot to be invested in infrastructure.”
— John McIsaac, Portland Diamond Project
The Portland Diamond Project says they’ve inked an agreement with the Port of Portland to develop a stadium on Terminal 2, a 50-acre parcel of industrial land along the Willamette River in northwest Portland about one mile north of the Fremont Bridge.
Along with announcement the group released several renderings of the stadium. The main image, titled “Bike Tailgating,” features over a dozen bicycles prominently parked in the foreground.
This has us wondering: If this project moves forward (a big if, given the billions it would cost to build the stadium and buy an MLB franchise), how would people get to the games?
As it sits right now, the T2 site is basically a transportation desert. Unless you’re in a car. It’s served by just one infrequent TriMet bus line (16) and it’s over a mile away from a Portland Streetcar stop. Even with their planned northwest expansion a stop would still be about a half-mile away. Light rail is much too far away at about 1.5 miles and a MAX expansion in this area isn’t even on the table.
And who knows, maybe the nascent Frog Ferry would add a stop at the stadium.
As for bikes, some of the parcel is actually inside the current Biketown bike share service area. But the wide roads around T2 would be frightening for the average bicycle user to ride on. In April 2016 during our NW Portland Week, I shared two posts that offer an in-depth look at cycling in the area. To recap: There’s tons of cycling potential on NW Front Avenue. We could use the 80-90 foot wide cross-sections to build physically protected bike lanes and make a direct connection to downtown.
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(Photo: Port of Portland)
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
There are already positive signs for Front Avenue. In May we reported that a developer paid out-of-pocket for a Biketown station for an office property on NW 17th (the T2 site is further north at around 26th). That same developer also chipped in over $1 million to help the Bureau of Transportation build street upgrades that include protected bike lanes.
If this stadium is ever built, there’s also a question of how it would impact the Willamette Greenway Trail. Developers would be on the hook to create public riverfront access; but how and if cycling is integrated into it would be a big question mark.
Given the growth trajectory of the NW Front Avenue corridor, it’s safe to say street updates and bikeways will be built by the time any new stadium becomes a reality. Years down the road, it’s also reasonable to assume TriMet will have better bus service here as well.
But would taxpayers be on the hook for getting baseball fans to a privately-owned stadium? Mayor Ted Wheeler has said he won’t support public subsidy for this project; but he might not be in office by the time this issue boils over.
For their part, Portland Diamond Project spokesperson John McIsaac told me this morning, “We absolutely must take transportation seriously, and we absolutely do.”
However, at this stage in the game, it’s clear they’ve focused all their efforts in politics and fundraising. Asked if they’d talked to PBOT yet, McIsaac said they planned to do so today. The Oregonian reported yesterday that they haven’t yet talked to TriMet about the T2 site.
Asked if they were prepared to spend on transportation, McIsaac shared with me via email that, “We expect a lot to be invested in infrastructure.”
UPDATE: Don’t miss this article in The Oregonian that proposes five different locations that would make much more sense from a transportation perspective.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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At the rate MLB ballpark attendance numbers are shrinking ,by the time this thing is built they could put it in Col. Summers park and have plenty of room for the fans that would buy tickets.
Looks like Frog Ferry to the rescue!
– St Johns to T2
– Vancouver to T2
– etc.
Would these people like a $650,000 fee for doing their homework?
Yes. I was happy to see the article didn’t have a quote from the project people scolding the public for not having enough “skin in the game”, and also that the stadium doesn’t already have a name appropriated from Native American culture. Even better, they didn’t claim the stadium would be a perfect place for refugees to gather after the Big One hits.
The only reason the venue doesn’t have a name is because the naming rights will be sold.
Access to far-flung stadiums like this are a trap for local transit agencies. None of the surrounding development would justify anything more than a bi-hourly milk-run type bus. Obviously, this level of service wouldn’t work on game days. I think the solution here would be special shuttle buses, running a route from the stadium to Union Station, and then over the river to the Rose Quarter. These shuttles would only run before and after games and other large events.
Why would they choose an out-of-the-way industrial site that needs lots of environmental remediation and that has such poor transit connections, when there’s still not-yet-redeveloped 11-block postal facility in the middle of downtown? Yeah, I know there’s lots of plans for it, but nothing’s actually been done yet, right? USPS is still there, right?
The land is cheaper because it is further out. There isn’t the demand. Plus, as a bonus, they won’t pay any of the costs to fix the accessibility issues, they’ll expect the city and tri met to pony up those costs.
Oh, and the idea of a baseball stadium at the post office site was debated long ago and went down in flames.
Was there any discussion of Lloyd Center? These days the mall operators would probably be happy with a buyout.
Because of several reasons:
1) non-urbanite suburban power brokers who don’t care about transit and want to make a deal more than anything
2) every piece of urban land they bid on fell through
3) they haven’t tried to buy the PPS HQ site which is actually next door to the MODA center and has transit
I don’t like this. The land should be kept as industrial.
Agreed.
“But would taxpayers be on the hook for […] a privately-owned stadium?”
Of course. That is how we do it here…
Why? Good question.
Check out James Bennett’s They Play, You Pay.
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=981
Neggie nellie… when will you be satisfied. If a private citizen buys a franchise and pays to build a billion dollar stadium that can also have multiple other uses and the city builds some infrastructure and transportation links to open another section of riverfront… what’s the problem? This will bring jobs and tax revenue to the city at very little cost to taxpayers. Progress baby! Play ball!!
“What’s the problem?”
9watts just presented a whole book worth that sounds like it describes what the problems could be, based on actual experiences of other cities.
Every one of the many bad experiences cities have had with stadiums probably started with a pitch similar to your, “This will bring jobs and tax revenue to the city at very little cost to taxpayers”. It often hasn’t been true.
Calling him a name doesn’t help your argument.
Could be? Have you even read the book? It does not apply if private money buys the team, builds the stadium with no public investment and then contributes jobs and taxes. I guess if GM decided to build a new state of the art factory to build environmentally friendly automobiles in PDX you would ask… “What’s the catch?”
I’d definitely ask, “What’s the catch?” That doesn’t mean I’m automatically against the idea. I’m not automatically against the riverfront stadium, either. I just see lots of reasons why it COULD be wrong (yes, could is the correct word).
I know that having the stadium privately financed instead of publicly makes a difference. That doesn’t mean people should become unquestioning boosters. That doesn’t eliminate all potential problems, either. As one example, stadium backers in other cities (as well as other similar types of projects–new manufacturing plants for example) have often overstated how many jobs will be created, how much tax revenue will be raised, how much the infrastructure costs financed publicly will be, etc.
Skepticism is healthy where there is so much public impact. I don’t think even the stadium group expects people to believe everything it presents without questioning and fact checking. Every single stadium project that failed or missed projections started with positive intentions and projections, or it wouldn’t have been built in the first place.
Your use of GM in your example is particularly ironic, given that GM is in the news currently for proposing to close its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. It’s beyond dispute that GM fell far short of the promises it made in the 80s to get that plant approved, in regard job creation, spurring of related development, tax revenue, etc. And of course now all the jobs will be gone if the factory is closed.
I guarantee there are plenty of people who OK’d that deal who now wish (at least privately) that they’d asked, “What’s the catch?” I don’t understand your apparent stance that one party in a deal (the citizens of Portland in this case) should not question the promises being made by the other party.
https://jalopnik.com/a-part-of-detroit-was-destroyed-in-the-1980s-so-gm-coul-1830666242
Not sure if others are experiencing this, but for the past month or maybe two the email relay of comments here on bikeportland has gotten all jumbled. It is no longer sequential or in real time. Some are forwarded to my inbox; others not at all, or out of sequence….
“Neggie nellie… when will you be satisfied?”
But back to your question (which I only saw because q’s reply did show up in my email).
Let me ask you: Why are you, or do you appear to be, so quick to be satisfied, when smart people across the country who have studied the subject have identified enormous downsides to these boosterist claims not to mention to the projects that keep getting built?
I’m happy to be satisfied about things that are demonstrably useful or that yield recognizable benefits, but unless you can show me that your blithe assertions about jobs, etc. are valid I won’t likely be persuaded, much less satisfied.
Why?
Well, one reason is that industry at least historically has actually provided good jobs that pay well and stick around.
Another is that without local, proximate industry we’ll keep sending our money to countries that do produce things, which does nothing for our local economy, doesn’t keep the money circulating.
Portland’s land use regulations correctly aim to preserve riverfront property for uses dependent on the river. A stadium has no need to be on the river, so taking up acres of property with river access (plus rail and truck access that industry needs but stadiums do not) deserves to be questioned.
It’s a big river.
Not particularly. The amount of riverfront property available for industrial uses isn’t great in Portland, even when the Columbia is included. And I’d rather see currently developed riverfront areas being converted back to nature being given a greater priority than taking up acres of riverfront with a stadium.
Life moves forward. Get on board or move t the forest, build a cabin, live off the grid. I wish you well.
It is too bad that you prefer platitudes to engaging here with those who have a different take. We’d all learn more from each other if we didn’t have to listen to the inexorable march of progress shtick.
Why would you say that?
It sounds as if you’re saying that if I question building the stadium at that site (which is all I’ve done) I’m against progress?
It’ll be like the convention center.
They’ll build it in an out of the way place. Then they’ll complain that it isn’t doing enough business because it’s not convenient to the rest of town, and ask the taxpayers for whatever it is that they think they need.
After a few years, they’ll figure out a way for the taxpayer to finance something that will cost a ton money….. The streetcar won’t be high enough capacity, so we’ll likely foot the bill for a new max line. And hotels. And everything else.
Count me out.
So your saying 2 decades later there will be a Lloyd District out that way? Doesn’t seem like the worst place to grow…
We are currently subsidizing the construction of a hotel right next to the convention center and the rose quarter because the convention center says they need it to stay viable. It is being built with public financing, public bonds and public guarantees. All because they didn’t want to spend the money to build the convention center downtown.
Asked if they were prepared to spend on transportation, McIsaac shared with me via email that, “We expect a lot to be invested in infrastructure.”
notice they don’t say who they expect to do the investing.
Has construction started on the Front Avenue repaving / road diet yet? The construction contract was authorized by council back in August.
I thought PBOT were supposed to be putting a cycle track on NW Front this year. I’ve read at least two articles here on BikePortland alone about it. Why is this not mentioned anywhere in this article?
It is mentioned Adam. Right under the last image. It was supposed to be built by now. I’m not sure of the status.
a section of sidewalk on NB Front has been ripped out at the intersection of 9th Ave, with some sort of intent to continue tearing up sidewalk all the way up to 19th-ish.
signage states “the project” ends Apr 2019.
How about some financial innovation–like absolutely no public money whatsoever used to build or run the stadium or buy the MLB team? Or maybe, if public coin is involved, the right to declare it property of the city if a certain threshold of said investment is reached.
How about setting some financial metrics to define “success” if the MLB comes to town? Something like # of jobs created or some other clear definition of economic impact. Then when we don’t hit those metrics, the city gets a share of the team — a bigger or smaller share depending on how close we were to hitting the targets for economic impact.
The reason no ownership group would agree to a deal like that is they know their claimed economic impact is hokum.
I should have said “if public money is spent on bringing the MLB to town”
That’s the plan Dave. The only thing the city will do is expand infrastructure to help get people to and from the area… and collect a ton of new taxes.
Is this the old “we’ll tax the players to pay for the stadium?” Or maybe we’re going to take a big bite out of the seasonal service industry workers who would fill most of the jobs associated with a sports stadium.
Welcome to the deep end, Mike.
How would we go about expanding infrastructure to serve this stadium? It is hemmed in by a river on one side, and a busy rail yard on the other. Are you expecting a new river bridge? MAX extension?
it looks like they already have $150million lined up from the state……
I’ve heard that one time another city built a stadium, and after a few years, the team moved, leaving the city with an empty stadium and a lot of bills.
Too bad it’s not a football stadium. They could build a light rail station right in the middle of the end zone. Any team Portland got probably wouldn’t be using that space for the first several years.
Teams switch directions every quarter!
On a different note, wtf is going on in the rendering with the Gondola Suite!?! I can’t fathom that at all.
St. Helen’s max? Just about as likely to happen as this stadium. But it might be a great spot for a velodrome!
The Memorial Coliseum should be re-purposed to a world-class velodrome.
*If* this was built, it’d be an obvious place to connect to witha streetcar expansion (that’s already planned for this rapidly growing part of town)
I imagine that in the coming decades as downtown expands up here (as it’s been doing since the Pearl District kicked off), there’ll be need for Max here to. Maybe it’ll connect to North Portland/St a John’s. A big stadium would just push all that need forward.
I don’t know if MAX is the right tool, but some RoW for extending C-Tran’s high capacity VINE system between the downtowns through St. Johns and NW seems like it has more potential than a Yellow Line extension. It is faster, serves more/different employment centers, and makes space to improve notoriously deficient routes for active users.
This is just an idea. I’m not sure that it’s a good one, independent-minded St. Johns wants it, or Vancouver can pull it off without dysfunctional Clark County messing it up.
Just what the city needs, more entertainment, more noise and traffic pollution.
I live in NW Portland and during my daily rides see the other side of the transformation of our city.
Have we made sure that the thousands of our brothers and sisters sleeping under bridges or by freeways have a home? That every fellow human in Portland has adequate food and does not need to search for crumbs in garbage cans? Have we got a handle on the high rents and endless destruction of old buildings so that more trinket stores and condos are opened? Are services like shelters for domestic violence victims well funded?
Even if the project is paid for by corporations or wealthy individuals and not city funds then we can and must stop this plan which impacts all of us.
I love sports but first let us solve the issues of real importance.
Let me get this straight you live pretty much in Downtown and you are complaining about noise, traffic, entertainment etc? Seems to me you would be better off close in on the east side or in the suburbs all together
Don’t miss this article in The Oregonian that proposes five different locations that would make much more sense from a transportation perspective.
Considering the source, that article was a breath of fresh air! Nice to see the O plugging transit a little. Guess the stadium folks are holding out for the way stadiums used to be: a big pile encircled by a giant parking lot.
I like Gateway as a location. It’s at the intersection of two freeways, three arterials, three MAX lines, eight bus lines, and multiple bikeways. Easily accessible for everyone. And if the current owners see money in it, the shopping center at Gateway should be fairly easy to redevelop in phases into an arena/shopping/entertainment district.
No.
Who do these make more sense to again? Not me. The chosen location is perfect for myriad reasons. Infrastructure that will ultimately be built at some point, infusion of private capital into our city, jobs, tax revenue. Should I go on?
No site is perfect. People have mentioned several reasons this site isn’t, and your response has been to call them complainers, tell them to move, call them names…everything but give actual reasons why they’re wrong.
And why is “infrastructure that will ultimately be built at some point” (and you have no way of knowing that) better than infrastructure that already exists at other sites?
If this site was “perfect”, it would already have the infrastructure in place, and it wouldn’t displace any other use.
And infusion of private capital, jobs, and tax revenue would happen at any site a stadium is built. It would also happen at this site without using it as a stadium.
Is anyone else extremely annoyed that the stock-image people were not even pasted in at correct or even consistent scale? Especially the last picture?
That’s pretty observant. And the girl with shorts and red shoes must be M.C. Escher’s granddaughter. She’s dangling her legs impossibly, given that the concrete she’s sitting on is the same plane as the top of the concrete bench that her feet are resting on below her. Plus the trees aren’t casting shadows, the dogs aren’t leashed, nobody is over 35, and possibly all the tall buildings on the Eastside have been destroyed.
“M.C. Escher’s granddaughter…”
My favorite quip so far this month here.
Jonathan, thanks for the article link. Maybe a Pearson Field stadium would be the wedge under the door to finally break Vantucky’s allergy to light rail.
It’s worth noting that the Oakland A’s also unveiled a new stadium proposal this week, complete with renderings. They’re proposing a bay front site that would have BART subway service, along with buses and cross bay ferries. The site also includes improvements to a popular bike path that runs along the East Bay Waterfront, as well as renovating the present Coliseum site into a concert venue. That, presumably, would force the Raiders to move (Lss Vegas?) and would also, one assumes, force the NBA Warriors to play in a temporary location until their present building is renovated or gets replaced. Keep an eye on that one as the PDP moves forward wuth their proposal. Seattle also has a proposal on the table for a new Key Arena to replace the current building there.
What are we noting? That teams regularly leave cities for greener pastures, leaving them with empty stadiums? Or maybe that teams often shakedown the cities they’re in by threatening to move unless the city agrees to renegotiate their stadium deals, or pay for expensive stadium renovations or even new stadiums?
The two teams you mentioned (Warriors and Raiders) have both moved so many times I’ve lost track of what cities they’re even in now.
Actually the Raiders made a deal to move to Las Vegas a long time ago and are just playing in Oakland until the new home in Vegas is built. The Warriors are also on their way out of Oakland having made a deal to move to San Francisco.
Your comment is chock full of fact-free fantasies.
Name one US city where the kind of privately financed stadium such as you are here floating has been proposed and built.
Next, please clarify what you mean by environmentally friendly automobiles.
It is easy to make up mellifluous sounding but implausible scenarios; much easier than reading the summary (much less the book or any of the dozens of books on this subject) which deal with your questions quite thoroughly.
Hilarious.
This is the kind of utterances we get from the guy currently playing at President.
What is big are our cumulative demands on everything from the river you think is so big to the Superfund site just downstream to the air which is already among the most polluted in the entire country, and the land, the quantity of which is fixed. Once everything along the river is paved over for parking lots, and the best farmland in the Valley has been covered with houses are you going to reassure us that ‘it is a big State’?
9watts… everything is a problem for you, right? at 9 watts, clearly not the brightest bulb on the tree. You should take a trip up to Pier 2… pretty much paved over right now.
Mike Q… murmurs? Fake news.
“9watts… everything is a problem for you, right?”
Only those things that involve malfeasance, misspending public dollars, ignorance, bad faith, Car Head, police brutality, oil wars, racism, inequality, etc.
“at 9 watts, clearly not the brightest bulb on the tree.”
Hilarious. So original.
“You should take a trip up to Pier 2… pretty much paved over right now.”
I figured you point that out. I am aware of that, and in an earlier comment failed to acknowledge this. Industry sometimes runs two or three shifts, utilizes their infrastructure pretty heavily. Sports stadia are even worse than school bus fleets when it comes to utilization rates. I don’t know if you really want to chase down all these rabbitnholes with me…?
What I thought… everything is a problem for you. Get off your ass and make change
instead of complaining about everything.
Thanks for the advice.
In the meantime why don’t you tell us about your constructive engagement with the world. How you are following your own advice.
Mike, I think you are mistaking 9watts for me. It’s my job to complain about everything.
No thanks. You are a complainer.
Are you able to hear what you sound like? It seems you are the complainer here. Your last umpteen comments have bemoaned my contributions, questioned my intelligence, my perspicacity, my right to be critical here.
I think you are failing to differentiate between
someone who has a critique—and supports that critique—and
someone who blasts all whose comments he doesn’t understand or isn’t curious about.
The fact that I don’t choose to continue to verbally joust with you has nothing to do with your perspicacity… it’s that you have chosen a negative attitude over a positive one. You strive to be an authority on every subject you touch. I understand you… but I’m bored with you.
“you have chosen a negative attitude ”
Pot, meet kettle.
Keep in mind the cost of this boondoggle is hush-hush. Reason, the promoters will be asking taxpayers to foot the bill while they cash in. Murmurs are already circulating in City Hall on how to pay for it. Never underestimate the ability of sports teams to snooker city populations into paying their way. Watch your back!
Today’s Oregonian reports that Mayor Wheeler has mentioned development fee waivers, SDC waivers and tax increment financing, along with the City maybe footing some of the infrastructure improvements. I thought projects like this were why SDCs were created…get them to pay for the infrastructure capacity that their projects demand. The O also mentions that Audubon and others are opposing it on the grounds that taking industrial land will put more pressure to develop west Hayden Island.
Good point about SDCs. So if you put a service (say grocery store) in a neighborhood that doesn’t have one, in effect reducing the need for people to use streets, you pay SDCs because you’re supposedly increasing street use. Same if you move your restaurant from one building to the building next door.
But if you build a stadium that really does create a need for 30,000 or more people to travel regularly, it gets the infrastructure paid for.
Taking a deep breath and stepping back, Terminal 2 looks like a distraction rather than a serious proposal from Portland Diamond Project
Our school district is suddenly taking bids on the site PDP actually wants, which is somehow not controversial. PDP can overshadow the fact that it undermines Albina Vision and put questions about the purchase price to rest by putting up the greatest consideration for our blessed children with money for the schools and even more sacred traffic by not choosing T2.
Looks like their work is just about done here.
Everything in that part of NW Portland is of course built on fill. We build large and tall permanent buildings on fill all the time, true, but all the surface routes in this area are going to basically disappear in the event of a major earthquake.
I have read elsewhere that they are not even serious about bring a MLB franchise here, it is just a ploy to get other cities to shell out more subsidies for their existing teams under threat of relocation.
I can think of dozens of things more important to the city than another sports team- education and transportation spending to name just a couple off the top of my head. This fantasy proposal never seems to die. Sort of reminds me of the CRC.
Conspiracy theories abound in our world. Oy!
The photo is missing the throngs of homeless who will harass singles, couples and families for cash on the way in and out.
Throw in a few tarps, piles of trash, feces, and bike parts…VIOLA! Picture complete.
Viola.
Yes, let’s not forget the strings.
As if that picture wasn’t bleak enough without gratuitously tossing the viola in…
I used to work out past there and it wasn’t fun to get to. The bus was too infrequent, but at least it was never crowded. Lots of big trucks passed you. And if you were taking the lane in one of the parts with an extra lane then drivers would rage against you for taking up 1 of the 2 narrow lanes.
“As it sits right now, the T2 site is basically a transportation desert. Unless you’re in a car. ”
A big part of the problem with this site: you won’t be able to get there in a car either. At least not easily. With probably more than 30,000 people trying to get in there on just one southbound and two northbound lanes on Front, plus a single lane across the NW 26th Drive viaduct, there will be traffic jams for miles in every direction on game days. Same problem getting out afterwards; it might take some people literally hours to leave. We could widen Front to four lanes north of the terminal, but it still won’t help much.
This site will come with a huge price tag for taxpayers in creating the transportation infrastructure to support it – cars, transit AND bikes.
Yes, and the river location really contributes to the access mess, because it forces all traffic to enter and leave from one side of the stadium–the river’s in the way on the other side.
The river has the same restrictive impact on the development potential that proponents tout–there’s no development potential to one whole side of the stadium. To the other side is the NW Industrial area, which can be redeveloped only at the cost of losing industrial land, which is a far from ideal outcome. That leaves some land to the northwest and southeast of the stadium, but that’s industrial riverfront land, the supply of which would have already been depleted by the stadium.
There are other sites (non-riverfront) that could be accessed from all or at least multiple directions, and that would have land on at least multiple sides more suited for redevelopment.
It’s right across the river from Swan Island.
I wonder how many hundreds of millions a six-lane bridge from NW Front Avenue to N Going Street would cost.
That’s the level of public subsidy this location would require.
Sidewalk Toronto plans to convert a 12 acre section of publicly owned land to a “neighborhood of the future” to be built “from the internet up.” Sidewalk Toronto envisions a mix of 50 percent retail and 40 percent below-market rate housing, which would include “a minimum of 20 percent affordable housing
https://sidewalktoronto.ca/
https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/11/sidewalk-labs-quayside-toronto-smart-city-google-alphabet/577078/
http://www.hayden-island.com/underwater-gardens/
I bet if they asked you guys to build a bridge that only foot and bikers used even though the VAST MAJORITY of the public won’t use you guys would be all over it..
This thing is privately financed only thing the city is doing is the infrastructure stuff and that’s because they do that anyways for large projects (sowa, Pearl District, etc)
It’s amazing what people will find To complain about. This stadium will generate MILLIONS for the city on property taxes alone. Slabtown is near here and development is already creeping
North towards T2. See the Conway development.
Play ball!
Let me get this straight you live pretty much in Downtown and you are complaining about noise, traffic, entertainment etc? Seems to me you would be better off close in on the east side or in the suburbs all together
“This stadium will generate MILLIONS for the city on property taxes alone.”
A familiar hook/lie/empty promise.
I’m curious how you know so specifically how this project is to be financed? Are you in touch with those proposing it? Are you proposing it?
Your telling me that big ol stadium will not be paying “property” tax? Lol
“With a few exceptions, property tax-free stadiums are baked into the financing for pro sports franchise deals.”
http://viewpoints.blog.statesman.com/2018/06/27/grumet-what-would-austin-soccer-stadium-pay-if-it-paid-property-taxes/
“Few exceptions” Portland isn’t doing that. These ppl came to US wanting to build this on their own. The city wasn’t wasting their time reaching out for these sports franchises. PDP sees the success Blazers Timbers have here and know baseball will do the same..
You can’t even ask the citizens of this city to pay for anything subsidized without being an uproar. Trust me the city doesn’t care if baseball comes here or not. Again PDP wants to do this on their own. All the city is doing is saying “fine we’ll do the normal infrastructure stuff since it’s going to generate new revenue.. etc”
So just relax, enjoy it, sports brings a community together, it brings attention to the city. You know how many times I go out of town and ppl say “ohh your from Portland home of the Trail Blazers nice!!” Its fun and exciting enjoy it. Your not going to lose a meal on your table from this deal bud trust me lol
Once someone asks the public to pay for something, it’s the public’s business. Questioning the details, as some people have done here, is hardly responding in an “uproar”. A lot of the questioning doesn’t even have anything to do with the issue of bringing a team here–it’s just questioning whether that site is the best for a stadium, if a team does come.
And sports teams are fine and have some positive impacts, but so would industrial and other uses that would use that site, and they’d work well there without asking for tens of millions of dollars of publicly financed infrastructure improvements.
I go out of town a lot, too, and nobody’s ever mentioned the Blazers to me, except back when they were the JailBlazers.
You must not know many sports oriented friends. Blazers are very well known.
Yes, that’s the point. The Blazers are well known, and I’m sure everyone I know knows who they are. Yet they don’t register as a conversation topic when I travel, because they’re not important to large segments of the population. And I doubt the people I know are unrepresentative of the general population.
Amen. This site is basically followed by cycling geeks like me. Unlike me, many here think that no growth in any area except more bicycle routes is good. Grow up… there is a whole world or interesting things to do in life except hopping on a bike and feeling you are saving the world. You are not. Batter Up!!
I’ve never seen anyone here EVER say anything remotely close to “no growth in any area except bicycle routes is good”. It’s especially ironic that you say that, given that one of the arguments several people have given against the river site is that it removes land available for river-related industrial uses.
I don’t think many people here believe they’re “saving the world” when they ride a bike, and of those who do, I’d guess none have no other interesting things they do in life.
Telling people you disagree with to “grow up” isn’t a very convincing argument for your cause, especially when it comes on top of telling people to go live in the forest off the grid, and calling them names.
First, everybody here doesn’t think alike, so saying how “you guys” would think is nonsense.
Second, I doubt many people here would support spending money on any bridge that didn’t have true, compelling value–serving lots of people, solving major safety issues, etc.
Third, if someone proposed an expensive bridge that didn’t make a lot of sense to build, and you objected or even just questioned it, and people called you a complainer, or told you to go live in a cabin in the woods because you’re anti-progress (that is, what you and at least one other stadium proponent have been doing here) you’d be right to dismiss them because they’d be out of line.