IMAGE: Jonathan Hill

One day before the original April 15 deadline to select a Rose Quarter location for Merritt Paulson’s minor league baseball team, all sides scrambled on Tuesday to hammer out details on the design.

At the same time, questions about the total cost of the project, who would pay for it and its impact on other Portland sports franchises were being pushed off to another day.

These harried last-minute bargaining sessions among Paulson, the Portland Trail Blazers and Mayor Sam Adams are no secret. The mayor himself acknowledged last week the city was working on a compressed timeline (see “Goal Rush,” WW, April 8, 2009).

The mayor’s rushing has, nonetheless, riled local business owners. Their livelihood hinges in large part on the success of the proposal, which calls for mixing the Blazers’ longstanding plan for an “entertainment district,” built by the Cordish Co., with Paulson’s more recent plan for a boutique minor-league baseball stadium. He wants a new baseball stadium so PGE Park can be revamped into a soccer-specific stadium for a Major League Soccer franchise starting play in 2011.

The rush has also angered local architects and preservationists, who are upset with the city’s plan to tear down the 49-year-old Memorial Coliseum to make room for the new baseball park and entertainment district south of Broadway.

What is a secret is how much the new, hybrid plan will cost, but that’s because no one knows.

“There hasn’t been a definite number determined yet,” says Adams spokesman Roy Kaufmann.

Yet the City Council is expected to formalize the city’s financial relationship with Paulson when it considers an ordinance Wednesday, April 15, to enter a predevelopment agreement with the owner of Portland’s new MLS franchise and its Triple-A baseball team.

The Council is expected to vote on that agreement April 22, as multiple questions linger about the project.

There’s the price tag (which could double or triple depending on the scope). There’s the impact of the new deal on the Portland Winter Hawks, who play about 20 to 30 hockey games a year in the Coliseum, and the Portland LumberJax, who may find it hard to secure Rose Garden dates for their 10 lacrosse games if the demolition of the Coliseum leaves the Rose Garden schedule crowded with tenants like the Winter Hawks.

And there’s the feasibility of the overall scheme when construction on projects like the Tom Moyer tower downtown have had to stop due to financing problems.

As of Tuesday morning, Paulson and the Blazers were not fully in agreement, according to the Blazers. “[Adams] wants the parties to be in consensus, but if they’re not, he’s going to make the call,” says J. Isaac, a vice president for the Blazers.

The differences between the Blazers’ preferred option and Paulson’s desired outcome translate to millions of dollars in extra cost, although there are no exact figures and no sense yet if taxpayers or the private parties will foot those bills.

As of Tuesday morning, Paulson’s plan for fitting a baseball stadium and an entertainment district in the Rose Quarter called for demolishing the Coliseum, the Blazers’ office building (which the Blazers’ own) and a relatively new parking garage. The Blazers’ plan called for a slightly different placement of Paulson’s new baseball stadium closer to Broadway, meaning North Larrabee Avenue would have to be torn up and a new street built.

“It doesn’t make getting it done any easier when you add tens of millions of dollars to the cost,” says Isaac. “It only makes it harder.”

Demolishing the Coliseum is an obstacle, notwithstanding the current objections from preservationists and nostalgics who draw on fond long-ago memories of a Beatles concert or the Blazers playing there, as well as more recent sold-out functions such as tennis’ Davis Cup in 2007 or then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama last year.

For one thing, Portland’s agreement with the Blazers’ corporate branch to manage the Coliseum provides that the city will give the building’s occupants one year’s notice before terminating the agreement. Paulson’s timeline does not allow for one year’s notice, which means the city must offer Coliseum users some other incentive.

“If this goes through, we will not get a year’s notice,” says Winter Hawks president Doug Piper. “That’s something they’ll have to take into consideration to make everyone happy.”

Piper said the “spirit of cooperation” on the project was so strong, however, that the city’s gesture might not have to be monetary. “It could take one of several forms,” Piper says.

Meanwhile, the decision last week to stop construction on Moyer’s downtown tower on Southwest Park Avenue could also pose problems for Paulson’s project. The building is in the middle of a new urban renewal district Adams and Commissioner Randy Leonard hoped to create as a way to generate $15 million in financing for Paulson’s proposal. Commissioner Dan Saltzman scuttled that district—thus creating a $15 million funding hole. While Adams hasn’t ruled out creation of the district, the Moyer decision drives its own hole in the assumption the urban renewal district would generate the funds to support he project.

“If we had committed to that urban renewal area, it might be a different story,” Kaufmann says. “I don’t think it’s going to shape the overall funding decision one way or another.”