When The Portland Beavers Last Tried to Move to Lents

An Oct. 26, 1960, article from the Oregon Journal reveals the Portland Beavers have considered moving to Lents before -- to a Southeast Portland farm site once owned by A.V. and Robertina Folkman. That farm site eventually became Eastport Plaza, the shopping center now on Southeast 82nd Avenue between Holgate and Powell boulevards.

Jim Running, an Oregon Journal staff writer in 1960, writes:

"With grandiose plans for a modern baseball stadium to succeed the old Vaughn Street park, the Portland Beavers bought most of the Folkman farm in about 1945. The Beavers, however, did not buy the old couple's barn and two-story farm home. The Folkmans lived in it up to their deaths, continuing to farm a two-acre tract which they did not sell. Meanwhile, the Beavers' plans did not jell and their land stood largely idle for 10 years, with evangelists occasionally pitching their big tents on the site and conducting month-long revivals. By 1955, its stadium plans abandoned, the ball club sold the 18 acres to the U.S. National Bank. It was this year also that a San Francisco investment firm, Fligelman and Meltzer, foresaw the Eastport Plaza and bought the land from the bank."

Thanks to Lents historian and resident Ray Hites for a photocopy of the 1960 article.