Adams' Savvy Move? The Mayor's Public Meeting on the Rose Quarter

On Tuesday, April 14, Mayor Sam Adams is hosting an "open house" with the public to discuss his quickly-developed plans to tear down Memorial Coliseum and build a minor-league baseball stadium in the Rose Quarter. With only days to go before City Council is expected to vote on the project on April 22, business owners from around the Rose Quarter already have questions for the mayor.

"I am concerned this plan has not been subject to enough public review," says Sattie Clark of Eleek, Inc., a manufacturer of sustainable lighting and other household items, on North Flint Avenue a few blocks from the Rose Quarter. "This doesn't feel like the right thing for this community at this time."

Yet the location for the meeting is prompting some Rose Quarter-area business owners to give political points to the mayor, who says his plans for the Rose Quarter and PGE Park will be "sustainable." The April 14 public meeting is planned for the leftbank project, an 86-year-old building, just north of the Rose Quarter, where Adams had once planned to put PDX Lounge and the Portland + Oregon Sustainability Institute.

"The leftbank is a location that has already built a reputation for nurturing community," Clark says. "The city is smart to want to tap into that for this event."

Call it the second score for the mayor. Last Tuesday, when Adams held a press conference to announce preliminary plans for the Rose Quarter, he did so with a Trail Blazers' executive by his side, suggesting the NBA team (which had its own plans for the Rose Quarter) was fully on board with the mayor's new plans.

The "open house" is Tuesday, April 14, at 6 p.m., at the leftbank project, 240 N. Broadway