News Portland Beavers and Timbers owner Merritt Paulson's proposal to bring Major League Soccer to Portland —while renovating PGE Park and building a new baseball stadium somewhere in town for the Beavers— got ink in the Manchester (U.K.) Guardian this week. One of the authors, Jules Boykoff, played collegiate soccer for the University of Portland and later played professionally. He's ...   More

News Mayor Sam Adams and City Commissioner Randy Leonard this morning rolled out their draft agreement (PDF) with Portland Beavers/Timbers owner Merritt Paulson to renovate PGE Park into a soccer-specific facility and build a new ballpark for the Beavers where Memorial Coliseum is now located. Total cost of the deal: $88.785 million. This afternoon, proponents of the deal are lobbying skeptics, including ...   More

News City Commissioner Dan Saltzman walked into last week's hearing at City Hall on Portland's controversial stadium-building deal with Merritt Paulson prepared to offer a new amendment calling for a 120-day "time out" on Mayor Sam Adams' rushed deal. Instead, out of "deference to the mayor," Saltzman says he withheld the amendment on the city's deal with Paulson, owner of the Timbers soccer team ...   More

News As if the powers behind a new minor-league baseball stadium in the Rose Quarter and revamping PGE Park for Major League Soccer didn't have enough to worry about, now this longstanding concern about potty parity at stadiums has made it to the front page of today's New York Times. Fortunately, Portland already has its own commissioner concerned with all things potty. We're sure he's already on ...   More

News Mayor Sam Adams is moving fast on plans to tear down Memorial Coliseum and start construction on a new minor-league baseball stadium for Merritt Paulson in the Rose Quarter. At the same time, city leaders and Paulson are trying to finalize Paulson's other plans -- to rebuild PGE Park for his new Major League Soccer team. During a two-day planning process convened by the mayor earlier this week ...   More

News About 30 people met all day Monday and Tuesday, at Mayor Sam Adams' direction, to design a new Rose Quarter district that would accommodate a new stadium for both Merritt Paulson's AAA baseball Beavers and the Trail Blazers' longstanding plans for an entertainment zone. And this afternoon, Adams publicly announced at a 4 p.m. press conference what was previously just a possibility: That the ...   More

News Commissioner Randy Leonard and Merritt Paulson went before the Lents community Tuesday night and told the neighborhood they would need $2 million from the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area to pay for new park space taken from Lents by the new proposed Triple-A baseball stadium. Leonard and Paulson both said the baseball stadium would "impact" one soccer field. But Portland Parks and Recreation ...   More

News A few more details on the proposal to bring minor league baseball to Lents Park have emerged in recent days. As previously reported, the proposed stadium would "require" 1,500 parking spaces, some of which could be at nearby Marshall High School (with cash-strapped Portland Public Schools earning some money from the deal.) This weekend, former Portland Development Commission director Don ...   More

News The cafeteria of Lent Elementary School near the site of Merritt Paulson's proposed baseball stadium was crowded Wednesday night with Lents neighbors who had questions about the proposal and its funding as well as the stadium's possible impact on the Southeast Portland neighborhood. And, oh man, was it heated. Commissioner Randy Leonard was one of the first people to speak at the meeting convened ...   More

News At the end of last night's meeting of the Lents neighborhood association, residents took a straw poll by quickly raising their hands to indicate whether they supported building a new public-private baseball stadium in Lents Park. A neighborhood association rep also asked folks to indicate if they were undecided. Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Portland Beavers baseball team that wants to ...   More