News Commissioner Randy Leonard pledged last week to vote no on his resolution [PDF] committing the city to go forward with Merritt Paulson, owner of the Portland Timbers soccer team and Beavers baseball team, following Paulson's decision to withdraw his proposal for building a new minor league baseball stadium in Lents. The deal, which officially divorces the revamping of PGE Park for Major League ...   More

News The Portland Beavers have had added a nice touch to next Wednesday's Triple-A All-Star game in PGE Park — ex-Portland Trail Blazer Brian Grant will was going to throw out the first pitch. Grant, who recently revealed he had Parkinson's disease, is a fan favorite for Portlanders who remember him well as a stand-up guy on and off the court during his stint with the Blazers from 1997 to ...   More

News The Beaverton Beavers may not be just the name of a high school mascot, if Merritt Paulson and the City of Portland don't find a new location for the Portland Beavers Triple-A baseball team in the City of Roses by Aug. 1. Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle is in France for most of the week on a visit to a sister city. But word is leaking out anyway that Beaverton officials have, in fact, reached out ...   More

News The $31 million revamp of PGE Park, which will allow Major League Soccer to begin play there in 2011 and force the Portland Beavers to find a new baseball home, was approved Thursday by the City Council. The vote on the resolution (PDF) authorizing the city's term sheet (or as Mayor Sam Adams put it, the "basic concepts and shape" of the deal with more definitive details to come) with Merritt ...   More

News Portland's tentative deal with Merritt Paulson to bring Major League Soccer to PGE Park, a deal City Council approved July 23, expires today. The deadline —which had moved from Sept. 1 initially to Oct. 1— to negotiate all the details of the final financial agreement has now been extended until December or January, when construction was to begin on the renovation project, according ...   More

News So much for any prospect that the Biggi family in Beaverton might change its mind and willingly sell its property around the now-defunct Westgate Theater so the Portland Beavers could move into a new minor league baseball stadium there. After the jump is the statement released this morning by the Biggi family — a major landowner in Beaverton and the principals in an 80-year-old horseradish- ...   More

News A preliminary design for a remodeled PGE Park went before the City of Portland's Design Commission on Sept. 17, even as financial negotiations between Portland and Merritt Paulson stalled. That design (pictured above) calls for a Providence Health & Services rehabilitation center at the stadium's southeast corner on Southwest 18th Avenue. The Design Commission expects new drawings Nov. ...   More

News The Oregonian's story today about Merritt Paulson's effort to bring minor-league baseball to Beaverton included a whopper of a comment from Paulson. At the same time he's trying to build a baseball stadium in Beaverton for his Triple-A Beavers, Paulson's working with Portland officials to renovate PGE Park for Major League Soccer by 2011. Here's the relevant passage [emphasis mine]: At Tuesday ...   More

News Here's a riddle: What do you get when you cross Don Bauder of the San Diego Reader, who's written critically before in that alt-weekly about San Diego's major league baseball stadium with the fact that the major-league San Diego Padres are the parent team of Portland's Triple-A Beavers? Answer: A piece published today in the Reader in which Bauder links efforts to promote moving the Beavers ...   More

News Portland Beavers owner Merritt Paulson has just withdrawn his proposal to build a new Triple-A baseball stadium in Beaverton. Here's his Dear John letter [PDF] to Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle. In the letter, Paulson says the lack of a stadium location under city control and no firm financial commitment yet in place from the city add up to make it impossible to meet the timelines needed to have ...   More