February 04, 2010
Portland Timbers get their stadium reno deal; Beavers future uncertain
It took a while, but yesterday the Portland city council approved a $31 million plan to renovate PGE Park to be soccer-only, clearing the way for the Portland Timbers to start play there as an MLS club in 2011. Most of the money will be provided by taxpayers, though partly via a convoluted "prepaid rent" scheme that makes it hard to understand exactly who's paying for what.
Meanwhile, the Portland Beavers minor-league baseball team — owned, like the Timbers, by Merritt Paulson, son of former Bush treasury secretary Henry — will be without a home after the 2010 season. Paulson had previously threatened that this would be a deal-breaker for any renovation plan, but who really takes sports team owner threats seriously, anyway?
December 23, 2009
Timbers release stadium design, construction schedule
Merritt "My Dad Gave Away Your Dad's Tax Money" Paulson still doesn't have a new home for his Portland Beavers minor-league baseball team, but that isn't stopping him from moving ahead with plans to renovate PGE Park as soccer-only. Paulson's Timbers soccer franchise released new renderings this week of how the renovated stadium will look, after a $31 million makeover being paid for by, well, The Oregonian didn't mention it this time, but psst, mostly the taxpayers.
The most interesting bit here may be that they plan to begin construction in January, pause for the baseball season, then finish up next winter. Which certainly leads one to believe that at least some of the renovations could take place while still accommodating baseball. Also, apparently Paulson was definitely lying when he told the Beaverton city council that "if I don't get a baseball deal done, I'm not going to finalize the deal with Portland" — unless he really thinks he's going to finalize a deal with the other Vancouver before the construction crews are set to arrive next month.
October 30, 2009
Paulson puts kibosh on Beaverton Beavers
This just in: Portland Beavers owner Merritt "Son of TARPman" Paulson has pulled out of his proposed deal with Beaverton for a minor-league baseball stadium. His explanation: There isn't enough time to get a stadium built there by 2011.
As explanations go, this is pretty unexplanatory: That would have been a tight timetable to get a Beaverton stadium done in any case, and it's not like any other cities are further ahead with their stadium plans. More likely: All the Beaverton city council members hating on the plan, combined with behind-the-scenes talks with other cities, caused Paulson to figure he'd be better off putting his money on another horse, whatever that may be.
Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard told the Portland Business Journal that the news doesn't threaten Portland's agreement to renovate PGE Park to be soccer-only for Paulson's Timbers. Which is exactly the opposite of what Paulson said two weeks ago, but then this is a guy whose lines in the sand change every other week.
Beaverton stadium deal "a terrible return"
Don Bauder of the San Diego Reader is one of the best writers on stadium issues in the nation, and this week he takes on the Portland Beavers stadium proposal in Beaverton, Oregon. (The Beavers are a San Diego Padres farm club.) He notes that in addition to the $35 million in stadium construction that Beaverton taxpayers would be on the hook for, the city would have to provide parking spaces for fans:
[Councilmember Betty Bode] figures that 1500 spaces would cost around $37.5 million. In claiming the tax bite will be small, proponents are using "phony figures," says Bode.
Rob Drake, who was Beaverton mayor for four terms (1993-2008), says that even if the number of spaces is cut to 750, parking would still come to $20 million.
Drake also wonders what would happen to Beaverton if nearby Portland got a major-league team before the stadium was paid off. Sports economist Roger Noll, meanwhile, rips apart our old friend Economic Research Associates' economic impact report, and says of the Beaverton project: "It's a terrible return — obviously not worth it."
October 15, 2009
Paulson threatens Timbers deal if Beavers don't get new home
The Portland Beavers and the city of Beaverton announced a tentative stadium agreement this week, and Beavers owner decided to mark the occasion the old-fashioned way — with a threat. "If I don't get a baseball deal done, I'm not going to finalize the deal with Portland," Paulson told the Beaverton city council Tuesday night. "So MLS will not come to Portland unless I do a deal for a new baseball park." Which is a change from what he said four months ago, but new times demand new threats.
As for the mystery of how a Beaverton ballpark, that seems to have been resolved. According to The Oregonian:
In Beaverton, Paulson would pay $9 million upfront and make annual rent and ticket-tax payments for 25 years, beginning at more than $870,000. The city would sell revenue bonds to cover $50 million, to be repaid through higher property and utility taxes.
Taxpayers would be on the hook for about 60 percent of total project costs.
That's a bit oblique, but what it seems to be saying is that: For a $59 million stadium, Paulson would kick in $9 million in cash and pay off about $15 million in bonds; the other $35 million would come out of taxpayers' pockets.
A citizens' group calling itself Let Our Voters Vote has launched a petition drive to force a public referendum on the stadium project. Mayor Denny Doyle has already countered by arguing that the monthly cost of a stadium would be less than half the price of a movie ticket; it's got to be only a matter of time before somebody translates that into pennies.
August 21, 2009
Beaverton Beavers push has no financing, site
The nonprofit Oregon Sports Authority has officially launched a campaign to build the Portland Beavers a new stadium in Beaverton — a decision that surely has nothing to do with Beavers owner Merritt Paulson's presence on the OSA board of directors. Only one problem: No one knows how it would be paid for. Oh, and Paulson says the proposed site might be big enough. And local landowners are threatening "war" if the city tries to take their property for use for a stadium. So, okay, three problems.
July 30, 2009
Beaverton mayor: We're gonna build us a stadium somehow!
Minor-league baseball is normally outside the scope of this site, but I just can't pass up a Beaverton Beavers story. Especially since it's really part of the Portland Timbers story. And the mayor of Beaverton is named Denny Doyle — though sadly, not that one.
So anyway: Mayor Doyle now says he hopes to have an MOU for a new Triple-A stadium by the end of August, and a financing plan in September. He doesn't know how much it would cost or who would pay for it, though he does helpfully note, "We would go out and put together a package that both sides would contribute."
Doyle also ruled out using property taxes or urban renewal money to pay for a stadium, which, in the words of Oregonian reporter Brad Schmidt, "would leave city-issued bonds." Of course, bonds don't actually pay for anything — they're just a means of financing, meaning this makes as much sense as saying Beaverton plans to pay for a stadium "by putting it on its credit card." But presumably Schmidt was just repeating what Doyle told him, and that's journalism, right?
July 23, 2009
The Portland Beavers are considering moving to Beaverton.
Do you really need to know more than that? If so, you'll have to wait a bit in any case: The Oregonian notes that the suburban city has "no list of locations, no project team, no financing plan — or even the discussion about whether to invest public money." Just the potential of an awesome name.
July 16, 2009
Running down your own stadium in the cause of getting a new one has a long, inglorious history, but Portland Beavers and Timbers owner Merritt Paulson still deserves some sort of award for telling Willamette Week that PGE Park is a "crap stadium," just in time for his team to host the AAA All-Star Game there last night. That's the All-Star Game, WWeek notes, that Paulson announced he'd landed two years ago with the statement that "we are thrilled at the opportunity to showcase Portland and our wonderful ballpark." But that's when he was more interested in selling tickets than stadium financing packages.
June 19, 2009
Paulson: Forget baseball, let's talk soccer
Those protestors in Lents have to be thinking, "That was easy": Portland Beavers owner Merritt Paulson withdrew his plan for a minor-league baseball stadium today, saying he wanted to instead focus on finalizing plans for a soccer stadium for his expansion Timbers team. As for the Beavers, he said he's committed to keeping them "in Portland or the Portland area."
It may or may not have been intentional, but Paulson has now pulled off a series of switches even slicker than his dad managed last fall. Let's recap:
- Two years after buying the Beavers and minor-league Timbers franchises, Paulson wangles an invitation to move up to Major League Soccer in 2011, provided he has a soccer-only stadium.
- Paulson presents Portland with a no-lose proposition: He'll build a new stadium for the Beavers, and renovate their current home park to be soccer-only. And all he'll need is $30 million or so in tax money.
- Everyone freaks out about where to put the baseball stadium. Paulson freaks out about the freaking out.
- Mayor Sam Adams says, "We don't need to worry about baseball to get soccer done."
- Paulson: "What is this 'baseball' of which you speak?"
While nobody knows what the soccer stadium deal will look like now — it was only presented previously as a package deal — Paulson is potentially sitting pretty, as the city has already identified a whole pile of different public revenue streams, any of which could cover the soccer costs if the baseball stadium is scrapped. Meanwhile, Paulson now gets to play "Who Wants To Build Me a Baseball Stadium?" with the Portland suburbs — both Hillsboro and Vancouver, Washington have been mentioned as possibilities — and at worst, he's traded in two minor-league teams for one big-league one and a AAA baseball franchise that he can move or sell or whatever, which is a good swap however you want to count it. "Hey, how about you build me a new soccer stadium and make my baseball team a free agent?" isn't a deal he likely could have gotten if he'd proposed it back in March, but what's important is how you get there, or something.
Portland: We'll do MLS stadium with or without baseball
Hours before more than 100 people rallied in protest of a Portland Beavers minor-league baseball stadium in their neighborhood of Lents, Mayor Sam Adams and city commissioner Randy Leonard threw the project under the bus, declaring that they'll back converting PGE Park for soccer for the expansion Timbers regardless of whether the Beavers get a new home. This likely means the Timbers deal will get done — commissioner Dan Saltzman, the swing vote on the city council, has opposed the soccer stadium because of concerns about the baseball plans — but also could mean the Beavers would have to move if the Lents stadium plan falls through: "I don't see another option," said Mayor Adams.
Of course, there's always the much-discussed option of having the Timbers and Beavers share digs at PGE, saving millions of dollars on building duplicate facilities. MLS Commissioner Don Garber has said he doesn't want to do that, but he's going to say that, obviously — he has no incentive to shack up with a baseball team if he doesn't want to. The only way to test whether he'd actually rescind the Timbers franchise rather than share space is to make the demand and see what happens. Not that Mayor Adams is likely to do that, but you don't get if you don't ask...
June 12, 2009
Portland study: New ballpark site blows
Another city-backed study of the proposed Portland Beavers minor-league baseball stadium is out, and it looks just as promising as the last one: A stadium in Lents Park, according to consultants HVS International, would have lower attendance and revenue and provide less visitor spending in the immediate neighborhood than the previously considered downtown site, thanks to being way out in the boonies and surrounded by a residential neighborhood. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who has opposed the downtown site and holds the swing vote on approving the baseball stadium — which is being sought by Beavers owner Merritt Paulson so their current stadium can be converted for his expansion Timbers soccer franchise — told The Oregonian that he planned to make the report "my weekend reading."
May 27, 2009
Portland study: Stadium would destroy jobs
Another day, another economic consulting report making glowing claims about the jobs created by new stadiums ... er, what's that you say, Portland Mercury?
Mayor [Sam] Adams' office asked consulting firm ECONorthwest on Monday, May 11, to figure out the number of jobs the Beavers stadium construction would create in Portland. The mayor gave ECONorthwest only one working day to turn around the study, but its results were not good news for the mayor's office or the stadium plan: While the ballpark construction would create 453 jobs during construction, the $49 million total investment would actually create a net loss of 182 jobs citywide.
"If those individuals who put their money into baseball via taxes are allowed to put that money into the private market, that same amount of money would actually yield more jobs," explains ECONorthwest number-cruncher Abe Farkas. The study also showed that 67 percent of the construction jobs would go to people who do not live in the City of Portland.
You will not be surprised to learn that this report never saw the light of day — the Mercury only finally obtained it from the city yesterday. For their part, Mayor Adams' office charged their consultants with making "seriously faulty underlying assumptions," including that residents would get to keep their urban-renewal tax dollars if they didn't go to the stadium. While this is a fair criticism, it's worth noting that urban renewal money would presumably be spent elsewhere if not on a stadium, an opportunity cost that the ECONorthwest study (downloadable here) doesn't attempt to quantify; and if other taxes ultimately have to be raised to support whatever other project doesn't get the stadium money, then the study's numbers pan out. (For his part, Farkas said he made reasonable assumptions, given the one-day turnaround required.)
While one city commissioner called for a new report, the mayor's office nixed that idea, saying it would take up to a month and cause them to miss Major League Soccer's deadline for a Timbers stadium, which is coming up in ... September. But still, it's got to be better to act first, and ask questions later, right?