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?
actually PGE will not Soccer only. Part of the renovation is to make it the home of Portland State Football
Actually, the stadium already was the home of Portland State football.
Also, the Timbers and Beaver deals were packaged together at first. But since nothing was getting done because an agreement could not be made on both, the two were separated.
The Beavers are as good as gone. Where will they play? There are cities that would probably love to have a Class AAA baseball team: Spokane, Tucson, Vancouver, Boise…
If Portland doesn’t care about baseball, they deserve to lose the Beavers.