MLB Athletics May Actually Relocate to Portland

[BroadwayVik]

http://blog.seattlepi.com/baseball/...nd-eyeing-oakland-as-for-possible-relocation/

A rival for the Seattle Mariners? Portland eyeing Oakland A’s for possible relocation
by Nick Eaton Friday, April 11 at 12:42pm

The Seattle Mariners don’t exactly have a arch rival, like the Seahawks have in the 49ers and the Huskies have in the Ducks and Cougars. But that could all change within the next few years if sports fans and businesspeople in Portland have their way.

Experts and leaders in the Rose City are slowly but surely working to make Seattle’s neighbor to the south an attractive landing spot for the Oakland Athletics, whose future at O.co Coliseum is up in the air after 2015. While there has been talk for decades about luring an MLB team to Portland, the A’s possible relocation represents a fresh opportunity.

The new Hillsboro Hops minor-league team has been drawing thousands of Portland baseball fans since the team’s arrival last season.

Involved in the discussions are Lynn Lashbrook, president of Portland-based Sports Management Worldwide, and Portland architect Barry Smith, who have a vision of a new riverside ballpark next to the Rose Garden on the east bank of the Willamette. According to the Portland Tribune, they think they could have a stadium ready for an MLB tenant within a few years.



This week, the Tribune reported, Lashbrook visited the new minor-league ballpark in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, where the Class-A Hops now play after moving from Yakima in 2013. The big question: Could Hillsboro Ballpark, which currently holds about 4,500 people, expand to a capacity of 15,000 or even 20,000 to serve as a temporary home for an MLB team while a new stadium is built in Portland?

“They can’t go past 2015 in Oakland,” project consultant Larry D’Amato told the Tribune. “The A’s are displaced (at the Oakland Coliseum). They’re going to have to go some place. This is an ideal situation, at least for three years, as a temporary fix until the ballpark is built in Portland.

“They’re not going to be able to move to San Jose. They have a ballpark that is inadequate. They received $30 million revenue-sharing (in 2013), and the other major-league clubs aren’t happy about that. They’re looking for a resolution. There are owners out there who would be delighted to buy the club. This is the situation they’re looking for.”

Big-league baseball in Portland, however, is not by any means a new idea. There was a push in the early 2000s to relocate the Montreal Expos to Oregon’s largest city, and another in the late 2000s when the Florida Marlins threatened to leave Miami. Detailed construction proposals for a Portland ballpark were submitted to the MLB, and work continues to this date.

MLB.com’s Tracy Ringolsby noted in January that all Portland needs now is a team.

Portland’s backers of baseball have the blueprint for a state-of-the-art baseball-only stadium, which would have a retractable roof and seat 35,000. They have community support, including that of the current city administration. A site, endorsed by mayor Charlie Hales, has been chosen, next to Memorial Coliseum and the new Rose Garden, home of the NBA’s Trail Blazers.

“We have the land and the infrastructure,” said architect Barry Smith.

The supporters believe they can find an ownership group, possibly a major Japanese firm, along the lines of Nintendo, which owns the Seattle Mariners.

With a metro-area population of nearly 3 million, Portland is the largest U.S. city without a Major League Baseball team, larger than such MLB towns as Tampa, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. And it has had numerous independent and minor-league teams throughout its history, including the Pacific Coast League’s Portland Beavers — a rival of the old Seattle Rainiers.

Hillsboro Ballpark, about 15 miles to the west of downtown Portland, was completed in 2013 for the arrival of the minor-league Hillsboro Hops. Yet Portland experienced a baseball drought as recently as 2010 to 2012, between the departure of a reincarnation of the Beavers and last season’s arrival of the Hillsboro Hops. A short-season Class-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Hops play in the brand-new Hillsboro Ballpark about 15 miles west of Portland.

While it has the only remaining NBA team in the Pacific Northwest, the Rose City, it seems, is champing at the bit for more professional sports. As we reported a month ago, the Seattle Seahawks’ success in 2013 appears to have inspired renewed interest in also luring the NFL to the Portland area.

Not surprisingly, the team being targeted in those discussions is the Oakland Raiders, who are dealing with the same decrepit O.co Coliseum as the MLB’s Athletics.

As Ringolsby wrote on MLB.com, the Mariners very much like being the only baseball show in the Northwest, and odds are the Seahawks enjoy their regional football dominance too. Yet as Major League Soccer has shown, rivalries can thrive here in the PNW, as evidenced by the Cascadia Cup battle among the Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps.

Would such a rivalry work in Major League Baseball? Or the National Football League, for that matter?


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[BroadwayVik]

Portland Duo Wants the City and Major League Baseball to Strike a Courtship to Lure a Team
By Andrew Theen October 23, 2013 at 5:34 PM, updated October 24, 2013 at 10:55 AM



They don't own the land, they don't have the cash, and they don't have a prospective team. But a Portland duo is attempting to drum up interest in bringing Major League Baseball to the Rose Quarter.

Lynn Lashbrook and Barry Smith believe the MLB needs Portland ... and that the Rose Quarter is an ideal location for one of the sport's 30 franchises.

Specifically, they say Portland's Veterans Memorial Coliseum is the best site for a major league ballpark. Lashbrook called the city-owned property a "very practical and logical location for a ballpark."

"It'd be an unbelievable park," he said.

The ballpark would have to be intimate by league standards to fit on that location, they say, roughly 38,000 seats.

The Portland Business Journal first reported the pair was having informal discussions within City Hall. Lashbrook, president of Sports Management Worldwide Inc., and Smith, a Portland architect, blame city officials for prematurely leaking the story in an attempt to kick the plan to the curb.

Dana Haynes, Mayor Charlie Hales' spokesman, confirmed there have been "loose discussions" with Lashbrook's group.

"This comes up from time to time, and of course we're interested in hearing more," Haynes said via email, noting that discussions about bringing baseball to Portland date back to Vera Katz's administration in the early 2000s.

But he characterized the discussions as being "on a low, low boil" and added that the mayor and his staff "don't expect much to come from them."

A MLB spokesman said league executives weren't aware of any Portland group contacting them regarding moving a franchise to the Northwest. The league hasn't looked at Portland since the Montreal Expos moved to Washington in 2005.

Lashbrook and Smith describe Memorial Coliseum, in Portland's Rose Quarter District next to the recently renamed Moda Center, as "obsolete" and a "major liability" to the city. Under their plan, the city wouldn't be asked to offer up much financially, other than the property.

Lashbrook, who was involved in an effort to lure the Expos to Portland a decade ago, said a 2003 financing plan to dedicate $150 million in income taxes generated by the franchise toward stadium construction is still available.

Lashbrook said the city doesn't need, and shouldn't expect, a local ownership group. They want the MLB to take an interest in Portland.

The city shelved a $31 million plan to renovate the historic Memorial Coliseum in December. In 2009, another plan to demolish the arena and build a minor league baseball ballpark was thwarted by supporters of the building. That was when city leaders were looking for a place to put the Class AAA Portland Beavers; the Beavers vacated what would become Jeld-Wen Field as part of Portland's push to win a Major League Soccer franchise.

Poor attendance at both Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Ray home games has fueled speculation in some circles that either of those franchises could potentially be on the move in the near future.

"Until Oakland and Tampa have solutions, whether they build a stadium or they move, Portland is still an option," Lashbrook said. "I'll go to my grave with that."

Previous rumors centered on the U.S. Postal Service facility in Northwest Portland or the Portland Public Schools headquarters across North Broadway and Weilder from the Rose Quarter as potential sites for a ballpark. Lashbrook and Smith say the Coliseum is the best location.

The Coliseum was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, a step advocated by architects to ensure the arena couldn't be razed without a long, costly fight, but Smith said he "doesn't see any reason to save the building."

"We have a great piece of property with the entire infrastructure in place that's owned by the city that needs a new life," Smith said.

"Until Oakland and Tampa have solutions...Portland is still an option. I'll go to my grave with that." Lynn LashbrookEven a speculative proposal got the attention of Brian Libby, an architecture writer and co-founder of the Friends of the Memorial Coliseum. "To parachute in and start swinging around a wrecking ball at a nationally registered landmark is not very Portland," Libby said.

Libby predicted strong opposition to any plan to demolish the arena.

City leaders plan to resume conversations about what to do with the Rose Quarter, and the coliseum, next year.

In an email, city Office of Management and Finance officials confirmed the timeline calls for a June 2014 return to City Council "with some options that take into consideration the larger issues in the Rose Quarter District."

Smith and Lashbrook believe the ballpark will serve as the catalyst for accelerated development, and bringing more people more often, to the Rose Quarter.

Using Pittsburgh's PNC Park as a model, Smith copied and pasted the ballpark onto Google Maps to get a sense of what was possible there.

Smith's concept, admittedly premature, would include part of the structure spanning North Interstate Avenue to connect to the waterfront. They envision the ballpark plan helping extend the East Bank Esplanade north of the Rose Quarter

Lashbrook said he first started looking at reviving a plan to attract Major League Baseball last summer after fielding interested calls in response to an article in The Oregonian about minor league baseball's return to the metro area.

Earlier this year, Lashbrook and Smith were able to convince two executives with a national sport's facility planning firm that helps shepherd new facilities through financing and development to take a detour to Portland to check out the site.

Bill Mykins, a vice-president with Brailsford & Dunlavey, confirmed he and a colleague specifically traveled to Portland to check out Lashbrook's plan. They took the MAX from downtown Portland to the Rose Quarter exit and surveyed the area.

"It's an awesome site," Mykins said, citing the access to mass transit, Interstate 5 and downtown. "I think there's enough land there to make it fit."

Mykin participated in a feasibility study that examined the possibility of luring the Expos to D.C. and also worked to plan the Nationals' ballpark there, so he's familiar with the process.

He said these projects are a three-legged stool: there must be the demand for the project, it's got to be financially feasible, and there must be sufficient political will to make it happen.

Right now the group hasn't formally addressed any of those three steps.

"It's a major undertaking," he said.

In terms of getting attention from the league, the timing really couldn't be much worse

Game one of the World Series starts Wednesday, and Bud Selig, the long-time MLB commissioner, is retiring after the 2014 season.

MLB officials said they didn't expect any discussions about franchises relocating to come up at the league's annual winter meetings which start after the World Series wraps up.

 

[BroadwayVik]

If the Veterans Memorial Colesium is, in fact, to be demolished, perhaps a remnant of the architecturally characteristic glass panels have already been slated for use in the Viking Pavilion. Hence the similarity in style and design between the two structures.



The Viking Pavilion will then serve as the de facto "Veterans Memorial Pavilion" to provide continuity in Portland commemorating WWII Veterans, their victory and the G.I. Bill from a grateful Congress. These are the causes that established the creation of Portland State University as a WWII war memorial university of thanks.

The V in Veterans is also why we have V names in Vikings for Athletics and Vanguard for Newspaper Journalism.

 

[martymoose]

I'm a huge baseball fan, but the constant years of let down on "MLB to Portland" has me to view it with zero optimism when the chatter starts up.

I just can't see the Memorial Coliseum every being torn down.

BroadwayVik has a good idea about reusing the glass. The timbers could maybe be reused as well in a project in the city. Move the memorial and keep the legacy alive, but let's not let an aging glass box sit in the way of progress.

 

[Pounder]

This isn't even an effort. John Canzano got excited about what the Tribune wrote, blogged before he talked to the Hops, then quickly figured out there was nothing behind it except Lynn Lashbrook's ties to certain people in the media. Lashbrook doesn't have the money, he's just trying to motivate a population to want this and encourage the city of Portland to make accommodations for this... and doing very poorly at it the further away we get from last decade's MLB2PDX effort.

There's no interest from an owner. Lew Wolff is not going to abandon the TV market where the Athletics reside.