Portland Architecture

Another look at PGE Park, and rebuttal to latest Coliseum demo talk

 

The situation involving Timbers MLS soccer in PGE Park, Beavers baseball...somewhere, and the future of Memorial Coliseum is in a kind of limbo right now.

City Council has de-coupled the PGE Park soccer renovation plan from the fate of the Beavers, meaning the plan to upgrade PGE as a soccer-only facility can go forward to meet its stipulated September timeline without being threatened by the Beavers' open-ended search for a new home.

That's particularly important given that Lents is now officially out as a potential location for Beavers baseball. In the weeks ahead, the City will be making a final search for a ballpark site that keeps the Beavers in Portland or, at the very least, in the metro area. 

Suburban sites like Hillsboro or Clark County have been suggested for a Beavers park, and here in Portland proper there have been numerous inner-city sites proposed: Delta Park, the Terminal 1 former shipyard facility, the Oregonian's vacant property in Northwest Portland, South Waterfront, the Lloyd Cinemas parking lot, among others.

Personally, I feel that PGE Park has never been completely or properly examined as a home for both the Timbers and Beavers.

Clearly Major League Soccer is opposed to having both soccer and baseball played in any of its venues. That's because the league, quite justifiably, believes strongly in having a quality fan experience that also translates well for television: namely, having all four sides of the soccer field lined with seating. So in the upcoming soccer-only renovation, you'll see seats moved much closer to the field. And that's a good thing for fans.

Baseball and football fans can also remember the days in the 1970s and '80s when a slough of multipurpose stadiums brought a compromised experience to both sports. Whether it was Veterans' Stadium in Philadelphia, Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, or Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, these were bland circular concrete cookie-cutter stadiums who nobody was that sorry to see go.

Even so, I think Portland's culture of strong design and innovation could chart the course for a new kind of multi-purpose stadium, one where the experience is as good as single-use stadiums but the wastefulness of building entire buildings for individual sports is abandoned for its unsustainability.

PGE Park is basically in need of a design solution. We need the Timbers to be able to play with the field surrounded by fans. And then we need the Beavers to be able to play on that same field with some of that seating removed to make way for the extended outfield. But that is absolutely doable with today's seating technologies.

Whether it's Audience Systems from the United Kingdom, Australian Seating Systems in Australia, or Spanish and US-based Figueras International Seating, there are numerous companies around the world that could create retractible seating for PGE Park that would help the Timbers and Beavers co-locate there while keeping both soccer and baseball fans happy.

In conversations recently with seating experts, I was told that it would be preferable at PGE Park if there could be retractible seating that is simply moved rather than temporary seating that must be disassembled. And that would be a more expensive proposition. But as it happens, Portland Beavers and Timbers owner Merritt Paulson is planning to spend many millions upgrading PGE Park.

Having an innovative solution at PGE Park that houses both the Beavers and Timbers but does so in a way that delivers optimal fan viewing would be a major design innovation that the rest of the world would take notice of. We've been in an era over the last ten to twenty years where teams build single-use stadiums. But that has happened in an unprecedented economic boom time. Returning to multi-use stadiums but doing so in a new, innovative way is precisely the kind of sustainable innovation Portland ought to aspire to. It would also solve a political soap opera that has been going on too long.

Meanwhile, although it's probably better not to even dignify it with a response, a reader named Samuel Baron of Fairview in Portland's outer outer suburbs chimed in today with an op-ed in The Oregonian arguing that Memorial Coliseum be torn down for a Beavers ballpark at the Rose Quarter. Luckily Mayor Adams and the Portland Trail Blazers have both adamantly said this will not happen. But just in case anyone reads that op-ed and is swayed, keep in mind this rebuttal.

Baron is admittedly new to the Portland area, having relocated from Baltimore. He thinks that city's now-gone Memorial Stadium is the same situation as Memorial Coliseum. Memorial Stadium in Baltimore had "outlived its usefulness" and was demolished. By that rationale, Baron says, our Coliseum should too. He even recounts how the cramped Baltimore neighborhood where Memorial Stadium was razed was relieved to have it gone.

But Memorial Stadium was not the unique work of architecture that Memorial Coliseum is. And Baltimore is not Portland. Is this what passes for informed commentary in the city's daily newspaper? Some guy from Baltimore piping up that we should get with the demolition program like his east coast hometown? Please. Couldn't we at least have a longtime Portlander making this wrong argument?

Hopefully the City Council knows better. (Luckily the Blazers already do.) These trite, tired arguments for razing the Coliseum have all been aired in the past months, and the community rose up in opposition. Sometimes buildings' value does not come only from their purpose, but from the relationship architecture has with the people of its community. Face it, Samuel Baron, Portlanders cherish Memorial Coliseum and are not going to follow the lemmings' path of destroying are most cherished buildings.

Time to re-sound the alarm? Oregonian story implies Coliseum could be back in play as baseball stadium site

It's just never over, is it?

A report on the front page of today's Oregonian by Ted Sickinger and City Hall reporter Mark Larabee seems to indicate that Portland's landmark Memorial Coliseum could once again be considered as the site for a baseball stadium.

"Coliseum numbers better than Lents site," the headline reads.

The story goes on to say that a city-produced study has found that Lents Park, the proposed site of the stadium, "falls short on almost every measure - attendance, development prospects, ticket revenue and parking - compared with the former front-running site at Memorial Coliseum."

Nobody in the story, from the City Council to Merritt Paulson (none of whom are pictured at right), is yet suggesting that attention be turned back to demolishing the Coliseum. But that is the clear logical extension.

The story does quote Council member Randy Leonard, who points out a a major flaw in the study, conducted by HVS International. It calls Lents a suburb, and uses numbers from previous suburban stadiums with lesser revenue numbers. To some this might seem like splitting hairs, but it's an important distinction. Lents is an outer neighborhood in Portland, but because Portland is not a sprawled-out metro area like most big cities in America, it's much more easily accessible from the center of the city than most suburbs would be in this country.

More importantly, the point to be made here is that if City Council, Merritt Paulson or anyone else makes a second attack on Memorial Coliseum, that effort will be met with a ceaseless chorus of opposition.

Memorial Coliseum is one of the great works of architecture ever built in the city of Portland. It is designed by a legendary architecture firm, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, representing the best of mid-20th century building with a combination of engineering prowess and transparency to make an arena unlike any other in the world: one with natural light pouring through.

Just like Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Pietro Belluschi-designed Portland Art Museum and Equitable Building, the Pittock Mansion, the Ladd Carriage House, the Benson Bubblers, the Park Blocks, the Jackson Tower and other beloved landmarks in this city, Portland and its people will not let stand some ridiculous plan to destroy our most beloved architecture in the name of a baseball stadium a few thousand at best will ever visit, or a minor-league team few in the city care about.

If you are reading this and feel even half as strongly as I do about preserving Portland's history and saving this exceptional work of architecture, please consider contacting City Council to say this: Don't even think about trying to tear down Memorial Coliseum.

Mayor Sam Adams

Phone: (503)823-4120

Email: Samadams@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Randy Leonard

Phone: (503)823-4682

Email: randy@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Amanda Fritz

Phone: (503) 823-3008

Email: amanda@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Nick Fish

Phone: (503) 823-3589

Email: nick@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Dan Saltzman

Phone: (503)823-4151

Email: dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us

Meanwhile, here is a copy of the previously-posted letter from the National Trust for Historic Preservation:

Dear Mayor Adams:

On behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, we are writing to express our support for the preservation of Portland’s Memorial Coliseum. We were alarmed to learn of your proposal to demolish this architecturally-significant modernist building and brazen pledge to seek City Council approval for demolition within a month. As detailed below, the unique qualities of this structure and its importance to the community require a careful evaluation of alternatives before demolition is considered. We are also highly skeptical of claims that the demolition of this Portland landmark is a “sustainable” solution. In fact, demolition followed by new construction would be a dramatic step backward in Portland’s goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable city.

The Memorial Coliseum is an historic building that contributes significantly to the community of Portland and the State of Oregon. Designed 1958-1960 by the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (established in 1936 in Chicago), the Coliseum is architecturally notable for its cantilevered steel-truss roof floating over a free-standing concrete arena bowl, the whole enclosed by a glass curtain wall. An all-glass exterior façade is an uncommon treatment for arenas of this era. The rarity of this style contributes to structure’s historic significance.

With the successful reuse of this building, Portland can demonstrate its leadership in the preservation of historic architecture and work cooperatively towards developing a practical model for communities that are debating new uses for their aging arenas. In 2002, William P. Macht, an adjunct professor of urban planning and development in the College of Urban & Public Affairs at Portland State University, put forward four alternative plans for the preserved coliseum, created as part of a three-month development planning workshop. These particular options -- a headquarters hotel, an arts complex, a sustainable technology center and an urban home center –prove that alternatives do exist and should be more fully explored by the City before any further decisions are made.

Finally, we are concerned that the Mayor has supported demolition of the Coliseum under the mantra of “sustainability.” We question the accuracy of this assumption. Choosing new construction over reuse is rarely the most sustainable choice. New construction requires a massive expenditure of energy to manufacture or extract building materials, transport them to the construction site, and assemble them into a new building. A substantial amount of energy is already embodied in the Coliseum’s sizable steel and glass frames. The replacement of existing structural components with newly manufactured and newly extracted materials must be factored into the environmental cost if the City is to tout sustainability as an objective of this plan.

In light of community support and significant historic evidence, the National Trust asks that the reuse and renovation of Memorial Coliseum be the City’s first priority regarding the future of Rose Quarter area. The Trust also asks that the City consider the historic importance of the building relative to the rapidly diminishing number of significant modern works of architecture in the State and nationwide.

Coliseum and Rose Parade snapshots

Earlier this morning, I did something I normally never do, especially on a weekend. I set the alarm. In fact, I set it for 7AM. And it was worth it to be there for the Rose Parade as it originated from inside the arena, with Memorial Coliseum's upper curtain open to allow light to pour through.

I normally am not a big parade enthusiast. When I was a kid we went to the Rose Parade, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it as an adult. They're too early for this unrepentant late sleeper. But once there, properly over-caffeinated, I really enjoyed the Americana of it all: the marching bands, the Rosarians in their white suits, the velvet-throated K103 DJs emceeing, the Boss Hog convertibles with the waving grand marshall, and of course the floats. And of course seeing the Coliseum with the curtain open was the best part.

Here are a few snapshots that I took of the parade and the building. Joining me and a few other architects who came to see the building with the curtain open for the city's central civic-cultural public event of the year were a couple of professional photographers, Jeremy Bitterman and Matthew Ginn. Those guys are much more talented shutterbugs, and their photos will be published here down the road.

Memorial Coliseum curtain to be opened this Saturday for Grand Floral Parade [UPDATED]

For decades, one of the most striking and unique features of Portland's circa-1960 Memorial Coliseum has been hidden away: the ability to flood the arena with natural light by opening the black curtain that encloses the top of the seating bowl.

This Saturday, Portlanders will have a chance to see for themselves just how incredible this indoor-outdoor architectural experience really is. The curtain will be open for the Grand Floral Parade, which originates in the Coliseum.

You can see the effect in the above photo by legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman. When the Coliseum's curtain is open, this becomes one of the most unique arenas in the entire nation, or even the world. Can you name a single arena or concert hall in the world big enough to hold 10,000 people or more but do so in an interior building illuminated with daylight?

When I spoke with Rich Jarvis of the Rose Festival Foundation, he told me the curtain was actually open for last year's Grand Floral Parade, although no formal announcements were made. I never go to the parade anymore (used to as a child), so I had no idea. I've never heard a single person even mention the curtain being open last year. But I'm not missing this year's opportunity. I'm buying a ticket to the Coliseum for the parade, and entirely so I can see the building itself.

Jarvis also recalled his own experience watching the parade through the open curtain last year. "When you're sitting at the top of the bowl, with that curtain open it actually becomes the best seat in the house," he said. "If you're sitting on the east side, you can look out at the skyline. If you're on the river side, you can actually watch the parade as it continues outside toward downtown."

You can order tickets ($30) to see the parade from inside the Coliseum here. If you are an architect or designer in Portland, or any kind of architecture enthusiast, I strongly recommend taking advantage of this all-too-unique experience. When the Coliseum's curtain is open, this may very well be the ultimate architectural space in the city.

ADDITIONAL NOTE, 6/3/09: Apologies for the short notice, but Portland State University professor Garrett Martin's architecture class has been studying a series of housing options for the Rose Quarter area. Students will be presenting their projects from 5-9PM today at the Leftbank Building, at 240 N. Broadway. I hope to post some of their work in the days ahead.

Oregonian reports Coliseum restoration is cheapest option, Cordish Kansas City district a "tourist trap" that "will not work" here

Last week's announcement that the City of Portland would not seek to build a baseball stadium on the Memorial Coliseum site at the Rose Quarter gave Portland's grand dame of international-stye modernism a reprieve from the guillotine. But the arena is still anything but safe, both as it relates to the power brokers determining its fate and the media trying to shape the narrative with mixed results.

Two major articles this week from The Oregonian have given the Rose Quarter deal and Memorial Coliseum's preservation a longer look, although in some cases you have to turn to the end of the article to get the complicating factors.

In Monday's paper, Helen Jung wrote a front-page cover story with a headline asking, "Save the coliseum, but for what?" Helen is a quality reporter, and her story ultimately had a good mix of argument from both sides. But that's not necessarily the impression one gets if you just read the headline and the first few paragraphs or the big graph on Page 1 showing the Coliseum's declining revenues over the past five years (a $42,000 loss is projected for 2008-2009). It seems like Helen had a fair-minded approach but her headline-writing editors may have viewed the Coliseum preservation with greater skepticism.

"It has struggled for more than a decade to just break even," Jung writes early in the story. "The coliseum needs millions of dollars in fixes, from overhauling its half-century-old electrical system to replacing the roof. Its egalitarian seating arrangement, with no luxury boxes or club seats, makes the coliseum feel more like a high school gym than a venue out to make a profit."

Only when one gets to the end of the story does the financial argument include both sides. Jung cites William Macht's research proving that the Memorial Coliseum management agreement gives Oregon Arena Corporation incentive to fill the Rose Garden with events instead of the Coliseum after the Coliseum reaches break-even point.

But she also lets Blazers Vice President dispute that without a rebuttal from Macht. Isaac says there's no conspiracy about deliberate neglect on the team's part. Rather, it's the customers seeking to fill events that prefer the Jumbotron screen and newer facilities that the Rose Garden can offer, Isaac explains. But if the Coliseum were renovated properly like it should have been years ago, or if it had a renovated Rose Quarter as part of the puzzle with surrounding entertainment or amateur athletic facilities invigorating the existing 50,000 square foot Coliseum exhibition hall, the older arena would be much more attractive.

Also, Jung's point about the Coliseum seeming more like a venue for high school sports than a profit-making major arena actually points to a brand identity for the MC.

Naturally the Rose Garden arena will always be the place for major league sports and the biggest concerts. But Memorial Coliseum could supplement that by being a more amateur and local-oriented arena. Put Cordish's planned entertainment zone and Doug Obletz's MARC amateur recreation complex in the exhibition hall, add Louvre-style light wells (a la IM Pei's pyramid), and suddenly you've got the stuff the Blazers and Cordish want to add without taking away a viable extra venue with special architectural qualities.

The most important part of Jung's story may be its "Ideas for Memorial Coliseum" sidebar. Here is where the different plans are presented side by side with accompanying costs:

Entertainment district: "The project could run as much as $100 million and the team would seek some amount of public investment." And this doesn't even figure in the cost of replacing Memorial Coliseum, which the community will need in the future as the city doubles in size over the next generation.

Recreation center: "The city had shelved the project [first proposed in 2002] when backers couldn't secure grant money to cover part of the $80-$102 million cost."

Veterans Memorial Arts and Athletic Center: "The price tag would be similar to the Memorial Athletic and Recreation Center proposal's $80 million to $102 million estimate."

Updated Memorial Coliseum: "This option, identified in 2002, would have dedicated about $13 million to capital expenditures and basic building system upgrades."

Granted the Coliseum, if renovated as an arena, would ultimately take more than $13 million, especially if it were paired with a MARC or Cordish entertainment proposal in (or both) in the exhibition hall. Even so, for all the talk of how expensive a Coliseum arena renovation would be, it's a lot cheaper than building anything else.

Meanwhile, in today's Oregonian Ted Sickinger has a cover story looking at Cordish's Kansas City Power & Light District. When Sickinger visited, there were plenty of people visiting the P&L on a Friday night. And it's full of youngsters and suburbanites enthusiastically trumpeting the area's greatness. "'Any place should have a place like this,' gushes Shawn Burkhardt, a 22-year-old from Topeka, eyes wide and beer in hand. 'Definitely in Kansas City this is the spot to be on Friday and Saturday night. I guarantee it."

Notice that the young inebriated fella from outside Kansas City mentioned Friday and Saturday nights. How often is he there on a Tuesday?

Sickinger also queried another passer-by, "a tattooed 25-year-old" named Christopher Nichols, who was more skeptical. On this visit, his third, Nichols said he was giving the Power & Light District one last chance. "Everything looks the same," he told the reporter. "'The Kansas City crowd is over there,' he said, pointing south to the Crossroads District, a more Portland-style mix of art galleries, bars, restaurants and condos. 'And the Johnson County (suburban Kansas) people are here. They come from outside Kansas City and want a very sheltered environment. It's a tourist trap."

Sickinger also reports at the very end of the article on Cordish's racist policies. Initially the Power & Light district had a restrictive dress coade banning hoodies, white T-shirts and baggy pants. "The African American community took that as a slap in the face," one visitor to P&L told the reporter.

When Mayor Sam Adams's chief of staff, Tom Miller, visited the P&L site in Kansas City, he told Cordish, according to Sickinger's story, "...If you want to cooke cutter it [the P&L] and drop it into Portland, it will fail."

All this points strongly to the need for a legitimate public process. Regardless of whether you appreciate Memorial Coliseum's history and architecture, the Rose Quarter is too important a district in Portland to be planned in a smoke-filled room without public involvement.

Adams announces Memorial Coliseum to be spared from demolition

As first reported Wednesday evening by Mark Larabee of The Oregonian (and shortly afterward by Matt Davis of the Portland Mercury), Mayor Sam Adams has announced that Memorial Coliseum has been spared from demolition.

The City of Portland and Portland Beavers owner Merritt Paulson will now focus exclusively on building a baseball stadium in Lents.

This is a time both to rejoice and to pledge continued vigilance. If Wednesday evening's news holds and a baseball stadium isn't built on the Memorial Coliseum site, it's like I told Matt Davis: It feels like the end of Star Wars when they blew up the Death Star. But notice Star Wars was only one of several chapters in the overall saga.

Memorial Coliseum, as best we can tell, will now have the opportunity for new life, and to continue as a Portland landmark for generations to come. That's something to be enormously thankful for, not just if you love modern architecture or support historic preservation, but if you care about the city itself.

At the same time, the City and the Trail Blazers will now be looking to bring significant change to the Rose Quarter site, which could include altering Memorial Coliseum so far beyond its original design that the building loses its architectural integrity -- its greatness.

The Blazers are said to be looking at an open-air music venue. That's one possibility for the Coliseum. "Don't worry, we're gonna save the roof," one insider told a member of our Friends of Memorial Coliseum grassroots group. If the Blazers take the glass walls off Memorial Coliseum, it won't be Memorial Coliseum. I'd argue the same is true with respect to the interior seating bowl.

The Coliseum experience, what makes it one of the most unique arenas in the world, is the ability to watch a game or other event from the seating bowl with natural light pouring through. It's something the Coliseum hasn't delivered for many years because its curtain around the bowl seems permanently closed. But if they could open that curtain, people who go inside will advocate for this unique place to be kept as-is.

That's not to say you can't make changes. For instance, Tom Webb had an interesting idea in an Oregonian editorial a few days ago: Why not open up PGE Park to be a public park when it's not being used for games? That would have some difficulty given that the field needs to be kept pristine. But at the Coliseum, you could absolutely make the outer areas around the seating bowl into some kind of space that remains open to the public even when there's not an event. The Coliseum could become part of Portland's wintertime playground, a place to be in the light but not the elements.

The Coliseum should not become the Blazers' new outdoor venue because it would be too drastically stripped of its gem-like quality. But how about an indoor-outdoor arena? The Coliseum could be altered in a way that opens up a little of its facade or its roof in a way that brings the outdoors in an vice versa, but maintains the Coliseum as a more viable multi-use facility instead of the single-use capacity an outdoor performance venue would serve.

As the Coliseum process over the rest of the calendar year looks at different options, we also need to pay more attention to the more than 50,000 square feet of exhibit space underground that surrounds the veterans memorial. If the City and the Blazers want to add more amenities to the Rose Quarter like restaurants, bars or more entertainment, it should go around the Coliseum in the exhibition area, not in the Coliseum itself. If we had enough room in the exhibition area to stage the Portland Auto Show there for years, surely there's enough room for a Hard Rock Cafe and a slough of racquetball courts and other amateur athletic center amenities.

In a Portland Mercury story I was interviewed for last night about the Coliseum being spared, one commenter said that I had been duped, that the plan was to gut the Coliseum for entertainment-venue stuff all along. Another said I was an "arrogant prick" for claiming the community was behind this grassroots effort.

You can't please everybody, but I certainly don't feel duped. We knew all along this was a two-part battle: save the Coliseum from demolition, and then save it from ill-advised, heavy-handed renovation. And I remain quite confident, or arrogant if you prefer, about the community being behind the Coliseum. It's not just the 8-to-1 margin that polls showed to favor the building's preservation, but the outpouring of emails, phone calls and blog comments that encouraged a small group of architects, designers and a blogger to take on a city council and two billionaires.

Thank you to everyone who joined in this effort: institutions like the National Trust, US Green Building Council and AIA; architects and designers like Stuart Emmons, Rick Potestio, Don Rood, Randy Higgins, Peter Meijer, Paul Falsetto and Joseph Readdy; blogger/columnist Barry Johnson of The Oregonian and blogger Tim DuRoche of Portland Spaces; great reporters at the Portland Mercury like Matt Davis and Sarah Mirk; editorialists like Mark Zusman at Willamette Week; and academics like Portland State University's Will Macht.

And now let us keep up our guard as we move on to the next phase.

Memorial Coliseum: City Council vote postponed, Lents & other sites still on the table

The City Council vote that had been scheduled for May 7 to select a site for Major League Soccer at PGE Park and a baseball stadium (at the Rose Quarter or elsewhere) for the minor-league Beavers has once again been delayed.

Sources say the Council is still looking at a number of options for where to build a Beavers stadium if it doesn't happen in the Rose Quarter. Right now, the leading candidates seem to be Lents Park and a co-location at PGE Park (at least temporarily) for the Beavers and Timbers.

The Lents site has strong points in its favor. It would be connected to a new MAX line a block away. The neighborhood has indicated they want the stadium. Lents is an urban renewal area that has been languishing for a generation without much improvement.

Building a baseball stadium in Lents would go a long way toward vitalizing the Portland Development Commission's Lents Town Center urban renewal plan that has already been in place for years.

There are two or three challenges with Lents for AAA baseball--parking and a net loss of park space--but sources say those problems appear to be surmountable.

The biggest challenge, parking, could be alleviated with a shuttle bus system connecting the baseball park to massive nearby parking lots at two malls: Clackamas Town Center and Mall 205. Trimet has already gone on record saying this plan would work from their perspective. There are also numerous surface parking lots in Lents that, if there were a baseball stadium there, would give private sector entrepreneurs a chance to make money on parking. Plus, the two malls would be excited to be involved with the shuttle because it'd put people in their parking lots, at least some of which would be likely to go shopping.

The other challenge, a net loss of open space from devoting Lents Park to baseball, could be not only accounted for but would actually improve Lents overall. There has already been open space identified along Johnson Creek that the city could make into a parkland. In fact, it would be more beneficial  than Lents Park in contributing to preservation of wetland and wildlife habitat. Plus, one of the local leaders most vocal in advocating for no net loss of park space, Mike Houck of the Urban Greenspace Institute, has already given approval to Lents Park (when it was looked at originally) as a baseball site if these conditions were met.

Even Merritt Paulson was into Lents when he and his staff visited the site. Regardless of what reservations he may express now, based on the demolished Coliseum site being more of a revenue stream, Paulson has explicitly told City Council members he likes the stadium there.

In fact, it's very possible attendance numbers at the Lents site could be higher than the dismal numbers the Beavers usually get at PGE Park (less than 2,000 per game for two recent sunny-evenings against the defending conference champions). People in Gresham, Vancouver, Clackamas, Oregon City and outer Southeast Portland would all be closer to the stadium. They'd have a lot easier time getting there by a range of options, not least of which is that Interstate 205 is a few feet away.

What's more, at least one of the two City Council members who supported baseball at the Memorial Coliseum/Rose Quarter site, Commissioner Randy Leonard, has preferred the Lents site all along. Bringing back the baseball park to Lents after the idea seemed to be dead would actually help Leonard's relationship with constituents in that neighborhood, a few of whom felt let down by the baseball plan going away after it seemed to be going forward in Lents last time.

Our group working to preserve Memorial Coliseum has been resistant to advocating for one non-Rose Quarter baseball stadium site over another (say, Lents versus Terminal 1 or Delta Park). But if baseball went to Lents, there seems little reason for anyone to complain.

What about going back to the idea of co-locating the Beavers and Timbers in PGE Park? After all, that's by far the most cost-effective. And it remains unclear whether having a soccer-only venue is merely a preference for Major League Soccer or a requirement. At the very least, PGE Park could be a temporary home for both, with MLS de-coupled from the Rose Quarter plan as we take a proper amount of time to look at where to build the Beavers a stadium.

Process is worth talking about in and of itself as well. There arguably hasn't been nearly enough of it regarding the Rose Quarter. Or, if you talk to certain City Hall veterans, there's already been a lot of process about this area in years past.

If one were to hypothetically imagine the baseball stadium going somewhere other than the Rose Quarter, and we then engage in a process to re-imagine Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Quarter for the future, what do we want that process to look like?

I believe a Rose Quarter process would benefit from going a different route than what we too often see here: a developer led system in which three developer-determined options are created from an RFP (request-for-proposal) process. Instead, we need to follow a model more like the Armory, where citizens are allowed to be part of the vision-making and developers play a more supplementary role. We have to have developers involved on the financial/pragmatic side, but should they be our dreamers?

Naturally this comes within the context of developers often being great forces for good in the community, and excellent place-makers sometimes. And it's not like developer-led proposals don't involve designers. So no offense meant to any of the developers reading this, some of whom I admire a great deal. Even so, I think the process of public projects, at least in certain cases like this, might benefit from a new way of working toward our shared goals.

As for the Coliseum itself, there is also an effort underway to move away from the protective, protection-oriented campaign to save the building from demolition and transition the conversation to something more aspirational and pragmatic. In other words, a renovated and revitalized Memorial Coliseum could be the centerpiece of a better future Rose Quarter.

Few cities in America or the world can offer two differently sized arenas available to work in tandem. What's more, the uniqueness of the Coliseum's design -- as a transparent, light filled space -- would allow it to act as a kind of indoor/outdoor public space.

Say it's raining on some January Saturday afternoon in 2014. You and your kids want to get out of the house, but everything seems to involve being outdoors getting wet or spending money in some retail setting. What if you could go to Memorial Coliseum and enjoy the openness of the glass box inside, with places to sit and congregate and eat and drink, even if there wasn't an even there? Or perhaps you could play racquetball in the MARC amateur athletic complex that's moved into the 50,000 square foot former Coliseum exhibition space, its underground now filled with natural light from skylights and light wells. Or if you don't mind spending a few bucks after all, the Blazers' planned bevy of restaurants and entertainment is there as well.

I also love the idea of Memorial Coliseum's central arena taking on the identity of amateur athletics and entertainment as a counterbalance to the NBA and traveling concert tours in the Rose Garden. Brand the Coliseum as the place where we hold high school basketball tournaments, or even a Friday night game of the week during the regular season like PGE Park functions during football season for prep teams. Then there's all the Rose Festival stuff that's gone on there for years. Maybe it becomes a place for public town hall-style conversations. 

Regardless of which idea hits or misses here, the city and Oregon Arena Corporation could be so much more creative in giving the Coliseum a purpose beyond just being the older, smaller (if vastly more elegant and open) sister to the Rose Garden.

The point is that both what progressives (about urban planning and architecture) want in terms of preservation for the Coliseum, and what business or government people care about in terms of economic viability and a reason to come there, can be made to work together.

Ultimately this isn't about just saving Memorial Coliseum (although it's the treasure here), but about re-imagining the entire Rose Quarter as a grand public space for the city.

Coliseum threat, Rose Quarter folly gaining traction in national, international media

The proposed demolition of the modern architecture landmark Memorial Coliseum has been steadily been gaining attention beyond Portland and Oregon's borders.

The London-based World Architecture News is the latest to pick up the scent of folly, hubris and ignorance coming out of the Coliseum demo plan. Check out this editorial by WAN's Matthew Freedman:

In 1965, along with 20,000 others, Allen Ginsberg saw the Beatles play Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon, and then he wrote a poem about it: “the million children / … / become one animal / in the New World Auditorium”.

In 2009 the Coliseum finds itself at that difficult age. Threatened with the prospect of demolition in recent weeks, it appears not quite old enough to be widely perceived as venerable heritage. Yet it’s not so young or unimpressive that it hasn’t found a nostalgic place in the hearts of locals, and an aesthetic one amongst architects and design buffs.

The place was only five years old when the Beatles invaded, and Ginsberg clearly saw its openness and modernity – the windowed curtain walls sitting around a concrete arena - as part of the same spirit of optimism and youthfulness embodied in the band’s triumph.

Yet their apparent absence as factors in the decision-making process – until dissenters raised their voice in objection - highlights the bemusing public sector thought processes that often accompany this type of redevelopment. 

And the new policy of a renovated, repurposed Coliseum and new stadium elsewhere comes with a familiar caveat: it will cost millions more from the public purse than the original plan. This places the guilty burden of increased spending for taxpayers on the victorious objectors, and somehow implies that they may be as much a nuisance as a legitimate voice of dissent.

The same tensions between preservation, progress, and public taste get played out all over the world, all the time. Still, the parallels point up the truth that the State often falls down on preserving crucial smaller examples of enlightened public building. Their survival so often depends on the vigilance of an interested community, even where this boils down to simple bafflement at why huge change is needed. But it’s easy for inertia and other priorities to win out over that. And therefore it’s encouraging when structures that are still barely on the radar of public architectural taste can be the focus of a fight.

Meanwhile, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has also gotten in the act with this blog post from Portland's Val Ballestrom of the Architectural Heritage Center:

A thought occurred to me many months ago that if we cannot review demolitions in Portland because of their potential historic value, perhaps its time we review demolitions for their impacts on environmental, social, and cultural sustainability. This is especially important in light of the fact that Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory is more than 25 years old, with no current funding on the table to have it updated. The first inventory remains incomplete and outdated as numerous neighborhoods were never surveyed or have since been annexed into the city limits. This means that Portlanders are potentially losing historic resources - we don’t even know we have - on a weekly basis. And all of this can occur without review or notification.

Still, I try to remain hopeful. The current controversy over the proposed demolition of our “glass palace,” the Memorial Coliseum, has brought to light the inherent connections between preservation and sustainability. Letters from architects, university professors, the US Green Building Council, the National Trust, and my own organization - the Bosco-Milligan Foundation - have emphasized both the architectural significance of the building and the un-sustainable solution of demolishing, once again, a perfectly usable building. I hope that the yet-to-be-determined outcome of this controversy begins a new chapter in Portland, one that truly makes the connection between preservation and sustainability by recognizing the negative impacts of needless building demolition.

Emmons talks Coliseum to City Council and in Oregonian op-ed

As reported by the Portland Mercury's Matt Davis earlier this morning, architect Stuart Emmons addressed City Council today about how saving Memorial Coliseum was the way for Portland to "walk the talk" on being a sustainable design leader.

"We are teed up to become a leading sustainability capital and design capital, but it will take more than just talk," Emmons told the Council. "We will be judged by our actions. Everything we do and are involved in should back up our words physically. We are not doing this in a coordinated, thorough way right now."

"Let's preserve Memorial Coliseum. Not only say 'preserve' it, but really preserve it. Preserve its design integrity respectfully and make it into a sustainable best practice," he said. "Good sustainable practices call for building reuse. We will be nationally chastised for tearing down Memorial Coliseum, or marring its design integrity, no matter how we spin it. We will be a poster child for what not to do. It's the wrong message to send."

Emmons offered the Council a handout filled with pictures of the building as well as New York's Penn Station, the symbolic lesson in preservation from the past. It was enough to garner praise from Commissioner Nick Fish after Emmons' testimony. His brochure also included a picture of a 1960 Corvette, with text saying it "needs new tiers, a new carburetor, and a new paint job. Should we junk it? Or should we restore it?"

He also made three arguments about finances for the Coliseum.

First, restoring Memorial Coliseum is, as Davis described, "a perfect shovel-ready project", and restoring it is likely to be more aesthetically pleasing, and cheaper, than building a replacement.

Second, the $200,000 to $500,000 the coliseum is losing is "peanuts relatively," he said, "and clearly under a new deal and new management, Memorial Coliseum can easily pay for itself."

Third, Emmons urged the council to consider the economic value lost by a demolished Coliseum. "The assessor values the Colieseum at $57.1million, which is a fraction of its replacement value. Has the Paulson team added the $57.1 million to their $55 million?" he asked.

Emmons also had a wonderfully written opinion piece in the Sunday Oregonian, providing a much-needed counter balance to the editorial board's advocacy for the landmark Coliseum's destruction. Here is the text of the architect's essay:

I walked around Memorial Coliseum at sunrise today. Its setting on North Interstate Avenue is amazing, I never noticed this view before: a huge glass wall hanging over a landscaped berm. The plaza we all know was serene at that hour. As I talked to a security guard about the building he was patrolling, a smile came to his face. Memorial Coliseum is so special to Portland and should be saved and restored.

Designed by the Portland office of the firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill in 1960, the coliseum is an excellent example of International Style Modern architecture. Along with Pietro Belluschi's Equitable Building (on Southwest Sixth and Stark) and the Standard Insurance Building (on Southwest Fifth and Taylor), Memorial Coliseum is one of Portland's three premier Modern buildings.

No other Modern buildings in our city rise to this level of high art. The three are different in their approach and use but share one of the main tenets of Modernism: a deceivingly simple, powerful expression of a concept through the use of form, proportion, structure and composition.

In the case of Memorial Coliseum and the Standard, their sites also become a key part of the composition: the Standard set in a passive plaza, with gardens and fountains; Memorial Coliseum now set on a plaza on one side and the landscape berm on the other, setting the stage for a masterwork.

Great examples of this high level of achievement in other cities would include works by Le Corbusier (such as Pavillon Suisse in Paris), Skidmore Owings and Merrill (such as the Lever House in New York), Mies van der Rohe (such as the Seagram Building in New York) and, on a large scale, Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia in Brazil. If the coliseum were a painting, a work of fine art, it would occupy a special place in our art museum and be cherished.

The beauty and sculptural power of Memorial Coliseum derive from its simplicity. Complex problems of function and structure have been culled down to the most basic, minimal expression through an amazing level of rigor, engineering and passion: a huge, magnificently simple, beautifully proportioned, exquisitely detailed glass box encasing a gracefully curved form. It is this contrast between the geometric and the organic forms that gives "the saucer in the box" its true power and brilliance.

Outside, the compositional ideas continue, with a curved canopy set in front of the box, the second organic form, and below, two sunken plazas, one holding a fountain that quiets the space in front of a memorial wall carrying the names of people from Oregon who gave their lives in war.

Back to the box. The box is enormous, and yet it has only four columns. Huge trusses span the whole interior, keeping the interior free for the graceful seating bowl. And the best and unique part of this building are the curtains around the bowl. When open, sunlight pours into the arena, negating the need for most artificial light. This is an extraordinary space, a curved bowl hovering in a glass box for shelter.

Walk out of the arena, and one glass box is in a towering space of glass and form overlooking the river and city beyond. No other public building in our city takes advantage of its site so well and offers such breathtaking views of the skyline. Watching the sun set over Portland from Memorial Coliseum gives me a great feeling about my city.

And so, we have not cared for this treasure as it deserves. No worries. It is still here and ready when we are, when we dare to take the leap. Many Modern buildings are in the same state. But, many have been restored to reach their original intent and grandeur. 

Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim and Saarinen's TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport just went through major renovations that have brought these buildings back to their original magnificence. Skidmore Owings and Merrill's 1952 Lever House went through a major restoration and now it is back to its best condition. These are just a few examples.

Look no farther than to Portland's City Hall and see a wonderful building that was given new life with a comprehensive historic restoration and seismic upgrade, completed in 1998. We love coming into our city building and are jealous of those who are fortunate to work in it.

Imagine a reconditioned Memorial Coliseum glistening against the evening sky, its beautiful curved form inside. People all about. Imagine the pride we all would have in our city, the city that preserves and cherishes its history, its past successes, and looks to its future. This is our Portland.

Great buildings in great cities need to be cherished and taken care of, for they are the riches of the city and tell the story of our place. Memorial Coliseum is part of our history, and one of our treasures.

Memorial Coliseum: City Council vote May 7 (and other updates)

As reported Monday by the Daily Journal of Commerce's Sam Bennett, the City Council has scheduled a vote for next Thursday, May 7 Wednesday, May 6, on a pre-development agreement to go ahead with renovations for PGE Park in order to make it ready for Major League Soccer by 2011.

How does this relate to Memorial Coliseum? If the vote on PGE Park is de-coupled from the issue of building a baseball stadium at the Rose Quarter, that's at least a temporary victory in that it allows the soccer plan to go through while the Coliseum and Rose Quarter get figured out. If the vote also stipulates a building of the Portland Beavers' minor league baseball stadium in a particular place other than the Memorial Coliseum/Rose Quarter site, like Lents Park or the Terminal 1 site in Northwest Portland near the Fremont Bridge, that's of course the ultimate victory for the Coliseum.

One thing to say about the baseball stadium itself: Those of us involved in the grassroots effort to save Memorial Coliseum have more or less decided that it's folly for us to get too involved in debating the merits of any particular non-Rose Quarter location for the baseball stadium. Lents, for example, has many things going for it, but like any site, there are complicating factors. To work towards preserving Memorial Coliseum is our greater focus. And if City Council decides that the Coliseum is untouchable, or at least not to be demolished, then the baseball stadium location becomes moot to our preservation effort.

Although much of the debate about saving the Coliseum has been focused on aesthetics, the preservation debate also requires pragmatic talk about economics.

Portland State University real estate professor William Macht's research shows that the Coliseum has tremendous untapped economic potential in its current form: as an arena. If the City were to re-write the management agreement so there's no longer a disincentive for Oregon Arena Corporation (the Blazers' Rose Garden and Coliseum manager) to turn a profit on the Coliseum, it could host many more events and thus bring in revenue for long-overdue repairs.

The Blazers are said to be seeking an open-air music venue. In June, July and August, that would be terrific. But what about the rain-inclined other nine months of the year? A better plan would be to turn Memorial Coliseum into an indoor-outdoor venue. Perhaps the riverfront facade could be opened up, or even a retractible roof installed.

The Blazers have also discussed putting their planned "Live!" entertainment in the Coliseum, mostly restaurants and bars. Making this work is not an impossibility, but there is strong reason to be very skeptical about how this would taint the Coliseum's architecture. A better plan would be to make the Coliseum, still as an arena, into the centerpiece of a redevelopment scheme surrounding it. Put the "Live!" stuff on the river to better integrate the Rose Quarter wit the huge untapped potential of the waterfront at the old Thunderbird motel, or on the grounds of the Rose Quarter between and around the two arenas.

As far as anyone knows, the City Council vote comes down to a split with Commissioner Dan Saltzman in the middle. Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish seem to be against Memorial Coliseum's demolition, while Commissioner Randy Leonard and Mayor Sam Adams are either for its demolition or undecided, given that Lents could still be the chosen destination for the baseball stadium.

From Adams' perspective, the Rose Quarter initially seemed like the means for getting a baseball stadium deal done. But to his credit, the Mayor listened to the thundering chorus of voices opposing Memorial Coliseum's demolition. (Polls by KEX radio and the Portland Tribune found a more than 8-to-1 opposition to the demolition plan.) It probably would best serve the mayor to get any kind of deal done, be it a baseball stadium in Lents or elsewhere, before the June 30 date arrives and the chance for his opponents to issue a recall campaign. The mayor risks further incurring the ire of those seeking proper time for a more drawn-out Portland style process if he goes too fast, but having this issue resolved would serve him even better.

Meanwhile, those seeking to join the Memorial Coliseum preservation effort are encouraged to keep the pressure on City Council by emailing all 5 members and asking them to save this gem.

To that end, as you can see in the pictures accompanied in this post (the first two were taken by the legendary architectural photographer Julius Schulman - the latter scanned as best we could over a two-page fold, and the final one is of the Coliseum's construction), we're continuing to unearth pictures of our beloved Coliseum that better articulate what make it special. Not only is this a pure and beautiful glass box, but watching an event in the seating bowl can be done during daytime with natural light pouring into the space. Think about it for a minute: of all the basketball games or arts performances or political rallies you've ever been to anywhere in the world, how many of them could daylight one of those performances?

Shame on Commissioner Randy Leonard (updated)

In today's Oregonian, Randy Leonard is quoted as saying the following:

"It's amazing to me that some people have persuaded others that the Coliseum is some kind of an architectural gem when it's in reality a child only a mother could love. The dirty little secret is that it's ugly. Somebody needed to say that."

Commissioner Leonard, why do you think somebody needed to say something so ignorant?

Don't take my word for it that the Coliseum is a gem. Ask the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Institute of Architects, or the US Green Building Council. They've all called for the building to be saved. Look at coffee table books like "Modernism Rediscovered," in which the Coliseum is the only Portland building pictured in a selection of American architectural gems.

Commissioner Leonard certainly also sees himself as a friend to Veterans. Does he think the historic building our city built to honor them is really ugly? Is the pride millions of Portlanders felt when it opened ugly too? How about the sacrifices our veterans made to earn that honor?

Commissioner Leonard, will you call it ugly to all the veterans who showed up at an open house earlier this month with Mayor Adams to tell him to save the Coliseum?

What about the people you've been working with to save John Yeon's Portland Oregon Visitors Center? That's a very, very fine work of modern architecture that's in a very similar vein  to Memorial Coliseum -- although not even remotely close to being in the same zip code of significance.

Commissioner Leonard has developed a reputation as the Council's voice for the everyman, the blue collar vote. But now he is patronizing that voting base.

Previous generations called iron-framed building like those in the Skidmore historic district ugly. Now if we'd saved them we'd have a Portland version of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Previous generations called Victorian houses ugly. If Portland had saved more of these beauties, we'd have a famous collection like San Francisco's.

Randy Leonard is falling for the same seductive ignorance that has plagued historic preservation since its inception. He should know better.

Commissioner, you may not appreciate Memorial Coliseum's one-of-a-kind glass curtain wall surrounding the arena, or how the seating bowl sits completely detached from the rest of the building, allowing natural light to pour in like no other arena in the nation.

And getting aside from aesthetics for a moment, let us also remember how Oregon Arena Corporation's management agreement for the Coliseum screws the City of Portland by setting up the building to die a slow death from disrepair and untapped usage potential.

Since I'm a little younger than you, Commissioner, if Memorial Coliseum is razed, I look forward to the day when I can stand at the site of the building with your grandchildren and said, "You know, he actually said it was ugly. Boy, history sure proved him wrong. Look at the monstrosity here now. It's too bad, because your grandpa was a strong leader, and wanted the best for Portland."

UPDATE: After a few hours of reflection and exchanging an email with the Commissioner, I would like to amend my comments. It was overly hyperbolic and too emotional of me to accuse Randy Leonard of "arrogant ignorance." I apologize to Commissioner Leonard for that. He's a good guy and working very hard for Portland.

It was frustrating and seemed pretty insulting to Portland and all those who care greatly for Memorial Coliseum to hear it called "ugly" by a member of City Council who I'd expect to be above such things (unlike yours truly). When I originally wrote of Leonard displaying "arrogant ignorance," it was an attempt to return his right cross with an uppercut. However, this debate is hurt, not helped, by getting personal and ugly.

While I apologize personally to Randy Leonard, I do very much believe he should take up our group on a standing offer to take him on a tour of Memorial Coliseum. I remain convinced he'd change his mind upon giving the building a real look.

Baseball stadium back to Lents? Saltzman as Coliseum savior?

Local media from the Portland Mercury to Willamette Week to The Oregonian are reporting that Southeast Portland's outer Lents neighborhood--the site originally envisioned for the Portland Beavers' new minor league baseball stadium--may be back in play. (The photo above is by Matthew Ginn of Homestead Images.)

The change comes because the City Council's swing vote on this matter, Dan Saltzman, appeared to be against the plan to raze Memorial Coliseum - or at least to do so quickly and without proper public process.

Also becoming more of a consensus now is that Memorial Coliseum and a new baseball stadium can't me made to fit in the Rose Quarter. So if baseball comes to the Rose Quarter, Memorial Coliseum is out.

Lents is actually a great location for the baseball team. And not just because putting the stadium there could help save the Coliseum.

A stadium at Lents park would help re-invigorate a long ailing neighborhood. The people who live there are in favor of the baseball park in Lents by a considerable margin. The park would also be connected to a new, nearby MAX stop along the coming I-205 line. And, of course, it's right next to I-205.

Merritt Paulson never opposed the idea of Lents Park for the baseball stadium, but he was concerned about its potential because about 60 percent of Beavers game attendees are said to come from the west side.

But attendance at Beavers games now is abysmal. Maybe if they moved the Beavers to Lents park there would be fewer people from the West side coming to games -- but a LOT more people from the East side coming. After all, Gresham, Vancouver, Clackamas, Oregon City, and other suburbs would be a lot closer to the stadium. It's arguable that attendance for the Beavers might actually increase at a Lents site.

What's more, some of the City Council members currently on opposing sides might actually come together for a Lents ballpark. Randy Leonard, perceived as Adams' biggest ally on the plan to put a baseball park in the Rose Quarter and demolish the classic internationally renowned modernist landmark Memorial Coliseum, is said to be willing to support a Lents stadium, and he has explicitly been supportive of that idea in the past. And Dan Saltzman, who is the swing vote on the Rose Quarter, has also said he would support a Lents ballpark, and even without the waiting period being called for on the baseball at Rose Quarter idea. Hell, Lents could actually get a unanimous city council vote.

It's not to say there wouldn't be challenges in Lents. Parking is chief among them, although I believe that is a solvable problem. Tell me a poor neighborhood with lots of surface parking lots wouldn't see business opportunity in selling parking spaces. And then there's the fact that Lents will have excellent mass-transit access.

Let's also look at the Lents site for the baseball park in the context of inner and outer City of Portland investments. We already presumably have millions of dollars that will be going into PGE Park to convert it to a soccer stadium downtown. It's only fitting that the other ballpark be in more of an outer neighborhood to balance out the distribution of projects and funds.

One of the questions Dan Saltzman will face now, I think, is whether it's worth pursuing Lents as the solution now, without taking time out for a longer look at the Rose Quarter, or whether we should stick with an emerging plan to draw this out another couple months. To Coliseum supporters, the waiting period Saltzman was floating seemed like the best chance to save the building. But if Lents could be chosen, maybe it's a case of the sooner the better.

For Saltzman, I'd like to see more of a firm commitment to saving the Coliseum. He's been a real savior in this process, but largely by advocating for a longer process. The Commissioner is correct to favor a longer period in looking at the Rose Quarter, but regardless of whether he's nostalgic about a long-ago Jethro Tull concert at the Coliseum, it'd seal the deal and rescue the city from this horrific preservation emergency if he'd take the final step and express insistence on the building being kept.

Until, then, keep in mind these illustrious words:

"We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." -- Winston Churchill

Oregonian editorial gets it wrong (again)

I thought The Oregonian's editorial board was off base when they endorsed George W. Bush for president.

But what they're doing to Memorial Coliseum and, by extension, to Portlanders, is astonishing. Right there in the headline it's clear as a glass curtain wall: "Raze Memorial Coliseum and build a baseball stadium," it reads.

In today's paper, the editorial board -- which does not represent the opinions of staff writers and columnists like Barry Johnson, Steve Duin and Anna Griffin, who have all expressed skepticism about the Coliseum razing plan -- characterizes the Coliseum as a failed economic loser, and argues that the effort to preserve this legendary architectural landmark is jeopardizing the chance to fix the Rose Quarter.

No personal disrespect to the editorial board, but I continue to argue that this is misinformation. 

The Coliseum is only in disrepair and not making money because the management deal is set up for it to fail. And don't take my word for it. Look at the extensive research on this by professor William Macht, associate director of Portland State University's Real Estate program. Oregon Arena Corporation has a financial incentive to take the Coliseum to break-even point, but a disincentive to make a profit (they want to protect the Rose Quarter). And the city won't bankroll any upgrades because it doesn't make a profit. It's a Catch-2,222.

The Coliseum deal screws the City of Portland and instead of pointing this out, the editorial withholds this information. It's a pointy, rusty dagger in the heart of their argument.

Then there's how the Oregonian editorial doesn't even make the slightest mention of how the Coliseum is an internationally renowned landmark of modern 20th Century architecture. They make it sound like this is some old concrete warehouse. Or that if you care about the enduring economic, cultural, artistic and social value of the Coliseum more than the cold hard numbers, you're some kind of naive babe in the woods.

When it comes to making financial arguments for tearing down historic legendary architecture, as the editorial board is doing in lock step with Merritt Paulson (whose father, of course, was part of the George W. Bush cabinet), cities have a long history of manipulating economic arguments to justify decisions future generations regret. People tried to do it in Portland, arguing for us to raze what are now successful historic renovation projects like the Armory and Ecotrust. They argued New York's landmark Penn Station had to go for the same reason.

But what they're not telling you is what an economic value there is in a Coliseum given proper upkeep and the chance to thrive in a revitalized Rose Quarter.

Stop strangling the Coliseum and saying it can't breathe!

Not only would the Coliseum not be a money loser in a new Rose Quarter if given the chance, it would be one of the biggest attractors. It's the only building possessing great design on the complex, and being able to book two arenas instead of one would give Portland a huge advantage over other cities in this regard.

Having the Coliseum stay on the Rose Quarter site would make a headquarters hotel, like Mayor Adams is pushing, much more viable.

It's one thing if our city admits that we just don't care about the Coliseum or its historic value. But those of us seeking to preserve the building are sick and tired of faulty economic arguments being made to raze the building. About 300,000 readers of the paper could be looking at that editorial today, and chances are less than 2,000 will read this post. So the damage has unfortunately been done no matter what I say. 

I'm also being very strategically unwise when it comes to criticizing a newspaper that I regularly freelance for. (I love the rest of the paper!) But my conscience would never let this kind of unfairness and misleading go without answering back.

US Green Building Council calls on City Council to preserve Memorial Coliseum

The US Green Building Council, the nation's premiere sustainable building organization, has written Mayor Sam Adams and City Council calling for the Coliseum's preservation through its regional Cascadia chapter. Here is a copy of the letter written by Ralph DiNola of the Cascadia board:

Dear Mayor Adams, Commissioners Fish, Fritz, Leonard, and Saltzman:

On behalf of our membership and directors, we implore you to preserve and breathe new life into the Memorial Coliseum for this and future generations.  In our efforts to help advance the cause of sustainability in the region and Portland, we see green building and historic preservation as essential elements in our efforts to bring about a sustainable society.

Portland is already considered a leader in the emerging “Sustainable Preservation” movement.  Preservation and reuse of the Memorial Coliseum would provide another tangible demonstration of Portland’s leadership in this important national movement at an unprecedented and highly visible scale.  In almost any scenario, demolition and replacement of the existing building with a new building, no matter how green, would not result in a more sustainable outcome, while representing a huge loss for the heritage of Portland and the built environment.

“Historic Preservation is intrinsically a form of sustainable conservation.” - Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design, National Park Service, 1993  

The Sustainable Preservation movement has its roots in many places throughout the U.S. and for many, preservation is inherently sustainable, but Portland can claim leadership.

Portland in particular has been a leader in this movement with some of the most noteworthy examples of sustainable preservation projects including the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center (Ecotrust), the Brewery Blocks with the laudable LEED Platinum Gerding Theater (Portland Armory), as well as the University of Oregon Portland Center (White Stag Block).  The Mercy Corps Global Headquarters (Skidmore Building) is nearing completion and the Centennial Mills rehabilitation project is on the horizon.  With more than a dozen outstanding examples of how to most effectively reuse historic buildings, Portland has been a proving ground for the emerging movement. 

Further, if we use the balance of the “triple bottom line” of sustainability (environment, economy, equity) to weight the options, clearly the sustainable preservation of the Memorial Coliseum is the most sustainable choice.

Environment: 

One of the principal environmental arguments for sustainable preservation is the conservation of embodied energy and resulting avoided impacts of reuse rather than replacement.  Existing buildings have a sunk cost to the environment from all of the energy and materials that went into the original development.  While we cannot take credit for those costs, we can avoid many of the environmental impacts associated with the demolition of the existing building and especially the impacts of a new arena and the environmental toll related to the extraction, manufacture, transport and installation of an entire building’s worth of new materials.

Preservation and rehabilitation in nearly all cases requires less energy than demolishing or deconstructing and building anew.  To be clear, preservation of older buildings is a key strategy in mitigating climate change.  How can we consider the immense release of CO2 from the demolition and new construction in a city that is working to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions to meet stringent targets?

Many great historic buildings are inherently flexible and adaptable.  Reuse opportunities for the building range from moderate upgrades to gutting of the interior for a new use, the Memorial Coliseum provides that potential as demonstrated by the proposed design schemes for the building.

Economy: Jobs, revenue, etc. 

The main economic impacts related to this potential project are the current and potential revenue, jobs for construction and during operations and the impacts on the local economy.  The findings of professor William Macht, associate director of Portland State University's Center for Real Estate, clearly articulate the flawed business model of the Memorial Coliseum as it currently stands, but other proposed schemes for the facility could bear better fruit if implemented.  And while the demolition and new construction of a replacement arena are attractive for construction jobs, research shows that money spent on rehabilitation generate more jobs per dollar than new construction projects and pump more money into the local economy.  Rehabilitation and reuse of the Memorial Coliseum could provide a dramatically better economic return for the city than a new arena project.

Equity: 

What is the value of historic buildings and what are our values when we build or demolish our public buildings?  Many citizens develop a pride of ownership of public buildings.  For some it is because of the reason the building was built, for others it is memories of events they attended there, and others it has to do with the design or architectural significance related to the edifice.  Certainly, the Memorial Coliseum can claim citizens that love the building for one or all of those reasons.  The Memorial Coliseum was designed and built for the "advancement of cultural opportunities for the community and to the memory of our veterans of all wars who made the supreme sacrifice."  The building is certainly a product of it’s time, a stark modern glass, steel and wood structure that stands as a memorial to those who lost their lives in war.  This memorial was a gift to the citizens of Portland.

The National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places was created by the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, six years after the Memorial Coliseum was built.  The Register recognizes buildings associated with important people, events or distinctive design or construction types.  Listing on the National Register is in a way a strong proxy for valuing the cultural contribution of a building to the city and the nation.  A building must be at least 50 years old to be listed on the register; the Memorial Coliseum is one year away from reaching this age.  Listing on the Register also affords the building protections from public agencies efforts to alter or demolish the building.   This gem of modern architecture would most likely be considered eligible for listing.  The fact that the building has stood long enough to make this milestone is a testament to its value to the community.  

“The building’s survival through time – this alone- is a circumstantially strong indication of its value.  If time is a dimension that clarifies and enriches things, the conservation of such buildings would seem worthwhile.” – Nathan Silver, Lost New York, 1967

The rehabilitation and reuse of the Memorial Coliseum represents a golden opportunity for the City of Portland to once again demonstrate its leadership in sustainability and turn the existing underutilized building into a living, vital and essential part of our community.  Please consider the significance and value of this building and work with the citizens of Portland this help make the Memorial Coliseum a Living Building once again.

Sincerely,
Ralph DiNola
Board of Directors

Cascadia Region Green Building Council
 

Memorial Coliseum: rally and party tonight, vigilance afterward

It was with great excitement that we head Mayor Sam Adams announce yesterday that his office will seek to preserve Memorial Coliseum by building the planned AAA baseball stadium next door to the arena, not in its place.

In fact, we're not quite sure whether to call tonight's rally in support of Memorial Coliseum a rally or a victory celebration.

But just for a little longer, let's call it a rally. Mayor Adams' announcement was reason to be happy for all those looking to preserve the Coliseum. But it's still possible that when City Council takes this issue back up a week from Wednesday, they'll try to tell us they tried but the Coliseum just wouldn't fit with the baseball stadium and parking garage they have to have.

By the way: Remember what a perfect weather day it was yesterday, with temperatures around 80 degrees? Perfect night for baseball, right? Well, the attendance at last night's Portland Beavers game was just over 1,900. This is the team people want to wipe out the Coliseum for?

At the same time, particularly since there was a small handful pro-MLS protestors demonstrating outside City Hall yesterday, let's be clear: We on the Preserve Memorial Coliseum side are very much in favor of the Portland Timbers joining Major League Soccer. So if there are any Timbers fans reading this, please don't consider the Coliseum preservation effort a threat. Unfortunately some already have.

Meanwhile, whether the Coliseum really is saved or just slightly less threatened than before, we urge all those who love modern architecture, who support preservation and process, and who share our affection for Memorial Coliseum, to stop by the AIA Center for Architecture (403 NW 11th Avenue at Flanders) at 6PM tonight to share a beer and solidarity before we cheer on the Blazers at 7.

Memorial Coliseum: SAVED?! Adams announces city now plans to build baseball stadium next door to classic arena

In a press conference at City Hall this afternoon, Mayor Sam Adams announced to a room full of reporters that the City of Portland has altered its Rose Quarter plan to include the preservation of Memorial Coliseum.

The mayor said the new idea will be to site the Portland Beavers baseball stadium on the Rose Quarter site but adjacent to the Coliseum instead of on the Coliseum site.

There are still many questions and details that will have to be worked out, and the saving of Memorial Coliseum isn't necessarily a done deal. However, today's announcement could very well signal a great day for Portland architecture.

The City Council will now postpone Wednesday's scheduled vote on the Rose Quarter by one week. After that, presumably, Council will either reject or approve the plan with Memorial Coliseum included.

One surprise from the press conference: the City plans not to demolish the large parking garage also on the Rose Quarter site, because "we need the money," Adams said, from its revenues. So fitting the Rose Quarter, Memorial Coliseum, a AAA baseball stadium and a parking garage all on the Rose Quarter grounds will be very difficult. I'd thought that if they built the baseball stadium next door to the Coliseum, it would have to claim the parking garage space. After all, couldn't they just put parking underground, underneath the new stadium? A parking garage shouldn't be the front doorstep for the Rose Quarter anyway.

Even so, while it's not yet time to drop our caution and sense of vigilance about seeing the Coliseum be preserved, for those of us in this preservation effort, I think Mayor Adams deserves our thanks and praise assuming the Coliseum preservation plan goes through.

Survival for the Coliseum will not include the building remaining intact as we know it. If the baseball stadium goes next door, the Coliseum will apparently be renovated and transformed into the open-air venue sought by the Blazers. But as long as the design is done right, in a way that preserves the Coliseum's integrity, I think this is a very reasonable idea.

We are still having a rally tomorrow (Tuesday) for Memorial Coliseum, at 6PM at the Center For Architecture. Perhaps it can now be called a celebration, a victory party. I'm hesitant to go that far just yet while the Coliseum's fate still hangs in the balance. But I am very, very pleased at the apparent progress made today.

Hooray for Memorial Coliseum!

Blazers were reticent about baseball stadium at Rose Quarter, preferred to renovate Coliseum

Even if there's a lot of bad feeling about our leaders tearing down Memorial Coliseum, we needn't blame our beloved Portland Trail Blazers franchise.

According to one source I recently spoke with who has attended numerous meetings about the future of the Rose Quarter, the Blazers are aware of the affection that exists for Memorial Coliseum and the campaign to preserve the building. And even before the idea of replacing the Coliseum with a minor league baseball park was floated, the Blazers were looking to instead transform the Coliseum into their planned open-air performance venue.

So why didn't the Blazers stand up against Paulsen and the City to oppose the baseball stadium on the Coliseum site? Well, there has been a lot of bad blood in the past between the city and owner Paul Allen, be it over the original building of the Rose Garden or the financial troubles and bankruptcy that ensued in recent years. The Blazers aren't the ones driving the runaway train here, but they're also not really motivated to fight the plan.

Sources say the main supporters and instigators of the AAA baseball stadium at the Coliseum site, beside Merritt Paulson and his company, have been two members of Portland's city council: Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Randy Leonard. Adams took a beating from constituents during Columbia River Crossing negotiations for yielding to Vancouver's desire for a 12-lane bridge. So the mayor decided to back to being the Sam Adams we know: trying to make things happen.

Memorial Coliseum deal was structured for the arena to fail

In today's Sunday Oregonian, the Opinion section includes two essays about Memorial Coliseum: one by Barry Johnson in favor of its preservation, the other by David Sarasohn calling for its demolition.

Sarasohn's argument--that the Coliseum has been failing for 14 years as a viable arena seeking to turn a profit--is fundamentally and fatally flawed. But I'm almost glad that Sarasohn made this Gargantuan error, because it brings up an important point.

As shown by research the findings of professor William Macht, associate director of Portland State University's Center for Real Estate, Memorial Coliseum has been designed to fail as a business venture ever since the Rose Garden was built.

Macht writes in PSU's Urban Development Journal that after the new arena opened in 1995, the following deal was set up:

"While Paul Allen's Oregon Arena Corporation (OAC) has the obligation to cover any operating losses at the Coliseum, it must pay 60 percent of any net income from the Coliseum to the City, retaining 40 percent of net income as a management fee. Events at the Rose Garden are not so burdened," Macht writes.

"While the City may have believed that the agreement was favorable to it, one must realize that it is in the economic interest of the manager to hold just enough events at the Coliseum to keep it at a break-even level, but no more, because there is not incentive to exceed that level, especially when all the profit is available for holding the same event in the Rose Garden. The agreement does not address or resolve that conflict of interest," the professor goes on.

"In addition to receiving 40 percent of the net income from the Coliseum as a management fee, the Oregon Arena Corporation passes the full costs of operating the two parking garages owned by the city, including OAC's management fees, on to the city along with any parking revenues generated by events at the Coliseum. This does not constitute an incentive to hold more events at the Coliseum. The City is obligated to pay for all capital improvements to the Coliseum as well as all major repairs and maintenance. Since the Coliseum has been kept at a break-even point, the City has had no incentive to repair and improve it."

"Furthermore, the Oregon Arena Corporation was granted and enjoys development rights for any non-public development that would occur on the Coliseum site but has no such rights for public development. It is in the City's sole discretion to determine that the Coliseum is not needed for any public use. It is in OAC's economic interest  for the City to declare there is no public use for the Coliseum, and over the years it has advocated solutions that demolish it."

Without any doubt, the plan to demolish the Coliseum is a set-up and seemingly was from the start of its tenure beside the Rose Garden. If the City of Portland, Merritt Paulson's Peregrine Development (a peregrine is a preying falcon that eats other birds), or Oregon Arena Corporation tell you the Coliseum has had its chance as a public arena and failed, they are basically trying to sell you snake oil or the Brooklyn Bridge.

And even if an otherwise very respectable and veteran columnist like David Sarsohn (whose work I otherwise admire) tells you that the Coliseum has been "a ghost at the party for 14 years", it's very much at the behest of the people running the show.

I'm not trying to vilify anyone here. Maybe there were valid economic reasons the deal was set up this way originally. Even so, economics are not a viable argument for tearing down the Coliseum when it was engineered to generate less revenue than its newer neighbor.

Talking with Bill Rouzie, one of Memorial Coliseum's original architects

At least if Memorial Coliseum has to be threatened with demolition, it has caused the community of architects and fellow design enthusiasts to come together. A case in point: the call I received yesterday from Bill Rouzie, a retired architect who was part of the bravura team at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that designed the Coliseum.

"That building is marvelous," Rouzie says.

Talking by phone, he recalled visiting the Coliseum in 1960 shortly after the building was finished, on a day its curtain was opened to allow natural light to stream into the arena, which on that day had a skating rink set up inside. "The sunlight was streaming through. Everybody was skating on the ice in their costumes," he remembers. "It was just a beautiful sight."

Rouzie came to Portland in 1957 from SOM's Chicago office, where he had worked closely with one of the firm's best known architects, Walter Netsch, to design the Air Force Academy cadet building in Colorado. (It would go on to become a landmark of modern architecture in its own right.) The Coliseum was the first project he worked on in the Portland office, which was initially headed by SOM partner John Merrill. (Architects like David Pugh, Richard Ritz and Ned Kirschbaum would also distinguish themeselves there.) The Portland branch had emerged out of legendary architect Pietro Belluschi's office. And Belluschi, of course, had taken over that same office from A.E. Doyle. Rouzie had also attended graduate school for architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for which Belluschi served as dean.

A few years later, Rouzie was also part of the design team at SOM that designed a new home for the Oregon Ducks football team: Autzen Stadium.

The whole concept behind Memorial Coliseum's design, Rouzie says, was to give the arena a sense of transparency and connection to the outside - something anathema to most large performance spaces.

"We were thinking, we’ve got this oval bowl that is going to sit in a glass box," the architect recalls. "When you’re in the bowl looking at something happening, you can either have light or not with the control of the curtain. To get out of there, or at halftime, you walk out into a space and instead of being in some blind corridor, you come out and you’ve got glass and you can see the city. You know where you are, and whether it’s day or night." 

"That was the whole point of the design," Rouzie adds. "You never feel lost there. I can even get lost in some of the buildings I've designed, especially the hospitals. But not the Coliseum."

Rouzie remembers the powerful influence held by the timber industry in Oregon. "They even had a preliminary design for it," he recalls of the Coliseum. "It was going to be a big wood dome structure. That wasn’t exactly what SOM had in mind. But we worked with them. The entire glass wall is supported by huge glulam slabs that hold up that whole curtain wall all the way around. They got their share of wood in it."

If the timber industry was a powerful force, so was Gordon Bunshaft, one of SOM's New York-based partners and a legendary architect in his own right, known for such masterpieces as Lever House in New York City (which I think compares favorably to Mies Van Der Rohe's famouse Seagram Building directly across Park Avenue). Bunshaft wanted Memorial Coliseum to be made of glass all the way up to its top, and SOM had, Rouzie remembers, figured out how to make it a reality. But the Coliseum's distinctive white band around its top, made of wood, became part of the compromise. It also helped keep the project from going over budget: Bunshaft's all-glass cube was too expensive. Today, though, the white perimeter seems indelibly part of the Coliseum: the glass cube's headband.

Besides the transparency of the building, the Coliseum is noteworthy for how the concrete seating bowl is completely independent from the glass box. There are only four columns in the whole building, and as Rouzie proudly points out, "Those columns are completely outside the perimeter of the seating form. There’s one point where they come close together but they don’t touch. They never touch."

Rouzie says he will try to make it to the pro-Coliseum rally we have planned for Tuesday at 6PM at the Center for Architecture, but regardless, it was a treat to speak with this living legend of Portland design. And needless to say, while exceptionally modest on a personal level, Rouzie is understandably against the notion of this architectural gem that helped define his career being laid to rest unnecessarily.

The transparent building

On Tuesday night, immediately after the open house at Leftbank with Mayor Sam Adams about the Rose Quarter and Memorial Coliseum, I decided to take a walk to the Coliseum next door. The sun was setting and, after the stuffy room and its contentious debate during the hearing, it felt soothing to walk outside in the springtime sunset and look at the site itself.

The accompanying couple of photos aren't the best I've taken. They turned out slightly blurry because the light level was low and, despite not having a tripod, I didn't want to use a flash. But I think they capture one of the most essential qualities of Memorial Coliseum: its transparency.

I'm not sure if the interior curtains were only partially closed (instead of all the way) or if they don't stretch to the corners of the building, but the incredible see-through quality of Memorial Coliseum (the very thing that all other arenas lack) was very noticeable. Usually arenas and concert halls seem monolithic and closed-off to people outside, but the Coliseum is the most inviting large public building of its kind that I've ever encountered when you're up close to it. 

Maybe the transparency doesn't seem obvious when you're driving on Interstate 5 or even on Interstate Avenue. But up close, the Coliseum is almost like a minimalist greenhouse, a cross between artist Donald Judd's boxy sculptures and the grand botanical architecture of Kew Gardens outside London (below).

Standing outside the Coliseum's front entrance, I and the two architects who came along (Paul Falsetto of Carleton/Hart Architecture and Scott Pitek of Colab) could see through the east wall and the north wall of the Coliseum to the sky and sunset. Meanwhile, the Rose Garden across the street, dark and lifeless without a game inside, seemed like a boulder to the Coliseum's diamond.

Coincidentally, although the Rose Quarter site was otherwise completely empty as our trio toured the Coliseum perimeter, we twice passed Mayor Adams and a small group of his colleagues. I'm not sure if they walked to the MAX stop and changed their minds, or were taking a look at the Rose Quarter site just like we were. Our two tribes exchanged very brief pleasantries and expressions of thanks as we passed - no added theatrics. I feel like there's a metaphor in here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is.  

It's true the Coliseum is in disrepair. And if it should be blessed with another chance at life from the City Council, who will decide its fate in the days ahead, the tarnish on this building will need to come off. That will take money and effort. Lots of it. But if there's anything to be gained from this threat to a landmark of Portland architecture--the biggest historic preservation emergency in my 10 years of covering design here, without any doubt--it's that the Coliseum is special, and we can't take that for granted any longer. And it sure looked beautiful, sitting there silently at the blue hour after the voices had gone.

 

Incidentally, here are a couple additional photos of Memorial Coliseum taken by a regular Portland Architecture reader, Andrew, that show off the building's transparency better than my shots. You can see more of Andrew's Coliseum pics here.

Meanwhile, I leave you a quote from the New York Times' editorial from 1963 called 'Farewell to Penn Station':

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball near OMSI would better fit city's future growth (and save Memorial Coliseum)

Portland resident Forrest Smith emailed me earlier today with an intriguing idea: building the Portland Beavers' AAA baseball park not at Memorial Coliseum, nor at previously-suggested alternate sites like the Rose Quarter parking garage, the Lloyd Cinemas lot, or north of NW 23rd & Vaughn, but instead adjacent to the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry and the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge.

This is the same neighborhood where the new MAX and pedestrian bridge over the Willamette will be built. It's also where outgoing City of Portland Chief Urban Design Strategist Arun Jain identified a broad swatch of future high-density development in his talk last week at the American Institute of Architects' Center For Architecture.

The bridge and MAX are already going to transform the OMSI area. Why not make the ballpark a helpful anchor for that space?

In discussions about this idea on the SkyscraperPage.com forum, one commenter pointed out that the OMSI site isn't necessarily very close to freeway entry points. But I-84 east would be accessible only about a half-mile up Grand Avenue, and I-5 north would be accessible  even closer at the Morrison bridgehead. I-5 south would have to be accessed across the river, but the Ross Island Bridge connects directly to it from just a few blocks away as well. Then there's the fact that MLK and Grand are technically Highway 99E, which you can drive all the way to Eugene.

Plus, you'd have a MAX stop right by the stadium - closer than the Rose Quarter stop would be to a Beavers ballpark at the Rose Quarter, even. There will also be a streetcar on Grand and Martin Luther King Boulevard coming soon, which also would jive nicely with siting the stadium at OMSI.

This is the kind of plan that City Council needs to strongly, strongly consider before destroying one of the very few most important works of architecture in all of Portland.

Mercury reports Rose Quarter developer Cordish has been chastised for strong-arming, racism

I swore I wasn't going to write about the Coliseum until I got some more sleep and until I wrote about something else for a change, but some recent reporting in the Portland Mercury is worth passing on.

In a feature story hilariously titled "Little Dubai", Sarah Mirk and Matt Davis report that The Cordish Company, the developer that would oversee redevelopment of the Rose Quarter into "Live!", a new entertainment district (minus the Coliseum), has irked residents and elected officials in Kansas City, site of one of its other biggest developments, the Power & Light District, as well as people in Louisville, home of another Cordish development.

"After receiving nearly $300 million in public money," Mirk writes of the Kansas City project, "the district is not meeting its revenue forecasts—in part because Cordish missed construction deadlines. The president of Cordish has sent Kansas City’s mayor abrasive all-caps emails demanding the Power and Light District receive top priority."

Louisville, Kentucky, has had similar problems with the Cordish-developed Fourth Street Live! project. (It's their exclamation point, not mine, by the way. Are these titles thought up by teenage girls?) The Louisville Metro Council, Mirk adds, "publicly berated Cordish for using $950,000 in city money to bring its own sports bar to town. 'In our city they do whatever they want, over some pretty strong protest, and we just keep giving them money,' says Kelly Downard, a Louisville metro councilor who says Cordish wooed the Louisville mayor to secure a $1 lease on city land valued at $17 million."

In today's Mercury, Mirk reports that in Kansas City, Cordish tried to institute a racist dress code that banned "white t-shirts, baggy pants, men wearing necklaces and shorts that hung below the top of one's calf. Many Kansas City citizens and a majority of City Council members felt the ban on very specific clothing items clearly discriminated against black people." The city ultimately banned restrictive dress codes, but only after the ACLU got involved and a former City Council member in Kansas City shouted in one hearing, "You want to invite us down to picket you? I'm embarrassed black people stand up here and advocate discrimination!"

Is this the kind of outfit you want overseeing the new Rose Quarter? Is this a good reason to demolish one of Portland's most beloved architectural landmarks?

Live from City Hall

This post is coming to you live from City Council chambers at City Hall, where I am waiting to address Council regarding the planned demolition of Memorial Coliseum. I hope they don't lump me in with the Adams protesters, or the crazy guy currently discussing vomit and garbage on Burnside. He actually dumped a bunch of trash on the table for testimony, so now they have to take a 10-minute recess.

Last night there were hundreds of people at Leftbank to protest the demolition of the Coliseum. When oppisition was expressed for the Coliseum, it drew the strongest applause of the night -- by far.

I will write in greater length about last night's event when I'm not embroiled in this morning's event here at City Hall. But I had to pass one astonishing bit of information. Last night we learned from the City that a Portland Beavers baseball park would actually fit in the Rose Quarter site without Memorial Coliseum being demolished, but that such a plan would require demolition of the Rose Quarter's above-ground parking garage. And the garage is a revenue stream for the Rose Quarter.

That's right: the City of Portland is looking to tear down Memorial Coliseum in order to preserve a PARKING GARAGE. A parking garage! Can you believe that?

If the City of demolishes Memorial Coliseum to preserve a parking garage, it will be the single greatest act of lunacy in Portland's history.

Everybody, I'm told that Commissioner Dan Saltzman may be the swing vote on this matter. If you support the Coliseum, please consider contacting his office.

Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale: Memorial Coliseum "one of the best buildings in the city."

He's not an elected official or business leader of any kind, but musician Thomas Lauderdale one of the city's most admired figures in the arts & culture scene. His band, Pink Martini, is also internationally renowned.

Lauderdale was among those who organized a press conference at City Hall in support of Mayor Adams when the scandal involving Beau Breedlove broke out

But now, he says that while he doesn't necessarily regret defending the mayor against a rush to judgment happening during the Breedlove scandal, he is dismayed that the mayor is planning to demolish Memorial Coliseum.

"I am extremely disappointed in the position that Mayor Adams has seemingly taken," Lauderdale said this afternoon by phone. "Memorial Coliseum is one of the best buildings this city has, and one of the most beautiful."

Also, Lauderdale added, "We're a growing city and we don't have a comparable other facility. And certainly nothing we build now will be as beautiful. Look at the recent attempts by the city like the Rose Garden, or even the Portland Building. When you compare the Rose Garden to Memorial Coliseum it's clear which is the greater building."

"I also find it curious and alarming that all of this is happening in such an accelerated fashion, without a proper public process. This is unacceptable."

The pianist and composer whose Pink Martini work has been broadcast on French television, PBS, and staged at the Cannes Film Festival, recalls seeing the Oregon Symphony and numerous Trail Blazer games at Memorial Coliseum over the years. And this September, Pink Martini will be playing a concert at the Coliseum, which Lauderdale says will be part of Oregon's 150th birthday celebration and may also become part of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival.

"He’s told the veterans he’s promising them a better building," Lauderdale adds, "which is why the veterans are behind this. They’re not going to get a better building. We’ll be left with something as ugly as the Rose Quarter or the Portland Building. And then it will be too late."

Memorial Coliseum: two alternative sites for baseball stadium proposed (updated)

First of all, let me reiterate two very important public events tonight and tomorrow, to which any supporter of Memorial Coliseum is implored to attend.

There will be a public open house tonight at the Leftbank building (240 N. Broadway) from 6-8PM, and a City Council hearing/vote Wednesday morning at 9:30AM at City Hall (you have to be there by 9AM to register to speak).

Meanwhile, two Portlanders have contacted Portland Architecture with proposals for alternative sites for the Portland Beavers baseball stadium.

I was especially intrigued by a proposal from architect Rick Potestio: to build the minor-league baseball stadium on the site of the Lloyd Cinemas surface parking lot.

It wouldn't have seemed to me that the parking lot has enough room for a baseball stadium, but if we're talking about a 9,000-seat minor league park, Potestio has done the math and says the needed square footage is there.

The Lloyd Cinemas lot is also right next to a MAX stop, making it closer than the Rose Quarter stop would be to the Coliseum site. Below is a drawing by Potestio of the possible Lloyd location with baseball.

Unlike PGE Park, the Lloyd site would have ample parking: across the street in the multilevel Lloyd Center parking garage. The garage would also mean that eliminating the Lloyd Cinemas lot would not pose a big problem to Lloyd Cinemas. In fact, one would expect the movie theater to benefit from having a baseball stadium next door. Up to 9,000 more people could be coming there 50 times a year.

Obviously the Lloyd Cinemas site is privately owned, and it would take extra effort to make this site work for that reason. Even so, it would be a benefit to that private landowner. And if it could save Memorial Coliseum, why not condemn the property if we have to? If Randy Leonard is willing to do so for the integrity of a neon sign, why not to save one of Portland's most significant and popular works of architecture?

Potestio also believes that Memorial Coliseum could be transformed into the open-air concert venue and beer garden the Blazers and developer Cordish Company are suggesting. He sees a retractible roof being placed on the Coliseum or part of the roof being removed altogether, and the west, river-facing facade being cut into in order to create connections to the river and a smaller structure (the beer garden) on the riverside.

Many, myself included, have focused on the Portland Public Schools-owned site north of the Rose Quarter for the baseball stadium. But a member of the mayor's staff told me last week that the PPS site is not under consideration because PPS has said they're not ready to move. But as it happens, the Lloyd Cinemas site may actually be better for the stadium than the PPS site anyway. It's much closer to a MAX stop, and it would help integrate the Convention Center, Rose Quarter and Lloyd District. That's a major goal of the Portland Development Commission, one that wouldn't be achieved by erecting a baseball stadium on the Coliseum site.

Another alternative site for the Portland Beavers stadium was suggested by Steve Linder, who has spearheaded efforts to preserve the landmark Riverdale School (designed by legendary architects A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi). Linder has identified a parcel of vacant land in Northwest Portland where 23rd Avenue meets Yeon Avenue and Nicolai Street.

The parcel, where an industrial building was previously demolished, would be enough for the baseball stadium, particularly if you combine it with an adjacent vacant lot. This site would also, like the others being proposed, have excellent freeway access. And because it's close to both Naito Parkway and 23rd Avenue, there is every reason to believe a streetcar or MAX connection could be made. After all, the streetcar already goes into NW Portland and 23rd Avenue at Lovejoy and Northrup streets.

Of these two ideas, I like the Lloyd proposal the best. But anything is better than choosing the Memorial Coliseum site. Councilors Leonard, Fish, Fritz, and Saltzman, are you listening? Mayor Adams?

One other idea, which seems less plausible but is nevertheless quite intriguing, was forwarded to me by a couple people: what if we transformed Memorial Coliseum into the baseball stadium? Obviously major alterations would be required, but again - anything is better than losing one of Portland's biggest architectural jewels.

National Trust For Historic Preservation urges City Council to preserve Memorial Coliseum

Those seeking to preserve Memorial Coliseum just got an assist from the nation's largest nonprofit historic preservation organization: The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Below is a letter sent to City Council members today from Althea Hartig, Ph.D., Director of the Trust's western region and Brian Turner, Law Fellow for the Trust.

Dear Mayor Adams:

On behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, we are writing to express our support for the preservation of Portland’s Memorial Coliseum. We were alarmed to learn of your proposal to demolish this architecturally-significant modernist building and brazen pledge to seek City Council approval for demolition within a month. As detailed below, the unique qualities of this structure and its importance to the community require a careful evaluation of alternatives before demolition is considered. We are also highly skeptical of claims that the demolition of this Portland landmark is a “sustainable” solution. In fact, demolition followed by new construction would be a dramatic step backward in Portland’s goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable city.

The Memorial Coliseum is an historic building that contributes significantly to the community of Portland and the State of Oregon. Designed 1958-1960 by the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (established in 1936 in Chicago), the Coliseum is architecturally notable for its cantilevered steel-truss roof floating over a free-standing concrete arena bowl, the whole enclosed by a glass curtain wall. An all-glass exterior façade is an uncommon treatment for arenas of this era. The rarity of this style contributes to structure’s historic significance.

In 1961, the building won an Honor Award from the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects and is currently listed on the City of Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory as a “Rank 1” structure. A Rank 1 rating distinguishes Memorial Coliseum as one of the most important historic properties in the City, distinguished by outstanding qualities of architecture, historical values, and integrity. Buildings with this ranking are the highest priority for landmark designation and eligible for National Register status.

The City of Portland has long been a patron of modern works and maintains an important collection of period resources, including Pietro Belluschi’s 1944-48 Equitable Building and 1951 Central Lutheran Church, as well as the 1966 Lovejoy Fountain Plaza by famed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.  Memorial Coliseum is the result of both community effort–voters approved an $8 million bond in 1954 to finance the building–and the work of local building professionals, including the Portland-based Hoffmann Construction, a well-known company that has contributed substantially to the built environment in the northwest and is the recipient of more than a dozen architectural awards and commendations for its work in the City.

Preservation of Memorial Coliseum has received strong community support from a number of organizations, including Bosco-Milligan Foundation, AIA - Oregon/Portland Chapter, Recent Past Preservation Network, Docomomo WEWA, local Veterans groups,and a host of well-respected architects and designers. Brian Libby, a nationally published writer living in Portland, expressed “shock, sadness and anger” when he learned of the plan to “demolish one of the greatest works of architecture, and one of the most historic sites, in the entire City.”  This action, he asserts, “sends the worst kind of message about how the City respects its history and sustainability.”

With the successful reuse of this building, Portland can demonstrate its leadership in the preservation of historic architecture and work cooperatively towards developing a practical model for communities that are debating new uses for their aging arenas. In 2002, William P. Macht, an adjunct professor of urban planning and development in the College of Urban & Public Affairs at Portland State University, put forward four alternative plans for the preserved coliseum, created as part of a three-month development planning workshop. These particular options -- a headquarters hotel, an arts complex, a sustainable technology center and an urban home center –prove that alternatives do exist and should be more fully explored by the City before any further decisions are made.

Finally, we are concerned that the Mayor has supported demolition of the Coliseum under the mantra of “sustainability.” We question the accuracy of this assumption. Choosing new construction over reuse is rarely the most sustainable choice. New construction requires a massive expenditure of energy to manufacture or extract building materials, transport them to the construction site, and assemble them into a new building. A substantial amount of energy is already embodied in the Coliseum’s sizable steel and glass frames. The replacement of existing structural components with newly manufactured and newly extracted materials must be factored into the environmental cost if the City is to tout sustainability as an objective of this plan.

In light of community support and significant historic evidence, the National Trust asks that the reuse and renovation of Memorial Coliseum be the City’s first priority regarding the future of Rose Quarter area. The Trust also asks that the City consider the historic importance of the building relative to the rapidly diminishing number of significant modern works of architecture in the State and nationwide.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation was chartered by Congress in 1949 as a private nonprofit organization for the purpose of furthering the historic preservation policies of the United States and facilitating public participation in the preservation of our nation’s heritage. 16 U.S.C. § 468. With the support of our 235,000 members nationwide, including more than 2,200 members in Oregon, the National Trust works to protect significant historic sites and to advocate historic preservation as a fundamental value in programs and policies at all levels of government. The Trust has seven regional offices around the country, including a Western Office in San Francisco, California which is specifically responsive to preservation issues in Oregon.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this important issue. Memorial Coliseum is an asset to Portland’s heritage and all effort should be made for its preservation. We hope that in light of these concerns your office will re-evaluate its preference for demolition and instead consider a full range of alternatives for adaptive reuse. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Anthea M. Hartig, PhD.

Brian Turner, Esq.

Coliseum update: City Council hearing Wednesday morning, 9:30AM

Please excuse any confusion this might cause, but it turns out that while Tuesday night's open house at Leftbank is a great opportunity for public testimony regarding the planned demolition of Memorial Coliseum, an even more important chance to show your support for the building will be this Wednesday in City Council chambers at City Hall.

On Wednesday at 9:30AM, Council hear the reading of the proposed ordinance, #427 on the agenda:

"Authorize Sole Source Acquisition and Predevelopment Agreement and authorize Sole Source Acquisition of an Operating Agreement, both with Peregrine Sports, LLC for Major League Soccer and Triple-A Baseball stadiums, pursuant to ORS 279b.075 and City Code Title 5, Section 5.33.120   (Ordinance)"

Obviously, things are moving very quickly and it will be difficult to coalesce a large public response in such a short time.  Nonetheless, please consider going to work a little bit late in order to show support for this threatened landmark.

According to one inside source I've emailed with, the Tuesday night open house is intended as a mere gesture of listening - a rubber stamp, even. The Wednesday morning affair is the chance to actually hold the City Council right then and there as they vote.

When the Major League Soccer plan for PGE Park was approved a few weeks ago by the City Council, Portland Timbers fans made a boisterous show of support. Between architects and other members of the community concerned about design and history, couldn't we do the same? Add a few Blazer fans to the mix, and it could really show the City Council that Memorial Coliseum matters.

Oregonian op-ed compares losing Coliseum to New York's tragic loss of Penn Station

I was disappointed to see the Oregonian editorial board today expressed support for tearing down Memorial Coliseum to build a baseball stadium for a minor league team 1% of the city cares about. But luckily, the paper (which I also freelance for) was also good enough to publish this op-ed from architect Ryan Yaden:

In 1963 New York's Penn Station was demolished to make way for Madison Square Garden. Since then generations of New Yorkers have lamented its loss. We shouldn't let Portland's Memorial Coliseum become our Penn Station.

Manhattan's original 1910 Pennsylvania Station by McKim, Mead and White was a classic of turn-of-the century Beaux Arts architecture with massive stonework and soaring spaces. But by the 1960s it was viewed as old and out of date. Obsolescence and operating expense were cited by the owners as reasons to tear it down and replace it with a new complex of modern concourses, offices and an arena.

As the great structure was razed, The New York Times wrote a heated eulogy: "Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age."

Today Memorial Coliseum faces a similar fate. 

A new Triple A baseball stadium that was approved as part of a package to bring Major League Soccer to Portland is most often shown on the site of Memorial Coliseum. The timeline puts the need for a plan to be accepted by this fall, so there isn't much time. The site was doubtless chosen for its prime location and size, and in recent years the coliseum has generally been described as obsolete, redundant and expensive to operate.

Sound familiar?

Looking past the (very real) practical issues, we see one of the great buildings of an era. Three years prior to the demolition of Penn Station, in 1960, Skidmore Owings and Merrill completed Memorial Coliseum, dedicated to the "advancement of cultural opportunities for the community and to the memory of our veterans of all wars who made the supreme sacrifice."

It's a sophisticated glass box with a gentle curving bowl set inside for the arena. Inside on the concourse is one of the great views of downtown Portland set against the Willamette River. It signifies a hopeful and progressive time in Portland and since its dedication has hosted some of the more memorable shared experiences for the city.

Most of us who grew up in Portland have some significant childhood memory associated with the coliseum. Don't let its demolition be the lament of future generations simply because we couldn't appreciate its significance in our own time. Beaux Arts structures were thought of as irrelevant in the 1960s, and since then we have learned that a lost masterpiece like Penn Station simply cannot be re-created. It's a nonrenewable resource: When it's gone, it's gone forever.

Now, I'm an avid soccer fan and player, and I'm thrilled that Major League Soccer has chosen Portland for its expansion. Likewise, I'm looking forward to watching both baseball and soccer in stadiums that are more conducive to each activity. But that shouldn't come at the expense of one of the great buildings of its era.

It's time that Portland put its considerable energy and progressive thinking toward adapting Memorial Coliseum to a new and financially sound use. As with any large project, the political, legal and development issues are formidable. It's a difficult problem, but not more challenging than what we have solved in the past.

For the same reasons, people said we couldn't draw a line around the city to preserve our rural lands from development. But we did, and the Urban Growth Boundary was born. People said we couldn't use federal transportation funds for mass transit instead of highways. But we did, and the MAX light-rail system was born.

We have a legacy of accomplishing unconventional change when it improves the quality of our environment.

Go visit the coliseum if you haven't recently. Step back a moment and appreciate the elegant structure for what it is. Look at the details and picture the spirit of that era. Stand on the concourse and look at the city that has grown up so much since 1960.

Yes, the building is a little worse for wear, but for a structure that's almost 50 years old, that's to be expected. With any luck, it won't be the last time you see it.

In the end, Penn Station's demolition did have a silver lining in becoming the example of how devastating lost heritage can be. I hope that won't be the legacy of Memorial Coliseum.

Ryan Yaden of North Portland is an architect and urban designer with Firm 151.

Please consider contacting City Council to protest razing of Memorial Coliseum

Mayor Sam Adams
Phone: (503)823-4120
Email: Samadams@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Randy Leonard
Phone: (503)823-4682
Email: randy@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Amanda Fritz:
Phone: (503) 823-3008
Email: amanda@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Nick Fish
Phone: (503) 823-3589
Email: nick@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Dan Saltzman
Phone: (503)823-4151
Email: dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us  

American Institute of Architects calls for City Council to save Memorial Coliseum

The groundswell of support for saving our beloved Memorial Coliseum is building. A letter was sent from the American Institute of Architects on Friday to City Council members Nick Fish, Randy Leonard, Amanda Fritz, and Mayor Sam Adams.

The letter is signed by the presidents of AIA's Portland chapter and Oregon chapter, as well as the Institute's key committee chairs and several of its 'Fellows', the most honored and senior members of the local architecture profession (designated by 'FAIA' after their name). These are people who have collectively built the MAX line, much of the Portland International Airport, the Nike campus, much of Portland State University, and much more. Here is the letter:

Dear Commissioner:

The American Institute of Architects/Portland with additional support from The American Institute of Architects/Oregon and participating committees, the Fellows of the AIA, the Downtown Urban Design Panel and the Historic Resources Committees would like to request that you join a large contingent of citizen groups and interested individuals to speak against and vote against the proposed development agreement advocated by the Office of the Mayor in support of a baseball stadium benefiting Peregrine LLC to the long-term detriment of the Rose Quarter.

To date an inadequate public process has failed to discuss the merits of a master plan providing alternative locations for a new baseball stadium within or outside of the Rose Quarter and failed to consider viable reuse options for the Memorial Coliseum, a building that is listed on the City of Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory and is significant for the following reasons:

• The Memorial Coliseum is an important and beloved landmark even for those unaware of its architectural pedigree;

• It is dedicated to our veterans and is held high as an emblem of our collective honor for what they have given;

• The Coliseum currently hosts hundreds of events each year serving many different sectors of our community, whereas a baseball stadium would be used a few dozen times a year for one interest group.

• The site is too restricted to permit subsequent expansion of a baseball stadium on that site – it may be necessary to look beyond the bounds of the Rose Quarter to find a site that makes long term sense.

In addition, the Office of the Mayor is advocating a development agreement that lacks adequate funding and proposes work that far exceeds the financial capacity of both the City of Portland and Peregrine LLC to achieve success without undue burden on the citizens of Portland.

Your vote against the development agreement would signal the need to develop a Rose Quarter master plan inclusive of all interested parties, has broad local support, and is more reflective of past successful planning efforts within the City of Portland.

We thank you for your support.

Greg Flinders
President, The American Institute of Architects/Portland

John Blumthal, AIA
YGH Architecture
President, The American Institute of Architects/Oregon

James McGrath, AIA
Co-chair, Downtown Urban Design Panel

Paul Falsetto, Assoc. AIA
Carleton/Hart Architecture
Co-chair, Historic Resources Committee

Paddy Tillett, FAIA
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
Co-chair, Fellows Committee

Thomas Hacker, FAIA, Thomas Hacker Architects
Joachim Grube, FAIA, Yost Grube Hall
Don Stastny, FAIA, StastnyBrun Architects
Stan Boles, FAIA, BOORA Architects
Martha Peck Andrews, FAIA, Andrews Architects
Larry Bruton, FAIA, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
George Crandall, FAIA, Crandall Arambula
Robert Thompson, FAIA, TVA Architects
Ned Vaivoda, FAIA, YGH Architecture
Ron Grownowski, FAIA, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
Bing Sheldon, FAIA, SERA Architects
Roger Shiels, FAIA, Shiels Obletz Johnsen
Robert Hastings, FAIA, Trimet
Brooks Gunsul, FAIA, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
Nels Hall, FAIA, YGH Architecture

Save Memorial Coliseum! (updated)

It was with shock, sadness and anger that I learned that the City of Portland and the Portland Trail Blazers have joined together to demolish one of the greatest works of architecture, and one of the most historic sites, in the entire city: Memorial Coliseum.

Demolishing the Coliseum is wrong for Portland, wrong for the Rose Quarter site, and sends the worst kind of message about how the city respects its history and sustainability.

And all to build a minor-league baseball park. Let me ask all of you: How many of you have paid to see a Portland Beavers baseball game in the last decade? How many of you passionately follow the Portland Beavers?

Even if you are a Beavers baseball believer, though, placing a stadium on the Coliseum sight is all wrong. Any stadium or arena is to a city's urban grid what a swallowed mouse is to a snake. It's too big to go down easy. Having anything next to the Rose Garden arena other than a stadium or arena would have been better.

Portland has established a well-deserved reputation for sustainability over the last decade. But one of the paramount principles of building green is to renovate buildings instead of tearing them down. You could build something with a LEED Platinum designation on the Memorial Coliseum site, but it's not truly green--not at all--if you tear down a building to do it.

In case there are people reading this who haven't read my previous posts (or others') about the Coliseum, it's worth reiterating that the building, however much it may seem to be in disrepair (which can be fixed), has tremendous architectural significance and historic value. Memorial Coliseum was designed by the legendary firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It's one of the great arenas to come out of the mid-20th century, for which nostalgia and preservation efforts around the world have been growing. The building itself is noteworthy and unique for how the seating bowl is enclosed by a glass box. It gives the Coliseum a sense of transparency that virtually no other enclosed arena has. That's also an architectural quality that would be conducive to many types of renovations.

The Blazers' plans for the Rose Quarter could easily accommodate the Coliseum. They want to have a covered entertainment venue for shows. Couldn't the Coliseum be altered to serve such a purpose? Anything would be better than razing it.

Adding salt to the wound is that a better and actually even available site lies across the street: the outmoded Portland Public Schools Blanchard facility. Why not have the stadium there and only add to the "synergy" (to use the team and developers' words)?

Another idea for the Portland Beavers stadium: the suburbs. Many supporters of the team are said to come from Southwest Portland and Washington County. Why not put the stadium on the MAX line in Beaverton or Hillsboro? I'll bet those towns would welcome the economic development potential of a minor-league stadium and not snicker (like I admittedly do) at the team or what its home will destroy.

Mayor Sam Adams is, from what I understand, supporting the stadium at the site of Memorial Coliseum. Considering his fall from political/popular grace this year, I can understand the mayor not wanting to take on the Blazers and Merritt Paulson on this. But I think it would be a boon to his popularity if he rode in with a win-win solution like brokering a deal for the Blanchard site to host the stadium instead of the Coliseum destruction.

It's also the worst possible irony that the Blazers are looking to demolish the sacred ground where the team won the 1977 NBA Championship. What are you going to do next, Blazers, use the championship banner as a welcome mat at the Beavers' empty stadium? (Nearly empty on game nights.)

It gives me great pain to be arguing against the wishes of the Blazers. I live and breathe Trail Blazer basketball. If the team wins another championship in my lifetime, that's all I'll ask for from God again. The Blazers should be protecting the Coliseum with a whip and a chair against any hungry lions. Instead, they've hired a corporate developer to generate a very, very cheesy sounding entertainment district that seems to have more Las Vegas or Los Angeles DNA than that of our Rose City.

I'm also gravely disappointed that leaders in Portland's city council have allowed this to happen and even maybe encouraged it. Obviously they want the best for the city, but this is just not it. Maybe it conveniently solves the issue of where to put the Beavers' stadium since the Portland Timbers' MLS squad will take over PGE Park. But solving a multimillion-dollar case of musical chairs by destroying one of the most beloved buildings ever built in the city is not the way to do it right.

As Portlanders we can not stand for this horrible plan that is contemptuous of history, sustainability and even the Blazers team itself. We need to start talking right away about petition drives, protests, back-door meetings--anything to prevent this tragedy from happening. Who's with me on the picket line?

 

UPDATE: Friends, Blazer fans, Portlanders, take note. There is a Rose Quarter Redevelopment Public Open House Event coming up:

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
6:00-8:00 p.m.

Agenda:
6:00 PM Public review of proposed redevelopment concepts
6:30 PM Presentation of redevelopment concepts
7:00 PM Community feedback session

Location:
Leftbank Building, 240 N. Broadway

Obletz offers alternative Rose Quarter, Coliseum & baseball stadium plan

In Sunday's Oregonian, an op-ed by Douglas Obletz offered a more sane and reasonable idea for the Rose Quarter in light of the recent awarding of a Major League Soccer franchise to Portland (and the ensuing need to build the Portland Beavers a new baseball stadium).

Instead of tearing down Memorial Coliseum for the ballpark, Obletz says, we should build the stadium across Broadway on the site of the Portland Public Schools Blanchard Education Center, which he calls "oversized and outdated."

"By moving the school district's administrative offices and warehouse to smaller, more energy-efficient buildings (or vacant space downtown), the district will save on operating costs; and the eight-block site will extend the Rose Quarter and its development opportunities."

The Coliseum could then be turned into a public sports and recreation center, Obletz argues, as was proposed in 2004 when several million in donations were up for grabs.

Obletz, president of the local development firm Shiels Obletz Johnsen, also calls for arts and entertainment and health and wellness centers on the site. "With the removal of the unsuccessful office and retail building and redesign of the large plaza west of the Rose Garden, there is plenty of room for the venue envisioned by [Paul] Allen, extending the legacy of great entertainment in the Coliseum." I also like Obletz's idea of a Nike Oregon Sports Museum here. The Oregon Sports Hall of Fame has been a huge disappointment.

One commenter on the Oregon Live website where Obletz's piece was originally published made the point that Obletz is head of a big local development company that could stand to profit from involvement at the Rose Quarter site. Maybe that's true, although I'm not aware of Shiels Obletz Johnsen having ties there currently. And regardless, I think Obletz's proposal is much, much better than what the Blazers and Beavers owner Merritt Paulsen have planned so far.

There are a couple issues happening simultaneously. One is location of the stadium. I've repeatedly argued that adding a stadium to the Rose Quarter site is bad urban planning. We need to integrate the area into the city fabric, not make it more of an isolated island for big sports and entertainment events. However, even though the Blanchard site would only be a block away, I think this proposal for the stadium is much better urbanistically.

The other issue is the preservation of Memorial Coliseum, a midcentury modern jewel (pictured at right in a shot by Jeff Jahn). Another commenter on the Oregon Live site chastised Obletz for wanting to save the building because, in this commenter's opinion, formed after attending Winter Hawks hockey games there, that "the MC is becoming a disgrace." That's an argument not for the Coliseum's eradication, though, but for its renovation. The same commenter actually vehemently argued for a casino on the Rose Quarter site. "Do something truly unique that will enliven the area and dump millions of dollars into the economy," he/she said. But I'd argue something far less crass would be better.

What do the rest of you think about how Memorial Coliseum should be saved and where else beside the Rose Quarter proper we could put the baseball stadium?

City Council approves MLS soccer plan

As reported by several outlets in within the last quarter hour (the Portland Mercury quickly followed by Willamette Week and The Oregonian if you go by the time the articles were posted online), Portland's City Council has approved the proposed plan for bringing Major League Soccer to the city with a renovated soccer-only PGE Park. (The accompanying image of the Timbers Army, is from The Oregonian and was taken by Brent Wojahn.)

The measure passed by a 3-2 vote, with Nick Fish joining Amanda Fritz in 'no' votes and Dan Saltzman joining Randy Leonard and Sam Adams with a 'yes'. Saltzman's deciding vote was conditional upon a new amendment to the original agreement that rescinds the use of money from a new urban renewal district. That leaves $15 million from the financing package that has to be made up.

I've wrestled with this decision a lot personally, and I can't definitively tell you what the best decision would have been. The deal includes many millions that Timbers owner Merrit Paulsen is offering to the city through rebuilding a stadium and bringing the city's second major league professional sports franchise. But it's probably also true that Portland committing to the deal could mean less funding for other, arguably more worthy causes. I am a soccer fan, and I'm also a major-league snob; I've wanted this, but not so much that I felt I could argue vehemently for it.

Assuming that PGE Park gets rebuilt for Major League Soccer, what about the issues of who might oversee that design? Let's make sure this is a first-class stadium and not the antiseptic yet dreary environment of the existing baseball stadium.

At the same time, part of me will always be skeptical about the chances of PGE Park becoming a good stadium, for a reason seemingly out of anyone but a select few people's control. The Multnomah Athletic Club abuts the stadium so closely that you can't put any seats on the south end. I wish the MAC would move somewhere else and the new MLS stadium would include taking over that space. But it'll never happen.

Also, as I understand it, the accompanying issue of where a new Portland Beavers baseball field would be built is undecided. I am absolutely positively against the idea of building a baseball stadium at the Rose Quarter. The other main idea, putting it in the Lents neighborhood in outer Southeast, I'm ambivalent and not sure what's best. Where do the rest of you think a baseball stadium should go?

Here is a portion of the statement released today after the vote by mayor Sam Adams:

"Today we mark a huge step forward in realizing the dream of bringing major league soccer to our great city. The City Council, by supporting the resolution to accept a partnership with Merritt Paulson and the Paulson family, has demonstrated a commitment to raising our city’s national and international profile. And, the Council has chosen to support an effort that will bring jobs, revenues, visitors and much-needed spending to Portland’s Central City." 

"Every commissioner on the City Council has the best interests of the City at heart. The partnership with Mr. Paulson protects those interests by leveraging the best assets and attributes of the private sector with the long-term planning and fiscal responsibility of Portland’s public servants."

"The myriad businesses downtown, the thousands of soccer fans, the tens of thousands of youth soccer players, and all the citizens of the Portland region stand to gain from the revenue, visibility and benefits of welcoming Major League Soccer to Portland. From the construction and operational jobs that will be created to the hundreds of thousands of visitors that will bring their families and their pocketbooks downtown and year-round, this deal means economic development as much as it means family-friendly entertainment."

"And, we must not minimize the investment that the City and Merritt Paulson are making in the existing AAA baseball club that is so beloved in our city. This deal brings real investment and real revenues for the tens of thousands of baseball fans who come downtown, 80 percent of whom travel from outside the City of Portland to attend games."

Council member Amanda Fritz had this to say in voting against the plan:

"I think I've probably watched more professional soccer games than anyone on this council, but I'm not making my decision today based on whether soccer is a wonderful game or not. I'm being asked to vote on the dedication of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. This increased debt capacity would take money away from those neighborhoods. We're in really bad shape as a city and we spent yesterday, our whole day in heart-breaking reviews of our city budgets."

LOVE the Blazers, but worried about their Rose Quarter plans

As The Business Journal and other media outlets reported last week, the Portland Trail Blazers have launched a campaign to remake the 36-acre Rose Quarter as an "entertainment-themed district "alive with activity 24 hours a day". I'd have thought making it feel alive on a regular old Tuesday afternoon would have been challenge enough.

Our beloved NBA franchise--did I mention the Blazers are the greatest NBA team in the history of the universe, and lifelong love of my sporting life?--has teamed with The Cordish Company, which also was a finalist for the Centennial Mills development commission. Cordish is based in Baltimore and has created similarly themed entertainment districts there and in Kansas, with projects in Philadelphia and Los Angeles on the way.

Cordish seemed to have the most corporate-feeling of the Centennial Mills proposals, the one that felt the least like a good fit for Portland. Or as Portland Spaces blogger Mike Thelin put it at the time, "about as good as a fit for Portland as a new NASCAR track in Pioneer Courthouse Square." Another Spaces blogger, Tim DuRoche, describes the developer's track record as "projects that jiggered loose much economic development in the way of high-voltage, big-bang retail, manufactured experiences but were sharply criticized for their garishness and cultural politics."

What's more, the very idea of a ghettoized "entertainment district" seems circumspect. It's true that, at least according to the Business Journal report by Wendy Culverwell, the Blazers would plan to have offices and residences in addition to clubs and restaurants. But plans for those kinds of spaces seem less thought out than bringing in entertainment outlets.

I mean, do you think a local outpost of the ESPN Zone sports bar chain is the right solution for The Rose Quarter's future? I watch ESPN more than any other channel, and I sure don't. I know the Blazers plan much more than that; I'm mostly kidding. I wish I could say I was entirely kidding. There's strong reason to feel like the spirit of Portland will be lacking and the feel of the suburbs will be in full supply.

Then there's Memorial Coliseum, which the Blazers have at least hinted could be either torn down entirely or significantly altered. It's such a tragedy: you really don't need two arenas sitting next to each other. I hate the clustering of sports stadiums, at least in central areas. They're hard enough to make feel an accepted part of the urban fabric with just one behemoth of a stadium or arena. Two is worse. So there's a logic in getting rid of Memorial Coliseum, of course. It's just really too bad, because architecturally it's so much better than the Rose Quarter. Memorial Coliseum is really unique to me; among all the basketball arenas I've ever seen, it's the most transparent. Because of the glass facade, you could be inside that building and be surrounded by the city. If the Blazers really want this entertainment zone, isn't there room for that kind of structure?

The team plans to utilize the Rose Quarter's link to the Willamette River, and that could be a special urban place if done right. But again, I worry that the Blazers and Cordish, even though they've announced lots of admirable intentions to build green, don't have the pulse of Portland of how to create the right kind of urban place for the center of the city. I think they need to parcel out this work in a way the organization almost assuredly wouldn't be willing to do: a design competition, for example. Or to hire an architect with great pedigree and let them not just follow a cookie-cutter quasi-mall plan but actually design a program. Or to hold a series of forums and brainstorming sessions with the public and with local leaders.

Then there's the talk of putting a minor league baseball stadium for the Portland Beavers on the Rose Quarter site. That's the last thing that should be on the table. This site is already over-crowded with behemoth arena buildings. We need some foothills to these mountains, not another mountain.

The Rose Quarter, even aside from its 200-plus events per year at the two arenas, is a hugely important urban intersection, where bus lines and MAX lines from all over the east side come together. Yet despite Portland's reputation for progressive urban planning, owner Paul Allen forced through a suburban-style environment with the threat always looming of pulling the plug. And Earl Blumenauer, then a city council member, was eager to get the arena on the light rail line; that may have caused as much trouble as it did good by allowing such an unsuccessful urban crossroads to be built the way it was.

To repair the Rose Quarter, the Blazers need to integrate this area into the fabric of the city. Instead of forwarding a cheesy "entertainment zone", they should be looking to erase all surface parking and above-ground parking garages, then add a mix of housing, commercial and retail, and do so in a matter that refrains from thinking of the Rose Quarter as an island. We need the Rose Quarter better integrated with land across busy NE Broadway and better pedestrian connections for people to move freely across the site. We need a building scale that allows small local businesses and not just big brewpubs that host sports-talk shows and serve cheap steaks to people coming from out of town for the night in their SUVs to see the monster truck pull and eat at Tony Roma's. We need the Rose Quarter to borrow a little of the Portland spirit happening in its backyard at Leftbank or the Eastbank Commerce Center or the Brewery Blocks. The Rose Quarter should incorporate onto its property the ambitious Lloyd Crossing sustainable infrastructure plan.

Again, let me be perfectly clear about the Blazers organization: I love you guys. I adore you. I bleed red and black. Sometimes I actually think my whole life is just about holding on long enough for either the Blazers or the Oregon Ducks football team to win a championship. When the Blazers won two Western Conference titles in the early 1990s, I jumped up and down and screamed and told half of New York City about it whether they liked it or not (they didn't). When the team lost the heartbreaking 7th game of the 2000 Western Conference Finals after holding a 13-point fourth quarter lead, I literally sobbed and blubbered. Not just a tear or two: outright crying. Even when it was the thick of the "Jail Blazers" era with embarrassment and unlikable players like Rasheed Wallace, Ruben Patterson, Bonzi Wells and Damon Stoudamire, I was with the team every step of the way. I was holding my breath when Rudy Fernandez got hurt last night. And Greg Oden? Calling him a bust is fightin' words in my house.

(By the way, we have the one of the best logos in sports. I'd like to see us go back to the lower-case font like in this picture of LaRue martin from the 1970s, but keep the symbolic troupe-leader's diagonal sash. Oh, and please don't sell out naming rights to the Rose Garden!)

But please, Portland, don't let the Blazers be in control of urban planning for the Rose Garden, at least not without a very transparent process, good co-leadership from the city and appropriate talent on both the development and design teams. I have every faith they can put a championship squad together. Kevin Pritchard is like a Michael Jordan of the front office, and Larry Miller has quietly done an excellent job as president. But these are basketball team builders, not city builders. I worry these are people, judging by affiliations and track record, with a bad combination of Robert Moses and Las Vegas as their guiding principle. And a development being green doesn't make it a good development.

I'd love to be wrong about this. Really, I would. But I worry the Blazers are just going to make a bad urban setting even worse.

Then again, if Roy, Alridge and Oden can win a championship, the team could just fill turn the whole place into a toxic waste dump and I wouldn't care.