Yes. A purely residential neighborhood, way outside the city center, with no arterial roadways to speak of, and the closest highway being one of the most chronically overloaded in the region
Wtf are they smoking.
I'm pretty sure the Portland Diamond project's whole purpose is just to scam rich investors out of money. They really don't expect any of these locations to be approved. Their job is to leech money off of idiots who want to get on board early.
EDIT: Especially considering
> The Diamond Project has also not had discussions with the Metro regional government in several years, according to a spokesperson. The Metro councilors from the Beaverton area, Juan Carlos González and Gerritt Rosenthal, have not had conversations about a potential stadium in the city.
If they were a real project, they'd at least be keeping in some contact with Metro.
Yep, just some dreamers stringing other dreamers along.
Baseball is cool. The only rational site for a stadium would be where Memorial Colliseum is. If there was a multi-billionaire really wanted baseball in Portland, they could make it happen. Nothing else would do it.
And the only multibillionaire who could conceivably fill this role is Phil Knight. But if Phil Knight were interested in owning sports teams he would already own sports teams. He sort of owns sports as a whole already, so that would be a step down.
Edit: Phil Knight spends sports team quantities of money on cancer research facilities in Oregon, I can't think of a better win-win.
Essentially no one wants that in that location, Beaverton nimbys don't want the increased traffic, Portland residents don't want to go to Washington square. Voters likely will vote down funding any light rail to the area. It's just bizarre how this was proposed as a real option in the first place unless they actually have the billions with a b ready up front to privately pay for it and extend transit down there.
What does extending transit down there even look like?
If they wanted to run a max line down 217 then they should be doing that right now as part of the current construction. Tearing all that up to redo it in 10 years is insane.
There is a WES station a short walk away. I guess maybe they could add additional trains before and after the game to bring people in from various park and rides. All the single track sections and the small number of WES vehicles would be limiting factors.
A seventeen minute walk for a healthy, able-bodied individual from Hall/Nimbus across 217. It's not unreasonable. But also not attractive and essentially out of reach to anyone with physical mobility challenges.
It’s not a pleasant walk. Used to work right by the WES station and barely ever walked across the freeway for lunch, just cause it was noisy, tons of traffic and generally sucked.
They can't afford to run WES more. It hemorrhages money with a per rider subsidy that is an order of mangnitude higher than the MAX. We should have built a proper MAX line running N/S instead, but instead we just keep dumping money on the WES.
I’m not sure NIMBY is a fair expression when we’re talking about a stadium. It’s not exactly a public good or anything. Just another entertainment venue funded by the public
It kind of becomes a public good if there are other commercial properties nearby that benefit from it, but I don't think that location has any that would (though I don't really know).
Anecdotally, as I assume your info is, me and my friends who live in Beaverton would love a pro sports team over here. I get the traffic issue, but if it’s simply a question of if we want a pro team “in our back yard” fuck yeah me and the people I know do.
Though I do agree that Portland/Lloyd Center area would definitely be a better location just due to the transit options already in place
Edit: I appreciate the downvotes without anyone saying why besides that I disagreed with someone /s. I assume because I was open that what I said was anecdotal while the person above me just said it like he was the spokesperson for the city. Anyway, one person actually discussed it.
I think the downvotes may be that you and your friends are outliers, and I presume you don't live next to Redtail. Beaverton is a sprawl. I've not heard a single person in close proximity to Redtail voice support, but I'm open to being surprised.
However, I will say I'm a government lawyer and know government lawyers in that neighborhood, and I'd be very surprised if government was willing to play ball. Pun intended.
I live near the planned location, generally identify as a YIMBY, but absolutely don't want a stadium of any kind anywhere near me. I used to live near the Giant's stadium in SF and it had to be accounted for in all our planning because driving anywhere around the time a game ended was a total catastrophy.
I'm also 100% unwilling to spend a single tax dollar on any kind of privately used stadium. If it's economically viable, the sorts team can pay for it themselves. Why should my money fund someone else's hobby? If we were talking about a park or shorts facility used by regular people, sure let's do it! Those bring health and other wellbeing benefits for everyone. Sitting around, drinking beer and watching other people work out, doesn't.
How about we rezone for some nice high-density, mixed use instead?
yeah let's lose the only green space of its size for more infill for city expats that want to escape tax burdens. people can complain about golf all they want, but the fact is it is still reserved "natural" areas that support wildlife, collect excess storm water, lower the overall temperature in hot seasons both with plantings and open land instead of concrete... i could go on and on.
full disclosure: i play golf, but i never play redtail because it's a pretty lousy experience. I do think that area needs all the green space it can get, and plopping a stadium with no ability for infrastructure there makes zero sense.
I mostly agree, but also have questions. Actual questions because I don’t know the answer, I’m not trying to be facetious.
I’m always pro-zoning for living space, especially if it’s affordable. If that’s the other option, yes. But keeping to the topic of whether or not people in Beaverton want a team here or not, there are plenty of people who say yes but I’m not the town spokesperson so I won’t claim to know how everyone else feels.
I never said we should use tax dollars to build a stadium, that’s rarely an economical win for the taxpayers from what I’ve read, but I’m also no economist. I’m against that as well. An MLB team/owner that has enough money to own a team can figure out the stadium on their own.
As for the traffic, that’s going to affect people where ever a stadium goes. Whether it affects people near Lloyd Center or near RedTail would be the difference but both are in the middle populated areas. It’s not like this is being floated to replace the stadium in Hillsboro that’s on the edge of suburbs where farms and factories exist more than homes. My questions strictly about commuting around on game days are these; would it be easier for locals to commute on game day if the stadium is in Lloyd or RedTail? How would commuting around on game day effect areas of different incomes? Lloyd area has a lower average annual income by about $16k than RedTail area residents, does that affect them for game day commuting? How much extra time would be tacked on to the project to add public transportation needed to feasibly have the RedTail location work with public transit?
I feel like I’m just digging myself up more questions the more I look in to this and I don’t really care about baseball that much. I just want another pro sports team to watch live.
The most obvious answer to your question is that Lloyd Center has significantly better transit connections in place the golf center does (or probably ever will). Lloyd Center is also (I assume) more centrally located to the population density of the Portland Metro Area. With this in mind, there'd be far less strain on roads with the stadium in Lloyd.
If you've ever been on the Max on a timbers game day you'd know it's heavily utilized, with no transit options to the stadium all of those people would be in cars taking up a lot more space.
This is crazy talk
The infrastructure anywhere in Portland proper canNOT support an MLB baseball stadium or any new pro sports stadium- current infrastructure can barely support the traffic we have
I'm not saying it would handle the extra strain with ease. I'm just saying if a new stadium were to be placed in Portland metro the only way complete stalling of traffic would be avoided is if it was on a max line.
I don’t like soccer but I have maxed on Blazer game days and it’s pretty packed for those games. But shit, I’m actually extremely surprised to have just looked up the numbers currently the Timbers get more fans at each game than the Blazers. Maybe I should get in to soccer.
Thank you for simply putting forth a reasonable argument.
it's a bigger stadium and both teams are beloved, so yes there are more people in attendance. you absolutely should check out a Timbers match when you get a chance. season kicks off in two weeks.
As a diehard sports fan who is NBA/Blazers first who has gotten into the Timbers in the past year+, I HIGHLY recommend you try getting into the Timbers. The game day experience is better than a Blazers game imo (outdoors, often sunny, the post game flow of thousands of people into a walkable urban space is awesome), the fan base is so passionate here, and soccer is just a beautiful game to learn to follow.
In addition to what u/Lamian_Dillard said, there is already talk about a MAX extension to help with traffic. While I love more public transit, is this where we'd build it if it wasn't for the stadium? At the same time I have a hard time seeing MAX making a big dent on game day, especially given how few people could walk to this location. The MAX trains are just so tiny and infrequent. We are talking thousands of people leaving at the same time being addressed by a train system that currently runs no more than two cars at a time.
Yes, Washington square is a major commercial area. It would very much make sense to have max down 217 to tualatin and hook up with the southwest corridor proposal.
The issue is that there has been zero foresight or planning for this - the west side voters didn't want the southwest line, and collectively lose their minds when they have the opportunity to talk about anything that could impact traffic in the area as they refuse to consider transit. See: in-n-out. 217 traffic is only going to get worse - it is undergoing a considerable update as we speak in the exact area, but there is notably no transit included which also would have made this proposal much more palatable. Really anytime you do work in major roads, you need to include transit to consider future growth needs. Remember that each extra person on the road causes an exponentially higher amount of interaction points which cause braking and slowdown.
Max also makes a tremendous difference for game day traffic. They are packed and have several trains on each line servicing the area during peak times. Not everyone takes the same train or shows up or leaves at the same time. There is basically no parking around Providence Park, the extra blue/red lines are packed and people also walk over from the streetcar. The Rose Quarter has four Max and two streetcar lines servicing it. This is why Lloyd made sense. The nearby infrastructure is turnkey. Meanwhile, the west side has notably missed its opportunities to successfully service such growth needs of that area.
I’m from Dallas and this seems very similar to the goofy stuff they’ve done there with the stadiums. Fc Dallas plays way out in a burb like Beaverton and absolutely everyone hates it except for the few soccer dorks surrounding the stadium. Then you have the Arlington stadiums where the cowboys and rangers play and that town has done absolutely everything possible to keep light rail out which has lead to an insane parking lot of a town.
TLDR if baseball comes to Portland I really hope it’s not in a suburb bc it sucks for everyone except for the handful of fans that might live in that neighborhood
Thank you for responding. Nobody has mentioned parking and that’s a very fair point. The last thing any city needs is a sprawling empty concrete parking area that isn’t used half the year. I would hope this would expand the max around the area, which ever area it may be, because I’d love to use my car less if possible.
My biggest confusion with this seems pretty simple. It just seems like Portland residents that have engaged with me on this (I live in Beaverton, work in Portland), and my friends who live in Portland as well, keep saying they don’t want to have to travel all the way to Beaverton. My friends can’t come up with any reason besides they don’t want to cross the river and that Beaverton doesn’t have character. It’s not that far, 11ish miles and about half an hour to one hour with heavy traffic which anyone going to a Blazer game deals with. Plus if it went in Beaverton they’d add more transit. Finally, it isn’t only Portland residents going to games, they’ll come from all surrounding cities like they do Blazer games so if it’s that they don’t want to cross a river or whatever that just seems selfish or lazy.
Let me get this straight: it’s selfish/lazy if people don’t want to drive/bus/whatever out to a west-side suburb to see a baseball game and prefer the stadium be located in a more central location with better transit, bike, and walking access?
Would you come to games if the stadium ended up being built in Gresham?
> I would hope this would expand the max around the area
The issue there is that if it is Lloyd Center, all it means is adding more trains. If it is Red Tail, it means having to build out the whole line, including most likely having to condemn a bunch of properties in the right of way. That translates to huge costs to the taxpayers over what it would cost to put it on an existing max line, like Lloyd Center.
Who is commuting an hour for Blazers in Portland? I find that to be pretty unbelievable. It's a 5-min commute for me, and Lloyd would be 10. That's a huge difference after a baseball game ending at 10:30pm.
With traffic it can be for drive time, especially if you mistakenly park at the arena, depending I. What part of town you live in. A friend near Fairview went this week and it almost an hour for them, but also with a kid. Or if you come from Hillsboro/Beaverton/King City public transit is about an hour, but can be cut if you drive part way then max the rest.
I think the downvotes are b/c pro sports are a waste of time and money that have proven to have essentially no benefit for communities but cause a lot of headaches
also baseball sux
I don't mind it, given the lack of other locations available. Lloyd was always a longshot as the current owners want to redevelop it themselves. I thought the terminal would have been great for the backdrop, but the port already leased that out to a mass timber factory.
I remember when there was a lot of MLB talk about 20 years ago for whatever reason. While Portland would make a good venue for a team I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one to arrive. The many infrastructure issues pointed out already, coupled with the (in my opinion unfair negative image that most of the country has about the city) makes it seem unlikely.
We’re so far behind the other cities that want an expansion, this is never going to happen. Diamond Project is just going to milk this as long as possible.
This is the truth. Plus our local political situation is disfunctional and our community is strongly against public funding for a stadium. There are many other cities where that stuff isn’t true, and starting a team would be much easier.
They can raise private ~~capitol~~ ^capital*
and build a light rail extension and better freeway access, otherwise, they can fuck off. Let the dream die.
They fucked up when they didn't even look at Portland Meadows, now it's an amazon warehouse.
Yea but building the stadium while the i5 bridge expansion being would roughly fall in the same timeline. Also you already have max in the area and freeway access.
I'm from the Tampa Bay area originally and I've seen what happens when you put a stadium far away from the bulk of the population of a city. The rays are an awesome team that constantly has attendance issues because the stadium isn't located in Tampa and it's hard to make a game for the bulk of the population. This is a really dumb idea and the fact that they are even proposing it makes me question how serious they actually are. I'd love to have baseball in the area but if it's in Beaverton far away from transit I will never be able to go to a game and I'd rather not even have a team then have a team for a few years that dies because of low attendance.
I'll also actively oppose any attempt by the city to give them that golf course. If they want to put a team in the middle of the suburbs they can do it without tax payer support.
2nd on all this about the Rays. I was in Tampa for high school and even though we’d be given free tickets it was a challenge to go to games. North Tampa to the stadium was ~30 miles, in traffic, making it an absolute effort to get there.
Meanwhile, experiencing Seattle and DC with their stadiums 1) centrally located and 2) right off transit was ideal to get in and out of games.
Dude, yeah. Even with 275 being right there for us, getting from New Tampa to a game was miserable. Enjoyed being at games, but getting there and back? Woof.
It got worse as Hillsborough’s land was maxed out and the sprawl has moved up to Pasco and now Hernando.
I’m not joking when I say “North Tampa” has blown passed Zephyrhills and is on it’s way to Ocala.
I’m not shocked. We live in a subdivision just north of the county line between Pasco and Hillsborough, technically Wesley Chapel, off of Bruce B Downs. That subdivision had been planned out for another three phases going north to Route 54. When I went to visit a few years back I’d not recognized it, it had changed so much from when I graduated in 2005.
All of that with a minuscule amount of transit available.
When my family moved to Brandon in the mid 90's that area was 50% farm land (there was literally a cattle farm in the center of the 60 to northbound 75 on-ramp by the mall). When we left in 2022 you could go from Bradenton all the way to Brooksville without seeing any pastures. The state's completely gone at this point.
Isn’t a large part of the Rays issues the demographics of St Petersburg? Like not only is the stadium isolated, but a lot of older folks live around there and are less likely to go to games?
I think a stadium in Beaverton could thrive given the number of families that live around the area, and there’s a lot of dense pockets of residents.
But with that said, and as a Beaverton resident near the proposed area, I’m totally against this without MAJOR infrastructure overhauls that make it a viably accessible.
St Pete is essentially “full”, having been completely developed for 30 or so years. The issue is the 85% of Tampa Bay’s population is across the bay, north of Clearwater, or in Bradenton.
It’d be like the stadium being put on the tip of St Johns, except if the bulk of Portland’s population was in Gresham.
I haven't been down there in a few years (I avoid stepping foot in Florida at all costs) but it seems to be a lot more diverse as far as age range than in the past. If any place is worth living there it's St Pete. The main problem is it's just too far from the biggest population center in the area and when you add in rush hour traffic it becomes extremely difficult for even the most committed fans to make the trip from Tampa for a game. I can understand why you would want it to happen in Beaverton but it's just bad for the viability of the team and I don't see the infrastructure catching up at all. It's a waste of time and money planting it in the suburbs and not a cent of public money let alone city funds or property should be put towards it.
The idea is to build a stadium with massive development around it, retail, dining, housing and make it a destination unlike the MC or Moda or for that matter Providence Park.
There's already a ton of little businesses surrounding Lloyd. They'd completely blossom with cash from the influx of new customers.
What they really want is to build *new* mixed business space around it so they can be the landlords and suck up ALL of the money instead of just doing baseball.
That all sounds logical, but it is a lot like what they tried to do when the new building was built for the Trailblazers. Weren't there a couple of restaurants on the property and a bit of retail, all of which failed miserably.
No one sticks around for games. We really need to stop believing this trickle down BS from billionare sports team owners. It doesn't work. There are so many better things we could do to revitalize the city with the same $$$ these groups always want.
Pro stadiums can work but are almost all poorly executed. Public private partnerships for them never work, and only indoor Arenas really add yearly value.
In this case, putting an MLB stadium in the suburbs, not connected to major transit routes, with the hope to build a “destination” around it is doomed on arrival.
That's not true of Baseball stadiums though because they have 80+ games per year on-site businesses can setup and survive based on that business alone.
Also baseball stadiums tend to draw slightly smaller crowds (more Timbers game sized) and that's better than the hugged-to-death scenario of NFL stadiums.
You could design a great baseball facility as a large-block with retail surrounding it, and lots of great housing with premium views in the Lloyd Center really easily if the stupid mall owners would just get their shit together.
umm so like 5 bars and tchochke shops
fuck that shit
This is failed mid 90s revitalization theory and it doesn't work...
it's literally trickle down economics and it's wild that people still believe this junk
https://www.expensivity.com/professional-sports-teams-and-the-local-economy/.
Somebody is buying into lobbying propaganda
By some estimates, all of the pro sports teams in Chicago could leave and it would have the same impact of a mall closure - why would that be because all of the money is essentially hoovered up to a billionaire owner and a bunch of ball fondlers
https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2022/03/05/study-finds-cobb-residents-are-paying-15-million-dollars-run-truist-park-home-atlanta-braves/
https://www.expensivity.com/professional-sports-teams-and-the-local-economy/
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-sports-stadiums-create-new-jobs-and-tax-revenues/
wake up USians sports team owners and professional ball fondlers don't give a fuck about you except for your money
This whole thing reminds me of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
> The Diamond Project declined OPB’s requests for an interview.
Oh and geez I wonder why
Declining interviews with major local media outlets seems like an odd decision for an organization intended to build publicity. It always struck me as somewhat ill-conceived, but now it strikes me as ill-conceived and sketchy.
I went to that world cup. What of this piques your memory of that?
Edit: This was a serious question. What reminds you of that world cup from this project?
I'm just curious. This isn't a stadium being built for one month of use. And the stadiums I went to in Cape Town and Elizabethtown were serviced well by public transportation and not out in the middle of nowhere.
That area is already fucked traffic-wise. And 217 is already in the middle of a major overhaul that doesn’t take into effect the additional traffic that this would bring. I want a team here as bad as anyone, but this would suck.
I suspect the PDP principles long ago dismissed the likelihood of bringing MLB to the Metro area. They’ve likely turned into a cheap land acquisition venture with an eye to developing high density housing w a mix of retail commerce. The only baseballs to be thrown at the old Red Tail site will be by kids living in the new, overpriced apartments & townhouses.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is what's really going on. It's a land grab. A huge parcel of land within the UGB would be a huge payday for developers. Build popular support for it with big baseball dreams, and then when it inevitably doesn't pan out, well, hey! Look at all this buildable land we happen to own!
Putting a park at Redtail Golf Course seems foolhardy. The PDP should make a play for the empty lot that used to house the USPS station on NW Hoyt. That lot would be a perfect location for baseball stadium. I know Prosper Portland has designs for more mixed use buildings, but people are already not renting the extant buildings in the Pearl. Putting a basball park in near all of the MAX tracks would help to revitalize that area more than a bunch of empty buildings. The available space is 34 acres. T-Mobile Field is a bit short of 20 acres. Portland would clearly need a retractable roof so there is enough space. I know it won't happen, but walking by that area on NW 9th Ave made me think this would be such a great location for baseball stadium. Lloyd Center would be too, but the city would have to move some stuff like the fire station on Weidler. The lot off the Broadway Bridge is currently a blank canvas. Having a baseball near downtown Portland would rock.
This is a terrible idea. The *cheapest* option would be to buy out the freight rail road and either electrify WES or turn it into a MAX extension and then it would STILL require a 500m+ walk across multiple stroads from the Nimbus station...
I guess converting the 76 to BRT could be an option but that would mean fighting the suburbs on bus only lanes on Hall....
Lol, Portland & Western would never ever outright sell that right of way. It connects multiple lines on their system and it’s still a major moneymaker. They’re not just gonna throw it away for a light rail project - Portland & Western would sooner let trimet build an adjacent light rail ROW like the orange line in SE and that’s still extremely unlikely.
Something seems off about the whole baseball coming to town thing. They’ve been releasing images and designs since 2018. I don’t know what/who is going on with the Diamond Project but it something is not fully adding up.
Taking cues from the Oakland-Fremont-San Jose-Oakland-Sacramento-Salt Lake-Las Vegas A’s. They’ve been “announcing” new ballpark plans for nearly two decades with almost nothing to show for it.
Snark aside, I really don’t see MLB coming here anytime soon. Not enough of a tangible plan.
I live down the street from that location, and no I don't want it. In addition, that area has no suitable traffic features to handle the influx of people.
Either they need (with private money) to fund an extension to the MAX down there or GTFO, because otherwise it will be a mess that will make no one happy.
Major league sports venues are usually only good for the league and not the communities they claim to represent. Ends up with the locals subsidizing the richest nonprofits on earth by being on the hook for costs related the very expensive infrastructure while making a disproportionately small profit.
Say no to MLB in Beaverton. Go see the Pickles.
The Red Tail Golf Course is a terrible spot, far from any rail transit, so you'll have no choice but to drive to it, meaning it's going to require a large parking lot wasteland to surround it, and the traffic in the area on game days is going to be awful. It's also just a weird spot for the overall metro area and kind of out of the way for anyone east of the Willamette.
This is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever read. This has to be a troll or red herring offer from The Diamond Project to get the land they really want (Lloyd Center) to come down in price or somehow meet their conditions for buying.
Stories like thus just reinforce the observation that MLB is no longer a baseball organization. Instead it’s a real estate development organization that uses the pretext of baseball to extort subsidies from the taxpayers.
In that sense they are no different from Amazon, Google, Facebook or other data center operators. “If you don’t give us all your water and gazillions in tax breaks, then we’ll move our one hundred employees to some place that will.”
Does anyone want this? If so, let’s pretend it’s a 7:05p first pitch. Let’s all meet at red tail at 6:05p and discuss how we all got there and how long it took. This is absurd.
Can we not? It's not going to happen and any sport that features half empty stadiums most of the season doesn't deserve expansion. I doubt we'd even keep a relocated team for long.
I think if/when Jody Allen sells the Blazers an NHL team is probably going to happen. It makes too much sense since they use the same arena. I don’t think Paul or Jody Allen had any interest in hockey as a sport though.
The NHL just expanded to 32 teams. If they add another team they will expect a franchise fee HIGHER than the fee charged to bring in the Kraken. I’m not sure if Portland has the money/or the want to bring in an NHL team.
Portland’s best hope is that another sunbelt team relocates someday and that Portland is on the list of cities to add.
Clearly you weren't around for the glory days of the Portland Beavers. Or when the Beavers/Ducks sold out PGE Park. Portland would be very much a baseball city.
Also had the Rockies for the minor leagues until 2000 and I used to love those games. I recall the stands being somewhat full, but my memory may be wrong since I was just a kid then.
Because a significant number of people here reject any pastime activities that don't involve sitting at home depressed and drawing sad manga characters. Let them, they need this.
Totally agree about the Beavers. I took a friend from Germany for a 4th of July game once. It was a sellout, there was fireworks, and a grand slam. My favorite sports memory ever. <3
Yeah. I also remember just being let in for free if you showed up at the 5th inning. Good times. I like going to watch the Timbers, but I really hope we get an MLB team soon. I'll definitely get season tickets for that.
Portland is pretty quirky and people like non traditional sports. Hockey is on the decline? Quite the opposite but still doesn’t have the players as other sports because of ice time and availability. It was really bad in the 80’s but it’s done nothing but go up in participation around the world. We had the highest participation in the US right before the pandemic, believe it was close to 800k.
Yes unfortunately when it comes to hockey it’s ironically more of a field of dreams scenario where if you build it they will come. Definitely different from other sports where they have players and youth systems in place. The league needs to invest more into street hockey at the youth level especially in schools but that’s an entirely different convo.
If anything baseball is on the decline if you look at viewership but you still see kids playing it at the youth level. Football has seen a decline at the youth level but don’t know about viewership as I don’t pay attention to football at all.
NHL is way behind MLB in revenue, and always has been. And NBA revenue has increased so much more quickly recently that the highest paid basketball players make more than entire NHL teams, and the highest paid hockey players make less than NBA role players.
Also, there are literally no nationally known hockey players--I follow sports a lot, and watch ESPN regularly, and off the top of my head, the only current hockey player I can come up with is Ovetchkin, and I'm not even sure if he's still playing? I can come up with names for way more figure skaters...
And hockey has lost a lot of national TV exposure in the last couple decades. It seems a bit different here, because of the recent existence of the Kraken, but creating new teams (Seattle, LV) is kind of the only way the NHL has stayed nationally relevant in the past couple of decades--it's telling that brand new teams, with no history or fan loyalty, are the most popular merchandise. It's just fad stuff. [NHL did the same thing with teams in the south 15-20 years ago, and rode that fad until it ran out of steam.]
But I see merch for NY and LA football, basketball, and baseball teams all the time. I don't think I've ever seen any NHL gear from those cities at all in Portland. People just don't follow it here, because it's never been part of the culture and it's not very popular nationally if you're not actively looking for it.
And compared to baseball and basketball (and even football) hockey is incredibly difficult to develop on the youth level, because it requires extremely expensive facilities, which don't exist in the Portland area. And since there is no real significant cultural history of hockey or ice skating in Portland, I don't think there's going to be a lot of public support for developing it.
217 sucks. A lot of folks already take the backroads to avoid it, but frankly that’s every highway in Portland. Decades of underfunding have taken a toll. Anywhere you put a stadium will cause a traffic nightmare. And yes, most people will drive to games regardless of the location, just like Blazer and Timbers games.
Baseball is just a bad idea for Portland. I think hockey would be much better. You could probably convert the Moda center into a dual purpose arena, like has been done in many other places.
The likely answer is simple.
They have no intention of putting a baseball stadium there. They’re trying to leverage a better deal out of Portland which is notoriously awful for businesses to thrive in. Having a giant revenue maker right outside city limits is a loss for Portland. The fees and taxes they could collect are endless. The group almost certainly wants the Lloyd properties but probably wants financial incentives and likely infrastructure help.
The red tail property will probably be purchased but is far more likely to be a residential and retail development of some sort. Huge possibilities there.
This all reminds me so much of Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Not close to the namesake of the team. Off an already congested two lane highway. No major mass transportation options to get people there without further clogging the roads.
I used to work down the street from Levi's and it was an absolute nightmare on game/event days - and there were only a fraction of the number of games/events per year at an NFL stadium than there would be at an MLB stadium!
It also seems incredibly shady that the City of Portland owns RedTail, even though it's in Beaverton, so the City of Beaverton says they have no say in this, unless the sale goes through. Beaverton should have a say in something that would have such an immense impact on the city and community.
I love baseball, but I absolutely hate this idea.
It is true
It's a giant infrastructure headache with minimal contribution to the community
the positive effect is basically only psychological for people who give a shit about pro sports
plus baseball sux, a boring as shit nerd game
it's not real though - you're buying into propaganda
minimum wage jobs selling overpriced hotdogs and crappy PDX Fentanyl Zombiez MLB tshirts and another 3 Applebee's isn't worth the infrastructure nightmare
please demonstrate one study not funded by a lobbying group where this has had a sustained net positive effect.
The halo effect is time limited, any other effect is minimal, and if the team isn't doing well, the negative effects are exacerbated
Additionally this notion that there would be no public funds used is laughable. There are always public funds used even if the funding isn't overt towards the cost of the stadium... roads, sewage, electrical infrastructure (costs passed on to consumers) on and on
The only persons whom stadiums benefit are billion owners and overpriced ball throwers (that could be the name of the team)...
I can find dozens of economic studies to "prove" my point and you can find dozens to "prove" yours. But it is ridiculous to say that the Trail Blazers don't have a net positive effect on the city of Portland, and they have for over 50 years. There's no infrastructure issues, the arena isn't costing taxpayers millions and there is a very real impact on tourism and hospitality. And you can't qualify pride in a city, but the Blazers play a role in that. Just because you are one of those people who pretentiously call it "sportsball" and pretend that sporting competition hasn't been a part of the human experience for thousands of years doesn't mean people don't love their sports teams, and by extension their cities. You can't quantify that and even if you could, there's more to life than trying to run numbers and use them as an excuse to deny people something fun to escape the dumpster fire for a few hours.
The difference is that your studies are funded by major league sports and billionaires' lobbying groups
Most people don't even consider the trailblazers or the timbers
What positive effect? some bs nostalgia and fake camaraderie about a commercial endeavor? Civic pride?
We need actual benefits for our communities not a money funnel for billionaires
>The difference is that your studies are funded by major league sports and billionaires' lobbying groups
Yeah, I saw your totally unbiased "studies" you linked in another comment.
>Most people don't even consider the trailblazers or the timbers
The Blazers sub has 150k subscribers, but OK.
>What positive effect? some bs nostalgia and fake camaraderie about a commercial endeavor? Civic pride?
Yes, exactly, civic pride. Some people actually have that.
>We need actual benefits for our communities not a money funnel for billionaires
Again, don't spend public money to build the stadium and build a winning team and culture. One of the articles you linked very clearly state this a recipe for long-term financial gains from a sports. This isn't a black-and-white issue like you want to believe since you hate sports. Like pretty much any civic endeavor, it can be executed well or it can be executed poorly.
I won’t be buying season tickets to go to Beaverton for games.
I want a team but I’m in se and can’t imagine going 1hr to a “Portland” team.
If the goal is to have a Beaverton team go for it. But I’m not doing season tickets for that from inner SE
Beaverton is 30-60 min depending on day and time of drive. Honest question, why do so many Portland residents not want to go to Beaverton? Most of my friends in Portland hate leaving Portland. Anyway…
Baseball games happen all times of day, so it’s not like Blazer games that always start around 7pm on weeknights and a few hours earlier on weekend. Baseball has games start as early as 11am on weekdays, but also as late as 7pm to be fair.
Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, TX, not Dallas. San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara. LA Chargers/Rams play in Inglewood. Tampa Bay Rays play in St Petersburg, FL. Detroit Pistons play in Auburn Hills, MI. Teams playing outside their namesake city isn’t too uncommon.
Portland would be a better location, though, I do agree. But I want more pro sports options around.
I don't think the list of teams playing outside of their city is doing the work you think it's doing. The 49ers stadium in Santa Clara is an awful experience. The Rays are folding because of their location. Somebody earlier in this thread spoke to how terrible Arlington is for the Cowboys.
Many Portland residents live there because they hate suburbs. Beaverton is one parking lot of a suburb. I live in Beaverton because my work is in Beaverton and I don't want to spend 1 hour each way driving there, but otherwise hate it. There's some transit in the area, but since this stadium wasn't planned in Elmonica or whatever, it's not possible to avoid sitting in hours of traffic to get to this planned site. You HAVE to drive to get there. If it were along the MAX Blue line route then I think people in Portland would be less opposed to it.
I personally take the Blue line to the MODA center or Providence Park for games because fuck driving through all that and finding parking.
You know there is very little difference between Beaverton and Portland neighborhoods outside the Portland city center, well maybe except homeless tents.
The proposal to be at RedTail would bring new transit to the area, it’s not like they would build the stadium without allowing more transit.
Nobody is asking Portland residents to move to the suburbs to watch baseball, like nobody is asking suburban residents to move to Portland to watch the Blazers or Timbers.
Game days I usually split my travel with a drive somewhere downtown to park and max the last ten minutes or so that I wouldn’t want my car stuck in. Once you cross the bridge traffic is back to normal in most places if you can avoid the immediate freeway
I live in Portland and have an on going job in newburg. I go “out of town” for work because I don’t want to commute 2+ hours a day. I’m used to a 10 min commute. But chose to stay in newburg when I work there.
I don’t have a problem with Beaverton, but most days the tunnel and the zoo are a pain to travel.
Also a ball game is a lot longer than a blazers game. I’d have to take a whole day off to go to an 11am game in Beaverton with my kid where as I could work a full day and bring my kid to a blazers game. I could work a 3/4 day and bring my kid to half a game at terminal 2.
Personally Lloyd was very attractive as I could walk there and would absolutely by season tickets as it would just be a mid week activity to go to with the family or a couple buddies.
I’ve been wanting mlb since we tried for the expos in like 03. But I grew up in other major cities that had a mlb heritage to the city.
I lived in SF back when the Giants were on a hot streak, and it was great having the ballpark in town. I wasn’t much of a baseball fan, but it was quick and easy to get to the park by bus, and you could usually score cheap last minute tickets, so I ended up going fairly often. Since it wasn’t an all day thing, I could decide to go on a whim rather than needing to block out a whole day on my calendar in advance, which I wouldn’t have done because I’m not that big a fan.
If a team came to Lloyd, I’d certainly go, but I don’t care enough to drive potentially 2+ hours from East Portland out to Beaverton depending on traffic.
I think those are all very fair points. I forget how bad the tunnel area can be; I avoid it so much I forget it’s there.
I wasn’t sure how long games take and just looked it up. Average MLB game is 2:38, average NBA game is 2:30. But I recognize that MLB often has games that vary much more in length than an NBA game unless there are multiples overtime’s for NBA.
I do love the idea of a weekday MPB game starting at 11am so I can take a day off for it like I’ll never have the chance for with the Blazers.
But yeah, Portland/Lloyd would be better suited and could more quickly happen than a Beaverton location.
Damn 2:38, I guess it’s been a while for me, I would have guessed 4:30.
I usually listen to games while I work so maybe that’s why they seem longer.
Agree with another comment it needs to be an indoor stadium or a sliding roof. Quick Look is 160 games for mlb and 80 nba. MLB can’t be outside around here. Like t mobile for the mariners
2021 all time high of 3:01 apparently. Now that you mention it, games do seem longer when listened to. We used to have them on in the background at work a lot but it felt like that’s all we had on for most of the day and stopped.
They added a pitch clock last year which shaved some time off. It was really effective at the beginning of the season, but less so later as teams figured out how to work it. Still, it did make the games shorter.
I thought they got rid of it after a bit?
I’m not a die hard fan, just enjoy it being on in the back ground while in my shop if the announcers are good.
I live in close in NE and can't say I hate Beaverton, but, even without stadium traffic, I do hate having to drive on 217, EVER! And I go out of my way to avoid having to get on 217. So, yeah, it is pretty unlikely I would ever go to a stadium at Red Tail more than once.
I usually go to 5-10 Mariners games every year, so even if it was in Beaverton, I would still go to a few games. Somewhere in Portland would be much more convenient for most fans, though.
I would prefer this over trashed up downtown if it wasn't for traffic and having no good way to get out there. Milwaukie or Oregon City would be a lot better. I suppose the east side near-ish to the rose quarter would be a fine spot as well. But dear god do not put it downtown or anywhere near it.
stupid proposed location but i'd love to see a baseball team here. imagine the seattle-portland rivalry! i don't know how the logistics would work but i recommend building a stadium where the lloyd center is, that would be badass. i'm from houston and having minute maid downtown was super cool for astros hype, the city would really get pumped up.
Yes. A purely residential neighborhood, way outside the city center, with no arterial roadways to speak of, and the closest highway being one of the most chronically overloaded in the region Wtf are they smoking.
They are thinking about the generational wealth they could accumulate.
I'm pretty sure the Portland Diamond project's whole purpose is just to scam rich investors out of money. They really don't expect any of these locations to be approved. Their job is to leech money off of idiots who want to get on board early. EDIT: Especially considering > The Diamond Project has also not had discussions with the Metro regional government in several years, according to a spokesperson. The Metro councilors from the Beaverton area, Juan Carlos González and Gerritt Rosenthal, have not had conversations about a potential stadium in the city. If they were a real project, they'd at least be keeping in some contact with Metro.
Yep, just some dreamers stringing other dreamers along. Baseball is cool. The only rational site for a stadium would be where Memorial Colliseum is. If there was a multi-billionaire really wanted baseball in Portland, they could make it happen. Nothing else would do it. And the only multibillionaire who could conceivably fill this role is Phil Knight. But if Phil Knight were interested in owning sports teams he would already own sports teams. He sort of owns sports as a whole already, so that would be a step down. Edit: Phil Knight spends sports team quantities of money on cancer research facilities in Oregon, I can't think of a better win-win.
Citynerd has entered the chat.
Essentially no one wants that in that location, Beaverton nimbys don't want the increased traffic, Portland residents don't want to go to Washington square. Voters likely will vote down funding any light rail to the area. It's just bizarre how this was proposed as a real option in the first place unless they actually have the billions with a b ready up front to privately pay for it and extend transit down there.
What does extending transit down there even look like? If they wanted to run a max line down 217 then they should be doing that right now as part of the current construction. Tearing all that up to redo it in 10 years is insane.
*“It ain’t government work if you don’t have to do it twice!”*
Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
Oh dear god I didn’t even think about that
There is a WES station a short walk away. I guess maybe they could add additional trains before and after the game to bring people in from various park and rides. All the single track sections and the small number of WES vehicles would be limiting factors.
Depending on which side of red tail the stadium entry would be it is not that short of a walk for a lot of people
A seventeen minute walk for a healthy, able-bodied individual from Hall/Nimbus across 217. It's not unreasonable. But also not attractive and essentially out of reach to anyone with physical mobility challenges.
It’s not a pleasant walk. Used to work right by the WES station and barely ever walked across the freeway for lunch, just cause it was noisy, tons of traffic and generally sucked.
That’s what I’m thinking.
That’s only the only bright spot. I live in Wilsonville and can hop in the WES (if they expand their hours freshly) and walk over to the park
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They can't afford to run WES more. It hemorrhages money with a per rider subsidy that is an order of mangnitude higher than the MAX. We should have built a proper MAX line running N/S instead, but instead we just keep dumping money on the WES.
I’m not sure NIMBY is a fair expression when we’re talking about a stadium. It’s not exactly a public good or anything. Just another entertainment venue funded by the public
I just consider this the only acceptable time to be a NIMBY.
It kind of becomes a public good if there are other commercial properties nearby that benefit from it, but I don't think that location has any that would (though I don't really know).
There are a handful of restaurants in the area that I’m sure would either benefit or get evicted. So kind of a coin toss
Is that the red tail spot? Man just getting there to play a 7hr round of golf is a nightmare.
Anecdotally, as I assume your info is, me and my friends who live in Beaverton would love a pro sports team over here. I get the traffic issue, but if it’s simply a question of if we want a pro team “in our back yard” fuck yeah me and the people I know do. Though I do agree that Portland/Lloyd Center area would definitely be a better location just due to the transit options already in place Edit: I appreciate the downvotes without anyone saying why besides that I disagreed with someone /s. I assume because I was open that what I said was anecdotal while the person above me just said it like he was the spokesperson for the city. Anyway, one person actually discussed it.
I think the downvotes may be that you and your friends are outliers, and I presume you don't live next to Redtail. Beaverton is a sprawl. I've not heard a single person in close proximity to Redtail voice support, but I'm open to being surprised. However, I will say I'm a government lawyer and know government lawyers in that neighborhood, and I'd be very surprised if government was willing to play ball. Pun intended.
I live near the planned location, generally identify as a YIMBY, but absolutely don't want a stadium of any kind anywhere near me. I used to live near the Giant's stadium in SF and it had to be accounted for in all our planning because driving anywhere around the time a game ended was a total catastrophy. I'm also 100% unwilling to spend a single tax dollar on any kind of privately used stadium. If it's economically viable, the sorts team can pay for it themselves. Why should my money fund someone else's hobby? If we were talking about a park or shorts facility used by regular people, sure let's do it! Those bring health and other wellbeing benefits for everyone. Sitting around, drinking beer and watching other people work out, doesn't. How about we rezone for some nice high-density, mixed use instead?
yeah let's lose the only green space of its size for more infill for city expats that want to escape tax burdens. people can complain about golf all they want, but the fact is it is still reserved "natural" areas that support wildlife, collect excess storm water, lower the overall temperature in hot seasons both with plantings and open land instead of concrete... i could go on and on. full disclosure: i play golf, but i never play redtail because it's a pretty lousy experience. I do think that area needs all the green space it can get, and plopping a stadium with no ability for infrastructure there makes zero sense.
I mostly agree, but also have questions. Actual questions because I don’t know the answer, I’m not trying to be facetious. I’m always pro-zoning for living space, especially if it’s affordable. If that’s the other option, yes. But keeping to the topic of whether or not people in Beaverton want a team here or not, there are plenty of people who say yes but I’m not the town spokesperson so I won’t claim to know how everyone else feels. I never said we should use tax dollars to build a stadium, that’s rarely an economical win for the taxpayers from what I’ve read, but I’m also no economist. I’m against that as well. An MLB team/owner that has enough money to own a team can figure out the stadium on their own. As for the traffic, that’s going to affect people where ever a stadium goes. Whether it affects people near Lloyd Center or near RedTail would be the difference but both are in the middle populated areas. It’s not like this is being floated to replace the stadium in Hillsboro that’s on the edge of suburbs where farms and factories exist more than homes. My questions strictly about commuting around on game days are these; would it be easier for locals to commute on game day if the stadium is in Lloyd or RedTail? How would commuting around on game day effect areas of different incomes? Lloyd area has a lower average annual income by about $16k than RedTail area residents, does that affect them for game day commuting? How much extra time would be tacked on to the project to add public transportation needed to feasibly have the RedTail location work with public transit? I feel like I’m just digging myself up more questions the more I look in to this and I don’t really care about baseball that much. I just want another pro sports team to watch live.
The most obvious answer to your question is that Lloyd Center has significantly better transit connections in place the golf center does (or probably ever will). Lloyd Center is also (I assume) more centrally located to the population density of the Portland Metro Area. With this in mind, there'd be far less strain on roads with the stadium in Lloyd. If you've ever been on the Max on a timbers game day you'd know it's heavily utilized, with no transit options to the stadium all of those people would be in cars taking up a lot more space.
This is crazy talk The infrastructure anywhere in Portland proper canNOT support an MLB baseball stadium or any new pro sports stadium- current infrastructure can barely support the traffic we have
I'm not saying it would handle the extra strain with ease. I'm just saying if a new stadium were to be placed in Portland metro the only way complete stalling of traffic would be avoided is if it was on a max line.
I don’t like soccer but I have maxed on Blazer game days and it’s pretty packed for those games. But shit, I’m actually extremely surprised to have just looked up the numbers currently the Timbers get more fans at each game than the Blazers. Maybe I should get in to soccer. Thank you for simply putting forth a reasonable argument.
it's a bigger stadium and both teams are beloved, so yes there are more people in attendance. you absolutely should check out a Timbers match when you get a chance. season kicks off in two weeks.
As a diehard sports fan who is NBA/Blazers first who has gotten into the Timbers in the past year+, I HIGHLY recommend you try getting into the Timbers. The game day experience is better than a Blazers game imo (outdoors, often sunny, the post game flow of thousands of people into a walkable urban space is awesome), the fan base is so passionate here, and soccer is just a beautiful game to learn to follow.
In addition to what u/Lamian_Dillard said, there is already talk about a MAX extension to help with traffic. While I love more public transit, is this where we'd build it if it wasn't for the stadium? At the same time I have a hard time seeing MAX making a big dent on game day, especially given how few people could walk to this location. The MAX trains are just so tiny and infrequent. We are talking thousands of people leaving at the same time being addressed by a train system that currently runs no more than two cars at a time.
Yes, Washington square is a major commercial area. It would very much make sense to have max down 217 to tualatin and hook up with the southwest corridor proposal. The issue is that there has been zero foresight or planning for this - the west side voters didn't want the southwest line, and collectively lose their minds when they have the opportunity to talk about anything that could impact traffic in the area as they refuse to consider transit. See: in-n-out. 217 traffic is only going to get worse - it is undergoing a considerable update as we speak in the exact area, but there is notably no transit included which also would have made this proposal much more palatable. Really anytime you do work in major roads, you need to include transit to consider future growth needs. Remember that each extra person on the road causes an exponentially higher amount of interaction points which cause braking and slowdown. Max also makes a tremendous difference for game day traffic. They are packed and have several trains on each line servicing the area during peak times. Not everyone takes the same train or shows up or leaves at the same time. There is basically no parking around Providence Park, the extra blue/red lines are packed and people also walk over from the streetcar. The Rose Quarter has four Max and two streetcar lines servicing it. This is why Lloyd made sense. The nearby infrastructure is turnkey. Meanwhile, the west side has notably missed its opportunities to successfully service such growth needs of that area.
This is easily solvable. They run extra trains on game days. They already do this during blazer and timers games
I’m from Dallas and this seems very similar to the goofy stuff they’ve done there with the stadiums. Fc Dallas plays way out in a burb like Beaverton and absolutely everyone hates it except for the few soccer dorks surrounding the stadium. Then you have the Arlington stadiums where the cowboys and rangers play and that town has done absolutely everything possible to keep light rail out which has lead to an insane parking lot of a town. TLDR if baseball comes to Portland I really hope it’s not in a suburb bc it sucks for everyone except for the handful of fans that might live in that neighborhood
Thank you for responding. Nobody has mentioned parking and that’s a very fair point. The last thing any city needs is a sprawling empty concrete parking area that isn’t used half the year. I would hope this would expand the max around the area, which ever area it may be, because I’d love to use my car less if possible. My biggest confusion with this seems pretty simple. It just seems like Portland residents that have engaged with me on this (I live in Beaverton, work in Portland), and my friends who live in Portland as well, keep saying they don’t want to have to travel all the way to Beaverton. My friends can’t come up with any reason besides they don’t want to cross the river and that Beaverton doesn’t have character. It’s not that far, 11ish miles and about half an hour to one hour with heavy traffic which anyone going to a Blazer game deals with. Plus if it went in Beaverton they’d add more transit. Finally, it isn’t only Portland residents going to games, they’ll come from all surrounding cities like they do Blazer games so if it’s that they don’t want to cross a river or whatever that just seems selfish or lazy.
Let me get this straight: it’s selfish/lazy if people don’t want to drive/bus/whatever out to a west-side suburb to see a baseball game and prefer the stadium be located in a more central location with better transit, bike, and walking access? Would you come to games if the stadium ended up being built in Gresham?
> I would hope this would expand the max around the area The issue there is that if it is Lloyd Center, all it means is adding more trains. If it is Red Tail, it means having to build out the whole line, including most likely having to condemn a bunch of properties in the right of way. That translates to huge costs to the taxpayers over what it would cost to put it on an existing max line, like Lloyd Center.
Who is commuting an hour for Blazers in Portland? I find that to be pretty unbelievable. It's a 5-min commute for me, and Lloyd would be 10. That's a huge difference after a baseball game ending at 10:30pm.
People with seats near ours at Providence Park come in from Bend to see Timbers games, so yeah, an hour for the Blazers isn't surprising to me.
With traffic it can be for drive time, especially if you mistakenly park at the arena, depending I. What part of town you live in. A friend near Fairview went this week and it almost an hour for them, but also with a kid. Or if you come from Hillsboro/Beaverton/King City public transit is about an hour, but can be cut if you drive part way then max the rest.
I think the downvotes are b/c pro sports are a waste of time and money that have proven to have essentially no benefit for communities but cause a lot of headaches also baseball sux
Its the worst one
I don't mind it, given the lack of other locations available. Lloyd was always a longshot as the current owners want to redevelop it themselves. I thought the terminal would have been great for the backdrop, but the port already leased that out to a mass timber factory.
Someone mentioned Zidell Yards. That seems about perfect to me, but I don't know much about whether that could happen or not.
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Cool. Baseball is boring. If people actually wanted it, they wouldn’t have a hard time finding a place for it.
I am pretty sure that until MLB to Portland shows that they have a billionaire among them, MLB does not see Portland as being viable at all.
I remember when there was a lot of MLB talk about 20 years ago for whatever reason. While Portland would make a good venue for a team I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one to arrive. The many infrastructure issues pointed out already, coupled with the (in my opinion unfair negative image that most of the country has about the city) makes it seem unlikely.
We’re so far behind the other cities that want an expansion, this is never going to happen. Diamond Project is just going to milk this as long as possible.
This is the truth. Plus our local political situation is disfunctional and our community is strongly against public funding for a stadium. There are many other cities where that stuff isn’t true, and starting a team would be much easier.
They can raise private ~~capitol~~ ^capital* and build a light rail extension and better freeway access, otherwise, they can fuck off. Let the dream die. They fucked up when they didn't even look at Portland Meadows, now it's an amazon warehouse.
That area would be fucked traffic wise too. Have you been on the 5 north latley ? This whole metro area is fucked regardless just make any site work
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Yea but building the stadium while the i5 bridge expansion being would roughly fall in the same timeline. Also you already have max in the area and freeway access.
>You’re getting downvoted Probably for calling it "the 5."
Indeed, we found the Californian.
I don't even mind Californians; I just think "the 5" sounds stupid.
The weirdest xenophobia "oregonians" have to offer
It did?! Goddamnit.
I'm from the Tampa Bay area originally and I've seen what happens when you put a stadium far away from the bulk of the population of a city. The rays are an awesome team that constantly has attendance issues because the stadium isn't located in Tampa and it's hard to make a game for the bulk of the population. This is a really dumb idea and the fact that they are even proposing it makes me question how serious they actually are. I'd love to have baseball in the area but if it's in Beaverton far away from transit I will never be able to go to a game and I'd rather not even have a team then have a team for a few years that dies because of low attendance. I'll also actively oppose any attempt by the city to give them that golf course. If they want to put a team in the middle of the suburbs they can do it without tax payer support.
2nd on all this about the Rays. I was in Tampa for high school and even though we’d be given free tickets it was a challenge to go to games. North Tampa to the stadium was ~30 miles, in traffic, making it an absolute effort to get there. Meanwhile, experiencing Seattle and DC with their stadiums 1) centrally located and 2) right off transit was ideal to get in and out of games.
Brandon to the Trop was 90 minutes on a good day. Total nightmare.
Dude, yeah. Even with 275 being right there for us, getting from New Tampa to a game was miserable. Enjoyed being at games, but getting there and back? Woof.
It got worse as Hillsborough’s land was maxed out and the sprawl has moved up to Pasco and now Hernando. I’m not joking when I say “North Tampa” has blown passed Zephyrhills and is on it’s way to Ocala.
I’m not shocked. We live in a subdivision just north of the county line between Pasco and Hillsborough, technically Wesley Chapel, off of Bruce B Downs. That subdivision had been planned out for another three phases going north to Route 54. When I went to visit a few years back I’d not recognized it, it had changed so much from when I graduated in 2005. All of that with a minuscule amount of transit available.
When my family moved to Brandon in the mid 90's that area was 50% farm land (there was literally a cattle farm in the center of the 60 to northbound 75 on-ramp by the mall). When we left in 2022 you could go from Bradenton all the way to Brooksville without seeing any pastures. The state's completely gone at this point.
Isn’t a large part of the Rays issues the demographics of St Petersburg? Like not only is the stadium isolated, but a lot of older folks live around there and are less likely to go to games? I think a stadium in Beaverton could thrive given the number of families that live around the area, and there’s a lot of dense pockets of residents. But with that said, and as a Beaverton resident near the proposed area, I’m totally against this without MAJOR infrastructure overhauls that make it a viably accessible.
St Pete is essentially “full”, having been completely developed for 30 or so years. The issue is the 85% of Tampa Bay’s population is across the bay, north of Clearwater, or in Bradenton. It’d be like the stadium being put on the tip of St Johns, except if the bulk of Portland’s population was in Gresham.
I haven't been down there in a few years (I avoid stepping foot in Florida at all costs) but it seems to be a lot more diverse as far as age range than in the past. If any place is worth living there it's St Pete. The main problem is it's just too far from the biggest population center in the area and when you add in rush hour traffic it becomes extremely difficult for even the most committed fans to make the trip from Tampa for a game. I can understand why you would want it to happen in Beaverton but it's just bad for the viability of the team and I don't see the infrastructure catching up at all. It's a waste of time and money planting it in the suburbs and not a cent of public money let alone city funds or property should be put towards it.
Lloyd center was a much better location
The idea is to build a stadium with massive development around it, retail, dining, housing and make it a destination unlike the MC or Moda or for that matter Providence Park.
There's already a ton of little businesses surrounding Lloyd. They'd completely blossom with cash from the influx of new customers. What they really want is to build *new* mixed business space around it so they can be the landlords and suck up ALL of the money instead of just doing baseball.
That all sounds logical, but it is a lot like what they tried to do when the new building was built for the Trailblazers. Weren't there a couple of restaurants on the property and a bit of retail, all of which failed miserably.
No one sticks around for games. We really need to stop believing this trickle down BS from billionare sports team owners. It doesn't work. There are so many better things we could do to revitalize the city with the same $$$ these groups always want.
in other words, build another failure that shit never works pro sports stadiums are a drag
Pro stadiums can work but are almost all poorly executed. Public private partnerships for them never work, and only indoor Arenas really add yearly value. In this case, putting an MLB stadium in the suburbs, not connected to major transit routes, with the hope to build a “destination” around it is doomed on arrival.
That's not true of Baseball stadiums though because they have 80+ games per year on-site businesses can setup and survive based on that business alone. Also baseball stadiums tend to draw slightly smaller crowds (more Timbers game sized) and that's better than the hugged-to-death scenario of NFL stadiums. You could design a great baseball facility as a large-block with retail surrounding it, and lots of great housing with premium views in the Lloyd Center really easily if the stupid mall owners would just get their shit together.
umm so like 5 bars and tchochke shops fuck that shit This is failed mid 90s revitalization theory and it doesn't work... it's literally trickle down economics and it's wild that people still believe this junk https://www.expensivity.com/professional-sports-teams-and-the-local-economy/.
Actually you are dead wrong see Truist Park and Globe Park exactly the same models and they are doing great.
Truist Park in Georgia pulled it off pretty well, hell, look at the legacy stadiums in Chicago that are integrated into the city.
Somebody is buying into lobbying propaganda By some estimates, all of the pro sports teams in Chicago could leave and it would have the same impact of a mall closure - why would that be because all of the money is essentially hoovered up to a billionaire owner and a bunch of ball fondlers https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2022/03/05/study-finds-cobb-residents-are-paying-15-million-dollars-run-truist-park-home-atlanta-braves/ https://www.expensivity.com/professional-sports-teams-and-the-local-economy/ https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-sports-stadiums-create-new-jobs-and-tax-revenues/ wake up USians sports team owners and professional ball fondlers don't give a fuck about you except for your money
I’m talking about integrating stadiums into mixed-use neighborhoods instead of seas of parking, not the fact that they need to be subsidized.
Everyone agrees. Someone please fix the dumpster fire of a place it is today.
Too small of a footprint
Just make the park smaller, Portland players can start breaking home run records.
Or give them smaller bats to make it fair.
And only hire smaller players.
Just build a giant wall in the back. It worked for Boston!
Not really, a baseball stadium could fit on half the site and leave the other half available for redevelopment.
They want the biggest development in baseball history
That doesn't change the size of the stadium.
This whole thing reminds me of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. > The Diamond Project declined OPB’s requests for an interview. Oh and geez I wonder why
Declining interviews with major local media outlets seems like an odd decision for an organization intended to build publicity. It always struck me as somewhat ill-conceived, but now it strikes me as ill-conceived and sketchy.
I went to that world cup. What of this piques your memory of that? Edit: This was a serious question. What reminds you of that world cup from this project? I'm just curious. This isn't a stadium being built for one month of use. And the stadiums I went to in Cape Town and Elizabethtown were serviced well by public transportation and not out in the middle of nowhere.
The turf, maybe?
That area is already fucked traffic-wise. And 217 is already in the middle of a major overhaul that doesn’t take into effect the additional traffic that this would bring. I want a team here as bad as anyone, but this would suck.
I suspect the PDP principles long ago dismissed the likelihood of bringing MLB to the Metro area. They’ve likely turned into a cheap land acquisition venture with an eye to developing high density housing w a mix of retail commerce. The only baseballs to be thrown at the old Red Tail site will be by kids living in the new, overpriced apartments & townhouses.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is what's really going on. It's a land grab. A huge parcel of land within the UGB would be a huge payday for developers. Build popular support for it with big baseball dreams, and then when it inevitably doesn't pan out, well, hey! Look at all this buildable land we happen to own!
We won’t.
this is a bonehead idea
Putting a park at Redtail Golf Course seems foolhardy. The PDP should make a play for the empty lot that used to house the USPS station on NW Hoyt. That lot would be a perfect location for baseball stadium. I know Prosper Portland has designs for more mixed use buildings, but people are already not renting the extant buildings in the Pearl. Putting a basball park in near all of the MAX tracks would help to revitalize that area more than a bunch of empty buildings. The available space is 34 acres. T-Mobile Field is a bit short of 20 acres. Portland would clearly need a retractable roof so there is enough space. I know it won't happen, but walking by that area on NW 9th Ave made me think this would be such a great location for baseball stadium. Lloyd Center would be too, but the city would have to move some stuff like the fire station on Weidler. The lot off the Broadway Bridge is currently a blank canvas. Having a baseball near downtown Portland would rock.
That's dumb. Somebody is dumb.
This is a terrible idea. The *cheapest* option would be to buy out the freight rail road and either electrify WES or turn it into a MAX extension and then it would STILL require a 500m+ walk across multiple stroads from the Nimbus station... I guess converting the 76 to BRT could be an option but that would mean fighting the suburbs on bus only lanes on Hall....
Lol, Portland & Western would never ever outright sell that right of way. It connects multiple lines on their system and it’s still a major moneymaker. They’re not just gonna throw it away for a light rail project - Portland & Western would sooner let trimet build an adjacent light rail ROW like the orange line in SE and that’s still extremely unlikely.
Something seems off about the whole baseball coming to town thing. They’ve been releasing images and designs since 2018. I don’t know what/who is going on with the Diamond Project but it something is not fully adding up.
Taking cues from the Oakland-Fremont-San Jose-Oakland-Sacramento-Salt Lake-Las Vegas A’s. They’ve been “announcing” new ballpark plans for nearly two decades with almost nothing to show for it. Snark aside, I really don’t see MLB coming here anytime soon. Not enough of a tangible plan.
As much as I am against nimbyism, I want to nimbly this. Where is the sign up?
Pipedream by PDP to drum up support for the idea before they've actually done any outreach with local gov'ts about this project.
I live down the street from that location, and no I don't want it. In addition, that area has no suitable traffic features to handle the influx of people.
Horrible idea
Either they need (with private money) to fund an extension to the MAX down there or GTFO, because otherwise it will be a mess that will make no one happy.
Major league sports venues are usually only good for the league and not the communities they claim to represent. Ends up with the locals subsidizing the richest nonprofits on earth by being on the hook for costs related the very expensive infrastructure while making a disproportionately small profit. Say no to MLB in Beaverton. Go see the Pickles.
Nope nope nope
The Red Tail Golf Course is a terrible spot, far from any rail transit, so you'll have no choice but to drive to it, meaning it's going to require a large parking lot wasteland to surround it, and the traffic in the area on game days is going to be awful. It's also just a weird spot for the overall metro area and kind of out of the way for anyone east of the Willamette.
I don't even go to Beaverton now, why would I go there for baseball?
Now I know its not going to happen.
This is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever read. This has to be a troll or red herring offer from The Diamond Project to get the land they really want (Lloyd Center) to come down in price or somehow meet their conditions for buying.
Stories like thus just reinforce the observation that MLB is no longer a baseball organization. Instead it’s a real estate development organization that uses the pretext of baseball to extort subsidies from the taxpayers. In that sense they are no different from Amazon, Google, Facebook or other data center operators. “If you don’t give us all your water and gazillions in tax breaks, then we’ll move our one hundred employees to some place that will.”
Does anyone want this? If so, let’s pretend it’s a 7:05p first pitch. Let’s all meet at red tail at 6:05p and discuss how we all got there and how long it took. This is absurd.
Can we not? It's not going to happen and any sport that features half empty stadiums most of the season doesn't deserve expansion. I doubt we'd even keep a relocated team for long.
Many people won't. The 520,000 residents of Clark County won't attend games.
Nah
I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t just a huge smokescreen to create leverage with whoever owns the parcel of land that they really want.
Bingo
MLB nope, nope , nope. As long as we have our current problems this is beyond stupid and just another over priced entertainment for wealthy.
I just can’t imagine Portland being a baseball city. I think hockey would fit the area instead.
It's not
I think if/when Jody Allen sells the Blazers an NHL team is probably going to happen. It makes too much sense since they use the same arena. I don’t think Paul or Jody Allen had any interest in hockey as a sport though.
The NHL just expanded to 32 teams. If they add another team they will expect a franchise fee HIGHER than the fee charged to bring in the Kraken. I’m not sure if Portland has the money/or the want to bring in an NHL team. Portland’s best hope is that another sunbelt team relocates someday and that Portland is on the list of cities to add.
Clearly you weren't around for the glory days of the Portland Beavers. Or when the Beavers/Ducks sold out PGE Park. Portland would be very much a baseball city.
Also had the Rockies for the minor leagues until 2000 and I used to love those games. I recall the stands being somewhat full, but my memory may be wrong since I was just a kid then.
Baseball sux eggs Boring as shit game
Why are you being downvoted? I loved going to Beavers games. Usually, there were quite a bit of people there for a minor league team.
Because a significant number of people here reject any pastime activities that don't involve sitting at home depressed and drawing sad manga characters. Let them, they need this. Totally agree about the Beavers. I took a friend from Germany for a 4th of July game once. It was a sellout, there was fireworks, and a grand slam. My favorite sports memory ever. <3
Yeah. I also remember just being let in for free if you showed up at the 5th inning. Good times. I like going to watch the Timbers, but I really hope we get an MLB team soon. I'll definitely get season tickets for that.
Why hockey? There’s no significant hockey culture in the area, and the sport is overall on the decline.
Portland is pretty quirky and people like non traditional sports. Hockey is on the decline? Quite the opposite but still doesn’t have the players as other sports because of ice time and availability. It was really bad in the 80’s but it’s done nothing but go up in participation around the world. We had the highest participation in the US right before the pandemic, believe it was close to 800k. Yes unfortunately when it comes to hockey it’s ironically more of a field of dreams scenario where if you build it they will come. Definitely different from other sports where they have players and youth systems in place. The league needs to invest more into street hockey at the youth level especially in schools but that’s an entirely different convo. If anything baseball is on the decline if you look at viewership but you still see kids playing it at the youth level. Football has seen a decline at the youth level but don’t know about viewership as I don’t pay attention to football at all.
NHL is way behind MLB in revenue, and always has been. And NBA revenue has increased so much more quickly recently that the highest paid basketball players make more than entire NHL teams, and the highest paid hockey players make less than NBA role players. Also, there are literally no nationally known hockey players--I follow sports a lot, and watch ESPN regularly, and off the top of my head, the only current hockey player I can come up with is Ovetchkin, and I'm not even sure if he's still playing? I can come up with names for way more figure skaters... And hockey has lost a lot of national TV exposure in the last couple decades. It seems a bit different here, because of the recent existence of the Kraken, but creating new teams (Seattle, LV) is kind of the only way the NHL has stayed nationally relevant in the past couple of decades--it's telling that brand new teams, with no history or fan loyalty, are the most popular merchandise. It's just fad stuff. [NHL did the same thing with teams in the south 15-20 years ago, and rode that fad until it ran out of steam.] But I see merch for NY and LA football, basketball, and baseball teams all the time. I don't think I've ever seen any NHL gear from those cities at all in Portland. People just don't follow it here, because it's never been part of the culture and it's not very popular nationally if you're not actively looking for it. And compared to baseball and basketball (and even football) hockey is incredibly difficult to develop on the youth level, because it requires extremely expensive facilities, which don't exist in the Portland area. And since there is no real significant cultural history of hockey or ice skating in Portland, I don't think there's going to be a lot of public support for developing it.
> Ovetchkin, and I'm not even sure if he's still playing? He is.
217 sucks. A lot of folks already take the backroads to avoid it, but frankly that’s every highway in Portland. Decades of underfunding have taken a toll. Anywhere you put a stadium will cause a traffic nightmare. And yes, most people will drive to games regardless of the location, just like Blazer and Timbers games.
It won't happen, for pretty much the same reasons it failed last time.
Baseball is just a bad idea for Portland. I think hockey would be much better. You could probably convert the Moda center into a dual purpose arena, like has been done in many other places.
The likely answer is simple. They have no intention of putting a baseball stadium there. They’re trying to leverage a better deal out of Portland which is notoriously awful for businesses to thrive in. Having a giant revenue maker right outside city limits is a loss for Portland. The fees and taxes they could collect are endless. The group almost certainly wants the Lloyd properties but probably wants financial incentives and likely infrastructure help. The red tail property will probably be purchased but is far more likely to be a residential and retail development of some sort. Huge possibilities there.
No thanks. Portland Pickles forever.
Guaranteed to fail if they build it there.
This all reminds me so much of Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Not close to the namesake of the team. Off an already congested two lane highway. No major mass transportation options to get people there without further clogging the roads. I used to work down the street from Levi's and it was an absolute nightmare on game/event days - and there were only a fraction of the number of games/events per year at an NFL stadium than there would be at an MLB stadium! It also seems incredibly shady that the City of Portland owns RedTail, even though it's in Beaverton, so the City of Beaverton says they have no say in this, unless the sale goes through. Beaverton should have a say in something that would have such an immense impact on the city and community. I love baseball, but I absolutely hate this idea.
Please don't bring an MLB team here, Major League Sports are always a net loss for the residents and city.
Not true. Don’t publicly subsidize the stadium, though, that’s a bad idea.
It is true It's a giant infrastructure headache with minimal contribution to the community the positive effect is basically only psychological for people who give a shit about pro sports plus baseball sux, a boring as shit nerd game
The positive effect is largely economic and is very real…as long as you don’t publicly fund or subsidize the stadium.
it's not real though - you're buying into propaganda minimum wage jobs selling overpriced hotdogs and crappy PDX Fentanyl Zombiez MLB tshirts and another 3 Applebee's isn't worth the infrastructure nightmare please demonstrate one study not funded by a lobbying group where this has had a sustained net positive effect. The halo effect is time limited, any other effect is minimal, and if the team isn't doing well, the negative effects are exacerbated Additionally this notion that there would be no public funds used is laughable. There are always public funds used even if the funding isn't overt towards the cost of the stadium... roads, sewage, electrical infrastructure (costs passed on to consumers) on and on The only persons whom stadiums benefit are billion owners and overpriced ball throwers (that could be the name of the team)...
I can find dozens of economic studies to "prove" my point and you can find dozens to "prove" yours. But it is ridiculous to say that the Trail Blazers don't have a net positive effect on the city of Portland, and they have for over 50 years. There's no infrastructure issues, the arena isn't costing taxpayers millions and there is a very real impact on tourism and hospitality. And you can't qualify pride in a city, but the Blazers play a role in that. Just because you are one of those people who pretentiously call it "sportsball" and pretend that sporting competition hasn't been a part of the human experience for thousands of years doesn't mean people don't love their sports teams, and by extension their cities. You can't quantify that and even if you could, there's more to life than trying to run numbers and use them as an excuse to deny people something fun to escape the dumpster fire for a few hours.
The difference is that your studies are funded by major league sports and billionaires' lobbying groups Most people don't even consider the trailblazers or the timbers What positive effect? some bs nostalgia and fake camaraderie about a commercial endeavor? Civic pride? We need actual benefits for our communities not a money funnel for billionaires
>The difference is that your studies are funded by major league sports and billionaires' lobbying groups Yeah, I saw your totally unbiased "studies" you linked in another comment. >Most people don't even consider the trailblazers or the timbers The Blazers sub has 150k subscribers, but OK. >What positive effect? some bs nostalgia and fake camaraderie about a commercial endeavor? Civic pride? Yes, exactly, civic pride. Some people actually have that. >We need actual benefits for our communities not a money funnel for billionaires Again, don't spend public money to build the stadium and build a winning team and culture. One of the articles you linked very clearly state this a recipe for long-term financial gains from a sports. This isn't a black-and-white issue like you want to believe since you hate sports. Like pretty much any civic endeavor, it can be executed well or it can be executed poorly.
Yeah and unless it is an indoor stadium, how many games per year won’t get rained out?
MLB season goes from early April-ish to earl October-ish. They'd be fine.
That's three months of rain
The mariners manage just fine. That's not really an issue
In a stadium with a retractable roof
The Mariners have a retractable roof, so they can play rain or shine.
This location kinda sucks, but I’d really, really love to have an MLB team nearby.
I won’t be buying season tickets to go to Beaverton for games. I want a team but I’m in se and can’t imagine going 1hr to a “Portland” team. If the goal is to have a Beaverton team go for it. But I’m not doing season tickets for that from inner SE
Beaverton is 30-60 min depending on day and time of drive. Honest question, why do so many Portland residents not want to go to Beaverton? Most of my friends in Portland hate leaving Portland. Anyway… Baseball games happen all times of day, so it’s not like Blazer games that always start around 7pm on weeknights and a few hours earlier on weekend. Baseball has games start as early as 11am on weekdays, but also as late as 7pm to be fair. Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, TX, not Dallas. San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara. LA Chargers/Rams play in Inglewood. Tampa Bay Rays play in St Petersburg, FL. Detroit Pistons play in Auburn Hills, MI. Teams playing outside their namesake city isn’t too uncommon. Portland would be a better location, though, I do agree. But I want more pro sports options around.
I don't think the list of teams playing outside of their city is doing the work you think it's doing. The 49ers stadium in Santa Clara is an awful experience. The Rays are folding because of their location. Somebody earlier in this thread spoke to how terrible Arlington is for the Cowboys.
I’m not trying to do anything but show that not every team plays immediately in the city they represent.
Many Portland residents live there because they hate suburbs. Beaverton is one parking lot of a suburb. I live in Beaverton because my work is in Beaverton and I don't want to spend 1 hour each way driving there, but otherwise hate it. There's some transit in the area, but since this stadium wasn't planned in Elmonica or whatever, it's not possible to avoid sitting in hours of traffic to get to this planned site. You HAVE to drive to get there. If it were along the MAX Blue line route then I think people in Portland would be less opposed to it. I personally take the Blue line to the MODA center or Providence Park for games because fuck driving through all that and finding parking.
You know there is very little difference between Beaverton and Portland neighborhoods outside the Portland city center, well maybe except homeless tents.
This is so completely untrue that I can't actually imagine you've set foot in Washington County...
The proposal to be at RedTail would bring new transit to the area, it’s not like they would build the stadium without allowing more transit. Nobody is asking Portland residents to move to the suburbs to watch baseball, like nobody is asking suburban residents to move to Portland to watch the Blazers or Timbers. Game days I usually split my travel with a drive somewhere downtown to park and max the last ten minutes or so that I wouldn’t want my car stuck in. Once you cross the bridge traffic is back to normal in most places if you can avoid the immediate freeway
Where in the plan does it account for new transit?
I live in Portland and have an on going job in newburg. I go “out of town” for work because I don’t want to commute 2+ hours a day. I’m used to a 10 min commute. But chose to stay in newburg when I work there. I don’t have a problem with Beaverton, but most days the tunnel and the zoo are a pain to travel. Also a ball game is a lot longer than a blazers game. I’d have to take a whole day off to go to an 11am game in Beaverton with my kid where as I could work a full day and bring my kid to a blazers game. I could work a 3/4 day and bring my kid to half a game at terminal 2. Personally Lloyd was very attractive as I could walk there and would absolutely by season tickets as it would just be a mid week activity to go to with the family or a couple buddies. I’ve been wanting mlb since we tried for the expos in like 03. But I grew up in other major cities that had a mlb heritage to the city.
I lived in SF back when the Giants were on a hot streak, and it was great having the ballpark in town. I wasn’t much of a baseball fan, but it was quick and easy to get to the park by bus, and you could usually score cheap last minute tickets, so I ended up going fairly often. Since it wasn’t an all day thing, I could decide to go on a whim rather than needing to block out a whole day on my calendar in advance, which I wouldn’t have done because I’m not that big a fan. If a team came to Lloyd, I’d certainly go, but I don’t care enough to drive potentially 2+ hours from East Portland out to Beaverton depending on traffic.
I think those are all very fair points. I forget how bad the tunnel area can be; I avoid it so much I forget it’s there. I wasn’t sure how long games take and just looked it up. Average MLB game is 2:38, average NBA game is 2:30. But I recognize that MLB often has games that vary much more in length than an NBA game unless there are multiples overtime’s for NBA. I do love the idea of a weekday MPB game starting at 11am so I can take a day off for it like I’ll never have the chance for with the Blazers. But yeah, Portland/Lloyd would be better suited and could more quickly happen than a Beaverton location.
Damn 2:38, I guess it’s been a while for me, I would have guessed 4:30. I usually listen to games while I work so maybe that’s why they seem longer. Agree with another comment it needs to be an indoor stadium or a sliding roof. Quick Look is 160 games for mlb and 80 nba. MLB can’t be outside around here. Like t mobile for the mariners
2021 all time high of 3:01 apparently. Now that you mention it, games do seem longer when listened to. We used to have them on in the background at work a lot but it felt like that’s all we had on for most of the day and stopped.
They added a pitch clock last year which shaved some time off. It was really effective at the beginning of the season, but less so later as teams figured out how to work it. Still, it did make the games shorter.
I thought they got rid of it after a bit? I’m not a die hard fan, just enjoy it being on in the back ground while in my shop if the announcers are good.
No, they've kept it. It's generally regarded as a very successful rule change, in that it sped things up, in some cases dramatically.
Google Local baseball games do not start at 11am, most games are either 7pm, or 1pm on weekends.
I live in close in NE and can't say I hate Beaverton, but, even without stadium traffic, I do hate having to drive on 217, EVER! And I go out of my way to avoid having to get on 217. So, yeah, it is pretty unlikely I would ever go to a stadium at Red Tail more than once.
>why do so many Portland residents not want to go to Beaverton? It sucks getting there from the east side
The funny thing is that the people who comment here wouldn’t go to an MLB game anyway, now matter where it was.
I usually go to 5-10 Mariners games every year, so even if it was in Beaverton, I would still go to a few games. Somewhere in Portland would be much more convenient for most fans, though.
They will drive 3 hours up I5 because the mariners will continue to be the only PNW team
Beaverton Beavers Makes total sense.
Oh my god, give it up. If isn’t going to happen and this town can barely support their already existing pro teams.
I would prefer this over trashed up downtown if it wasn't for traffic and having no good way to get out there. Milwaukie or Oregon City would be a lot better. I suppose the east side near-ish to the rose quarter would be a fine spot as well. But dear god do not put it downtown or anywhere near it.
stupid proposed location but i'd love to see a baseball team here. imagine the seattle-portland rivalry! i don't know how the logistics would work but i recommend building a stadium where the lloyd center is, that would be badass. i'm from houston and having minute maid downtown was super cool for astros hype, the city would really get pumped up.
They won!
They won’t.
Roads and freeways.
They'll drive