City Commissioner Dan Saltzman walked into last week’s hearing at City Hall on Portland’s controversial stadium-building deal with Merritt Paulson prepared to offer a new amendment calling for a 120-day “time out” on Mayor Sam Adams’ rushed deal.
Instead, out of “deference to the mayor,” Saltzman says he withheld the amendment on the city’s deal with Paulson, owner of the Timbers soccer team and the Beavers baseball franchise.
Saltzman, of course, was the swing vote on the council March 11, when this deal won initial approval. His proposed (and until now, unreported) amendment sheds new light on Adams’ announcement Monday that he would postpone three key votes on the soccer-baseball deal and reconsider the best use of Memorial Coliseum. At the time it appeared Adams was bowing to public opinion that called for saving Memorial Coliseum. Now it appears the mayor may have thought he was on the verge of losing his third vote.
Last night, Saltzman says he came to the conclusion that the proposed Rose Quarter redevelopment scheme calling for a new baseball stadium and an entertainment district south of Broadway is still moving too fast, despite a second one-week delay on finalizing the deal.
Citing lack of process, his own nostalgia for Memorial Coliseum (and a long-ago Jethro Tull concert) and increasingly troublesome questions about the deal’s financing, Saltzman says he told the mayor he wants to decouple the Major League Soccer deal from the Rose Quarter redevelopment.
Wouldn’t that imply Saltzman opposes the pre-development agreement, since it ties construction of a new baseball stadium to the city’s deal with Paulson to bring MLS to Portland?
“Yeah,” Saltzman told WW. “I didn’t say it [to Adams] in those black-and-white terms. I’m still going to listen to what he has to say about what he may come back with, but that’s the way I’m feeling now.”
Saltzman added that he’s not opposed to bringing a baseball stadium to the Rose Quarter (or north of Broadway on the site of Portland Public Schools’ headquarters) at some later date. For now, however, he says “the Beavers are going to have to find another location to play. They’re going to need to find another location to play if in fact they can’t use the MLS stadium on a temporary basis.”
Saltzman wouldn’t say how he would have voted today if the mayor had asked for a decision, but he cast doubt on the likelihood of a “yes” vote next week. “This is the way I’m feeling right now, and that will likely be reflected if this came to a head next week,” Saltzman said.
- Dan Saltzman Also Ready To Move Forward On Soccer Deal Commissio
- Another Delay for the Baseball/Soccer Deal Next Thur
- Adams Announces Proposed Locations for Baseball: Bye-Bye Memorial Coliseum About 30
- Soccer Deal Comes To A Vote Tomorrow. Here’s What To Watch For Mayor Sam
- Breaking: Randy Leonard Now To Vote Against Soccer Deal Commissio
Tags: Dan Saltzman, memorial coliseum, Merritt Paulson, Sam Adams
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Thank you Dan!
Well now…is someone remembering how “instant Karma’s gonna get you, and it’s gonna knock you off your feet?”
Great news!
Although it’s still possible some sort of solution could be found that keeps Memorial Coliseum (with its architectural integrity maintained) and a baseball stadium at the Rose Quarter, I really appreciate Commissioner Saltzman’s apparent stand on this.
He’s right: the PGE Park/MLS issue and the Rose Quarter issue should be decoupled. We don’t want to lose MLS squabbling over the Rose Quarter, but we don’t want to screw up the Rose Quarter or (more importantly) Memorial Coliseum by acting too hastily. It doesn’t have to be that way!
Thanks for covering this, WW!
I highly recommend anyone who’s interested in this issue to read this piece put together by Professor Macht in PSU’s urban development program. It gives a great historical background, alternative proposals, and details on the private/public power play conflicts:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=1538d2c036c42cd924a64199ac7f73e5e04e75f6e8ebb871
Begs the question to how – or more importantly, when – these projects were coupled in the first place. Why wasn’t the issue of the new baseball stadium in the Rose Quarter brought up during the highly publicized soccer negotiations? Do we really need to ask?
Sam won’t let this deter him. If he can’t tear down the Memorial Coliseum, he’ll just buy the PPS Administration building and pile the additional costs on the zero coupon credit card. Or they’ll cozy up to Lents again.
Meanwhile, the Sellwood Bridge is falling down, the Wapato Jail sits empty, the empty store fronts, drug addicts, and homeless proliferate, and the only response from Sam Adams is to build a ballpark and a Convention Center Hotel that 90% of the population don’t support.
In his panicked rush to stack a deck that’s adequate to repel his recall, Adams is turning in all directions attempting to manipulate anything in that direction.
This makes him dangerously vulnerable to influences who seek to take advantage of his weakness.
Adams is no longer equipped to represent the public’s interests.
This newspaper, along with every other editorial board should call for his resignation.
The city cannot afford to have this desperate and conniving Adams as Mayor.
Agreed. It’s clear that Sam is scrambling to please any and every interest group and not thinking very carefully about whether any particular decision is in the city’s long term interest.
Adams is apparently so very weak that Dan Saltzman tabled an amendment “out of deference” to him? We should all be so weak.
Portland’s policy-makers will do the right thing disregarding all this idle nonsense.
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I would think the baseball park issue would have been locked up before the decision to change PGE Park to soccer only. It appears the Boy Wonder got the cart before the horse in his zeal to put his mark on Portland before he gets his @ss recalled.
So now he is going to have to find an alternative location and in a hurry. No good will come from this process. How is it this guy is allowed to play fast and loose with all these pies that he has his fingers in?
I love watching his serious look in interviews and message of “It’s a difficult job but I’m up to it so no one really need be concerned with any of my decisions. Honest.”
Sammie, get out before you lose all credibilty.
What’s unfair is the way you pitch the anti-intellectualist group of curmudegeons you entertain, into high dudgeon with your misrepresentation of reality, complete war on facts and details, and single minded disdain for nearly everything that the City might do, regardless of how wrong about them you’ve been in the past. (Anything to say to the residents of Marquam Hill, who gratefully flooded the Portland Tram last December as the only safe way to get up the hill, and who are part of the ridership that has vastly exceeded projections and more than pay for the City’s maintenance costs?)
“the only response from Sam Adams is to build a ballpark and a Convention Center Hotel that 90% of the population don’t support.”
How unfair. Don’t forget the neon rose in Waterfront Park.
I was a stagehand at that Jethro Tull event!
Coliseum forever!
The “Sam is doing this because of the recall” crowd is seriously deluded and tiresome and have not paid attention to this issue at all.
Sam and Randy were on this a year ago. They have had meetings with Paulson and his representatives dating back two years.
The citizen task force set up to review the proposal and provide a recommendation to the council was created and convened well before Beau became news.
The recall fools overestimate their influence.
As for the issue – the problem with the MC proponents is they don’t have any $$$ or a plan for $$$ to make the MC usable again. Where have they been for 15 years? Where were they during the task force hearings earlier this year and last fall?
This 11th hour attack the process crap has got to stop in Portland. You can’t keep rewarding these people. I really hope Dan realizes that he is only emboldening the anti-progress, anti- do anything, process obsessed sliver of the constituency. The vast majority of Portlanders wanna see this city moving again after 4 years of “visioning”.
Not true, Jeremy. The MC proponents do have $$$ to make it usable again, but the baseball stadium proponents want to use it to knock down MC and build a “boutique” minor league stadium. Why can’t that money be used for the MARC? That is a plan right there.
Why is the baseball stadium part of the MLS deal anyways? Dan Saltzman has the right idea.
“I don’t think that reporters with the C+ college GPA and retirees with a lot of free time on their hands are qualified to make policy recommendations.”
As all of the above, I can only say that experience, perspective, and street smarts provide much more “expertise and sound judgment” in any policy discussion than straight ‘A’s and/or multiple PhDs. (Insert raspberry here!)
To those who think our electeds know what they are doing: You’ve been drinking too much BlueOregon juice. Take a breather. I’m a liberal and I love our liberal ideals but just because a branded liberal makes a decision, doesn’t mean it’s the right one. If a liberal shits in the woods, it stinks just as bad as a conservative’s. You can deny it all you want but it’s true.
Adams and Leonard are corrupt. They have been for a long time. Mayor Potter called them on it but because he wasn’t part of the established liberal in-crowd, he was smeared and that was the end of him.
It’s about time someone do something other than pander to these people. Portlanders are liberal lemmings, though, so I don’t have a lot of hope. Any other city this size would have 10 viable candidates running for a city council position. In Portland? We have 1-2 wackos and the remaining candidates are even more wacked than the first 2. I remember moving to Portland thinking WTH are Portlanders doing re-electing Vera Katz. Then I saw who she was running against and I realized it.
Portland is like some nasty sorority where no one wants to piss off the social chair by running against her friends but they all hate her anyway.
If you don’t like what’s going on, speak up. Get off your f(*&ing computers and show up at City Hall. The nutcases called the Timbers Army does, right alongside the animal rights crackheads. City Hall could use some balance by people that have brains.
Sam Adams was not fairly elected, he lied and cheated to get elected, and therefore his Mayorship is nothing but pure fraud. The only idiots supporting this moron are the few geeks working for his public relations company, which happens to be the worst public relations company I’ve ever seen. Give it up Sammy and cohorts, you’re going down.
It does appear you are right GKW, about the hand full of Sam’s supporters being from his PR co…..operating under more that a few alias identities…calling on out of state family and friends too. Why do you think so many of these comments read generic? Those would be the PR personal support group, posting from out of state. It’s a twisted business. Many of Sam’s real base, have come to doubt him, based on his words and actions, and toxic work at dividing the city into the “pious” and the what…”un-pious”. The numbers of voters realizing they were fooled by Sam and his marketing team, grow weekly.
torrid,
You’re delusion on the Tram success is the perfect dance for Mayor Creepy.
You two should get together. Perhaps in the mensroom.
However, your Tram assessment is too stupid for Creepy to use.
I’ll spring anyone posting here to a drink who comes to the brewhaha, 115 NW 5th, Backspace, on the 28th at 7pm, Technically a discussion on urban renewal but I suspect there will be a few people there discussing what to do about finding our next mayor. Wear a purple rose, and if you can find one that blinks, all the better.
freaky man….U one of those Mark/Off types posting for victims on Craig’s List? Get help.
Why does Portland have to pay for a cent of this? The teams belong to Paulson and his crime family, who have stolen more than enough money to build their own stadiums.
I’m sooooo over the Dan Saltzman “I’m anguished about this vote” act. The guy stands for nothing.
Anything controversial, he can’t decide, can’t decide, can’t decide… oh well okay, I’ll vote with Sam and Randy again. But I really really agonized over it!
When Sam and Randy get tossed out, this bozo needs to be tossed too.
JJ
We never should have – pursued a deal that involved gross amounts of public dollars when we are in a recession – and perhaps headed straight into a depression. But hey – and I mean it – if the Paulson family wants to FULLY FUND THIS – like other privileged families have been quite capable of doing – go right on ahead.
Otherwise – forget about it. My tax dollars – being squandered on a “dream” – instead of being designated to FULLY FUND city services – essential city services.
ALL city council members – especially our mayor should be mindful of that “losing” sight of priorities they are charged with “protecting” and providing for. Really…
Only a very small percentage of those in the Portland Area will use soccer entertainment. Let Paulson use his own capital and sink or swim.
Torridjoe – You’re one of the BlueOregon nuts who have had too much Kool-aid. You seem to think Adams and Leonard can do no wrong; why, I’m not sure. The public process involved a group of hand-picked members of the community that were sure to give Adams and Leonard the answers they wanted. They were even told to ignore certain things that might not provide the “right” answers. The meetings, were maybe public, but were not well-advertised and did not include representatives from the school district or the county, two groups that most certainly should have been included from the very start.
I would love to know when liberal hacks started thinking subsidizing a millionaire’s soccer and baseball stadiums and paying for an sign that’s always been an advertisement is a better idea than social services or schools. I know liberals have never been financially savvy but really, isn’t this a pretty big move away from what you’d *think* liberals would support?
[...] Garber, commissioner of Major League Soccer, wrote [PDF] yesterday to City Commissioner Dan Saltzman to say it would not be possible to have the Portland Timbers soccer team and the Portland Beavers [...]
Your saying it is the job of “Portland’s policy-makers” to ignore their customers, the citizenry of Portland.
Not involving the public in this process is the problem, not the solution.
What are you even talking about, Dr. Rick?
What a terrible view of politics. Should we blindly trust our leaders because they were elected? Citizens should give their input to elected leaders, of they cease to be very representative.
The rest of your post is a series of bizarre ad hominem attacks.
No Steve, not the citizenry as a whole, just the cranks and loons who wake up angry and want to bitch about something. To say the public hasn’t been involved in the process, simply because you appear to have missed all the meetings and hearings, is evidence that you might be in the latter category.
And government is the people and it’s from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
All the meetings and hearings?
Do you mean the “Open House” I attended where the Mayor wanted us to rubber stamp his done deal?
This deal was formed too quickly, without considering alternatives and without involving the public in the disposition of the public’s land and historic public architecture, and that is why it is in trouble.