Commissioner Randy Leonard and Merritt Paulson went before the Lents community Tuesday night and told the neighborhood they would need $2 million from the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area to pay for new park space taken from Lents by the new proposed Triple-A baseball stadium. Leonard and Paulson both said the baseball stadium would “impact” one soccer field.
But Portland Parks and Recreation just crunched the numbers and came up with vastly different figures. The differences point to huge discrepancies about the stadium’s impact on the park and how much it would cost to mitigate the proposed changes. They also point to the lack of clarity on the baseball-soccer deal, which still doesn’t have a pre-development agreement despite an already-expired April 15 deadline. Finally, the differences suggest there could be a new battle on the horizon over the proposed location of the baseball stadium, adding to the protests from advocates for affordable housing who are upset about the project’s impact on Lents’ ability to pay for housing improvements for low-income residents.
Parks has three estimates:
• If the city builds only a stadium, the project would take seven acres of Lents Park and would require $6.65 million for land, $4.9 million for parkland improvements and $1.3 million for design and soft costs for a total of $12.9 million.
• If the city builds a stadium and parking lots in Lents Park, the project would take 10 acres and require $9.5 million for land, $7 million for parkland improvements and $1.9 million for design and soft costs for a total of $18.4 million.
• If the city builds a stadium, parking and office spaces, the project would take 16 acres and require $16 million for land, $11.2 million for parkland improvements and $1.7 million for design and soft costs for a total cost of $28.9 million.
Lents Park is currently 38 acres.
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- Saltzman’s Conditions on the Lents Deal Commissio
“Initially, we were just going to ask for a hand job. Now, we’d like you to bend over and prepare for the full screwing. Sorry, there will be no reach-around.”
Sincerely,
City Council and Your Current De Facto Mayor, Merritt Paulson
You can not touch any aspect of any of the messes Sam and Randy have us dealing with and not need to shower with Lysol afterwards.
Matt Davis at Portland Mercury unearths even more damning information on these stinking sticky messes that have been long brewing with regards to these pet projects since way last year, and Tom Miller’s practically begging Mayor Potter to allow Sam to accept the gift ride on a corporate jet back to Kansas City in September to tour something Cordish built for their Power and Light District that turned out to have that impersonal “cookie cutter” generic design, cropping up all over the country, and was/is suppose to be a blue print for Portland’s Rose Quarter.
Is Cordish the construction company that would be lined up for Lents project too?
Welcome to the world of cost overruns. It’s only beginning.
[...] last week that removing 10 or more acres would cost far more than that, possibly as much as $18.4 million to $28.9 million. Share and [...]
The plan is supposed to be (per task force recommendation) that Merritt Paulson pays for the replacement park land. Parks and Rec are inflating their figures (and, quite likely, Leonard deflating) in the good old negotiations.
I believe someone from Lents has mentioned the possibility that Paulson will find park space that not only replaces the field or two that will be taken away from Lents Park, but will be used as a training ground by the Timbers. Again, that’s all in negotiation, stay tuned.
My hunch is we’ll know more Wednesday or Thursday, but negotiations are always a tricky thing.