A few more details on the proposal to bring minor league baseball to Lents Park have emerged in recent days.
As previously reported, the proposed stadium would “require” 1,500 parking spaces, some of which could be at nearby Marshall High School (with cash-strapped Portland Public Schools earning some money from the deal.)
This weekend, former Portland Development Commission director Don Mazziotti — who is working with Merritt Paulson to find a new location for Paulson’s minor-league baseball team — sent an email to Ken Turner, president of the 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association. In it, he talked about the impact of parking on the neighborhood:
The Pacific Coast League requires that there be a minimum of 1500 parking spaces on-site or immediately adjacent. With the help the URS engineers we have a plan for 780 spaces around the stadium inside the park. The surface of the parking will be permeable “green brick,” with grass growing between the bricks and can be used for many park uses – like art fairs, ice cream socials, dance contests and the like. The remainder of the parking will be at Marshall High School (sharing revenue with them), on the Tri-Met Park & Ride Lot, ODOT surplus land and a few other locations. Neighborhood streets around the park will not be used for parking. We also expect there to be the need for traffic management, signalization and other improvements based on a plan which will be developed with the neighborhood and Portland Bureau of Transportation.
Mazziotti also talked about the size of the proposed stadium.
Based on preliminary studies, we think the total footprint of the facility, including parking, is about 14 acres out of a 38-acre park. The current stadium uses about 5 acres. We think 30-40 mature trees will be lost, but they will be replaced as possible. No heritage trees are expected to be lost. The Gazebo will be relocated to just south of the parking lot on the eastern portion of the park. A large semi-circular grass berm will be built as the border to the outfield where people can be seated – these are great for family picnics while watching an event.
Commissioner Randy Leonard and Paulson told Lents neighbors last Tuesday the cost of replacing land at Lents Park would be $2 million. Portland Parks and Recreation estimated 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.
- Portland Parks: $13 Million to $29 Million Needed to Replace Portions of Lents Park Commissio
- Randy Leonard vs. Lents Neighbors The cafet
- Round Two: Randy Leonard Vs. Lents Neighbors — Why Lents May Be Cheering Today We’
- Update Your Scorecard: Baseball In Lents Requires New $2 Million for Parks Commissio
- Paulson on Lents Neighbors: “That Straw Poll Is Worth a Whole Lot of Nothing.” At the end
Where does Lents currently hold all their “ice cream socials”?
How do they plan to enforce no parking in the neighborhoods?
What are the pkg. fee figures they plan to “share” with Marshall H.S.?
Money for Public Schools? That’s good.
Green Brick? That’s good (Lents Farmers Market anyone?).
Losing 30-40 trees and 14 acres of park space? Not great, but since they will be replaced who cares?
As a Lents resident I’m looking forward to a more family oriented park experience with some professional sports and my the reputation of the neighborhood improving with people actually seeing it for themselves instead of just bashing it on blog comments.
Bring it on Portland! Can’t wait to watch the Beavers play right down the street!
Matt, As a self proclaimed Lent’s resident, you no doubt just momentarily spaced out on the fact that Lents already has a Farmer’s Market in the works for starting in just under 4 weeks. I’ve included the URL, to refresh your memory.
http://www.localharvest.org/farmers-markets/M14137
Are you kidding when you post “who cares” about 40 old growth trees being ripped from the earth and replaced with saplings that will take all of your lifetime and beyond to grow to the magnificence of what will be yanked?
I think you better get yourself right down to that park pronto, Mister, hug a tree, and say you’re sorry.
The cost goes up from around $88 million to close to $120 million, paid for by taxpayers, for a private business for an out of town millionaire. That doesn’t include the money to improve roads that taxpayers will also be providing for this project.
People who bought houses next to a park are now going to have houses next to a private eyesore that is usually closed.
Rather than paving over the park and starting a new smaller park elsewhere, how about Paulson just find existing business property that needs new business development?
I’ll bet the city lets Paulson to charge to allow bake sales in his parking lot.
If this park would actually be a wise investment for the city and not a complete waste of taxpayer money, then Paulson would front 100% of the money for this; after all he is related to a Billionaire. But, he wants Portland to front the money becuase he knows what a complete waste of money it WILL turn out to be. He is a very wise investor.
I am just shocked that a project like this can get so far along with so little public support. When is City Hall going to start using tax money for the benefit of the majority? I live in that neighborhood and looking at the map, the outfield is going to be built right over the top of the current playground. Good bye to the off leash dog park as well I guess. What a scam. Wake up City Council! The PEOPLE don’t want this!
except a public survey of citizens of Lents shows exactly the opposite. most of the people who actually LIVE there do want it…
Well, bones…we’re banking on it being a much better “public survey” than any survey, the financiers of this project may have done (or not) with our war Vets., on the razing of their Memorial Coliseum.
Many of us would be interested in your sharing the source information of the survey. Thank you for your help.
Here are the results of the survey of Lents where it was found the residents supported building the stadium there by a ratio of 2-1
http://ilovelents.com/?p=146
Tthis is a very informative site on Lent’s Community input, but 1st run through, I’m seeing skepticism and critical thinking with regards to the Paulson project.
I didn’t see the 2-1 approval you’ve mentioned “blackedout”. The numbers you say are in favor of the project, are not readily seen.
I’ll go back in and hunt around to see the 2-1 in favor survey. In the meantime, I’m reading requests for input and debate on that site. NOT automatic “yeah, so what…I’d be proud to consistently shell out over $100.00 for my family of four to see the Beavers batter up!
Actually dbo there are a lot of people that *DO* want this. There is a very small and vocal opposition to the project and a much larger vocal support for this project. Don’t let the echo chamber of the blogosphere convince you of everything.
When public opinion has been asked the vast majority of support has been for the deal to happen. The council hearings and task force hearings on the matter are public record and you can watch them yourself to see how many spoke in support and how many spoke against.
Not so fast blackout…the LoveLents site you brought to our attention is NOT backing up your statement that there are “a lot of people that *DO* want this”.
In fact, Lents appears to be taking it slow and steady…as they should in the micro second since they were presented the opportunity to rip out their Free Park, and plop in the spectator sport arena, they will need to pay out about a hundred bucks for a fam with 2 kids to attend a Beaver’s event there, each time they feel the urge to chomp on a ball park frank as a dinner option (didn’t count the cost in of weenies and drinks over ticket prices….so could easily be more than a bit over a hundred bucks for 4).
Lents isn’t behind it yet…so chill those rocket jets Mr. blankout, and give the people of Lents a chance to research the project, unlike those of us in Portland, who were forced to eat the Paulson/Cordish/Adams/Leonard project, like there was no tomorrow, and said “no thanks”.
“The cost goes up from around $88 million to close to $120 million”
Hey, if you think anyone knows the real cost, you’re fooling yourself. All the politicians involved will quote the lowest believable number and then we’ll start and then it will cost about 4x what they told us.
That trip Paulson took Randy on to NYC is getting pretty damn expensive for the taxpayers.
At first I was skeptical of the survey too, but if you drive around the Lents ‘hood you’ll see most of us have divided and sold our own yards for developers to build tacky crap on. No surprise that we’d sell out our park too.
Is this just more Cordish propaganda? Or some other monkey ass’s propaganda? It’s nowhere to be seen on that Love Lents site. When was the survey done and where can anyone tap into it, if it’s legitimate? If Lents is up and selling their property to make Oregon more ugly, then maybe they can double or nothing at that wack job casino in the works that will just shoot the crap out of the Columbia gorge. Where the hell are any of the Tom McCall offspring, when we need them, or did they peter out like the rest of Oregon looks like they’re doing!
I just noted something very very very interesting while perusing the Lents baseball receptivity study.
50% of respondents had been to a Beavers baseball game in the past year.
What percentage of greater area Portlanders go to baseball once a year? Attendance of Beavers games is 470K spectators/year. If every spectator only attended one game per year, then about 25% (470K/2 million) of the greater Portland population would be counted as attending one game per year. (Since many spectators are repeat offenders, the real percentage of people attending only once a year is actually lower than 25%, but let’s not go there, and just go with the maximum possible percentage of 25% of the metro population going once a year).
So how come in Lents, 50% of the people responded that they have been to a Beavers game in the past year?
Why does this seem odd? There is a greater proportion of fans in Lents than, say, Gresham? Or Beaverton?
Feel free to bombard, baseball fans.
Please, everybody. Ignore blackedout. He is a poor representative of Timbers fans. I have seen him on other blogs making a fool of himself and embarrassing the Timbers. I have also read posts of his on the Timbers message board where he tries to encourage others to go and “troll” blogs. All he does is attack anyone who brings up information that looks like it is against the Timbers’ MLS aspirations. I wish people like him would respect the democratic process as we all try to educate ourselves with the facts and decide whether this whole deal is actually worth it.
I think the Lents site will eventually happen since the neighborhood URAC is in favor. A poster on the Timbers message board pointed out that the neighborhood URAC is trying to drain the URA of all the affordable housing money to prevent that type of development in the neighborhood. The affordable housing people will fight it, but I think the baseball stadium people will win out.
[...] from Beavers owner Merritt Paulson’s representatives from this weekend indicated Paulson wants 780 spaces. Leonard indicated he wanted to see only about [...]
1.The area on the drawing: corner of 92nd and Holgate…soccer and little league football is gone.
2. Appears one baseball diamond is gone.
3. half or more of the south end of the park for kids, basketball court, picnics are gone
4. WHAT IS THE SICKNESS OF SOME PEOPLE IN CITY HALL OR MEMBERS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION THAT HAS ROTTED THEIR BRAINS TO SEE THIS AS A”GOOD DEAL!”
5. CUTTING TREE’S “IS THIS NOT THE GREEN CITY OF AMERICA?’
6. The bird society ought the be raising hell. loss of 40 or more tree’s.
Sam and his left hand man(we know he isn’t right) should be ashamed(fat chance) and recalled.
Jack Peek
Thank you, Jack, for expressing my sentiments exactly!
PDC destroyed the Little League site that was so firmly entrenched in Lents history on SE 92nd and Harold for the past 50 years. They uprooted it and moved it to Lents Park. Now, they have jammed baseball, softball, Little League, soccer, adults & children programs all on the same little piece of property. Something has to go, and for Randy Lenard, it’s the trees, children and the neighborhood livability. I am so sick of City Hall just deciding what is best for them and then shoving it down the throats of the victims of the neighborhood.
Hey Randy, listen to the 71 years old instead of shouting over the top of him! Show some respect for the people you allegedly “serve”. Randy, you are out of control and every time you open your mouth you alienate another group of taxpayers and voters! We’re not STUPID! Just because we live, work and/or play in Lents does not mean we are gullible, short-sighted and unthinking.
Where’s the Friends of Trees organization?
Where’s the Audubon Society?
Who is going to stand up and say, “Enough is enough, leave this park alone”?
Build it in Sam’s backyard!
[...] http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2009/05/18/green-brick-parking-and-40-fewer-trees-at-lents-park/ [...]