Merritt Paulson was at PGE Park bright and early at 8 am this morning, following a very hostile meeting in Southeast Portland Thursday night.
This morning, he also sent the following letter to Mayor Sam Adams and City Commissioners:
June 19, 2009
Dear Mayor Adams and Commissioners:
Nearly one year ago when we announced our desire to bring Major League Soccer to Portland at PGE Park and to build a new and better home for Beavers baseball in Portland, we made it clear that for the plan to succeed it needed to enjoy support from both city leaders and Portland residents. After all, professional soccer and baseball should bring people together, not only to strengthen our economy but to strengthen our community as well. Since announcing our plan we have been gratified by the broad-based support our plan has received from so many; sports fans, business leaders, neighborhood leaders, organized labor and elected officials from Portland and across the state.
While the city council has voted to support bringing MLS to Portland at PGE Park, securing a location and funding plan for a new Triple-A stadium in Portland has been difficult. The Portland Beavers are a Portland tradition – with more than 100 years of history in this community. The recent challenges notwithstanding, Beavers baseball enjoys a strong following in this community, and in no way does the lack of public consensus about a new stadium for the Beavers reflect a lack of fan, sponsor and public support for Triple-A baseball.
Now, with the September 1 deadline to secure a funding plan to ready PGE Park for Major League Soccer fast approaching, it is critical that we reach an agreement to fund PGE Park improvements or risk losing the unique opportunity to bring MLS to Portland altogether. For this reason, and a lack of community support for a new Triple-A stadium in Lents, I am withdrawing our proposal for a Lents baseball stadium. I am grateful for the time and serious consideration the neighborhood leaders, city staff, elected officials and Lents residents have given this proposal the past few months, but it is now clear that the community-at-large has not embraced this idea.
Our immediate task ahead is to complete our agreement to bring MLS to Portland so we may begin play at PGE Park in 2011. As for the future of the Portland Beavers, I am committed to doing everything possible to keep in the Beavers in Portland or the Portland area. And I intend to work with area business, sports, government and community leaders to make that happen.
The economic, social and community good that will come from MLS and better Beavers baseball in our community is worth fighting for. Change is never easy, particularly during challenging times. But working together, I am confident we can seize this opportunity and overcome the challenges that remain to turning this idea into a reality for the people of our city, region and state.
Warm regards,
Merritt Paulson
CC: Cora Potter, Lents URAC
Mayor Sam Adams’ response.
Commissioner Randy Leonard’s response.
Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s response.
And here are the responses from Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish.
- Parks Board Rejects Lents Stadium Deal The board
- Breaking: Merritt Paulson Abandons Beaverton Portland
- Mayor Sam Adams Moving Forward With Soccer Deal While Com
- Portland Parks: $13 Million to $29 Million Needed to Replace Portions of Lents Park Commissio
- Round Two: Randy Leonard Vs. Lents Neighbors — Why Lents May Be Cheering Today We’
Tags: Lents, Major League Soccer, Merritt Paulson, portland beavers, portland timbers
Not rocket science.
[...] News and Culture The Blog Formerly Known As WWire « Paulson Withdraws Lents Stadium Proposal [...]
[...] case anybody’s forgotten amid all the City Hall tumult over the soccer/baseball meltdown, City Hall has another hot potato coming its way this week. It’s the hearing at 6 pm Tuesday, [...]
hmmm… if the beavs. leave pdx – I wouldn’t care a bit, it looks like he’s trying to lightly threaten the city, MLS will fail, these ideas are so in the box and contrary to what makes pdx so liveable, this guy is such a carpet bagger with few reasearch skills…
Lents residents. Why are you the ones not wanting a brand new baseball stadium in your hood? This would bring lots of cash in the hood and raise the property value and help clean up the area. I would be begging the city to build a ballpark in Lents. What are you trying to save over there Walmart? This is a golden opportunity for SE PDX and Lents. Wake up people you don’t have to be ghetto anymore you have an opportunity to live in a new vibrant community with a max line and everything else. This would be bring nice bars and restaurants that a normal person could enjoy not just the neighborhood losers. When I lived across the street from Lents park for 3 years I rarely went to any of the bars in the area because everyone was skuzzy losers. Scared of change wow what a missed opportunity.
Doggies! It appears Blackedout and Sam Adams could be Twitter buddies.
WW gave us the Paulson announcement on leaving Lents, at 12:20, on the 18th, and 30 minutes later, at 12:57, “somebody” tweeted from @MayorSamAdams to the twitter feed of Garrett (Blackedout), “Wonderful! Please revisit MC. It’s a money bleeding waste of city owned land”.
To my way of thinking within that first 40 minutes of Paulson’s Pullout, Sam might have had more important things going on in City Hall, than tweeting messages to our buddy Blackedout.
It is educational to compare the content of Sammie’s Tweets to Blackedout, on Friday, and his public Twittering in that same hour, that he gave to us peons of Portland, on that damned Tweet of us.
Yeah, there’s really no doubt that Blackedout (as and in addition to other login names) is hooked up in some way to the stakeholders in Paulson’s agenda, instantly shoveling insulting and bullying comments wherever the latest coverage appears. His writing has all of the humorless, irritated, pushy meanness of a car salesman who keeps losing deals but doesn’t care to know why.
[...] Dennis Randazzo, a commercial real estate broker in Portland, wrote to WW to add one more idea to the mix about where to put Triple-A baseball now that the Lents neighborhood is off the table. [...]
[...] Now comes more evidence the City of Portland has not forgotten about Lents even though an effort to relocate the Triple-A Portland Beavers to a proposed new baseball stadium at Lents Park is dead. [...]
[...] months ago, Paulson wrote a similar letter when he pulled out of Lents, where he proposed putting the baseball stadium before his sights turned to [...]