City and Paulson complete the deal. Just up for official vote on Wednesday. http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/index.cfm?&c=49519&a=282513
Some key points from the agreement that have been brought up in the many locked threads before this. This allows for the city to capture the upside if we are wildly successful and beat the projections that have us averaging much less than capacity. Expect us to follow the model that Toronto did. Where after proving the long term profitability and the creation of other usable infrastructure (training facilities, tournament fields), we can switch to grass at our own cost. This ends the discussion that was sensitive during the initial public task force meetings. Looks like Paulson pays to construct this and gets to keep the lease revenue. Funny how this last one dominated this thread, but got worked out reasonably quick, despite what Bojack and all the naysayers said.
well that settles that, lets get this beast renovated. it will be exciting to see how it turns out. i wonder if this will affect the USL season coming up this summer, has this been addressed in the thread? will the timbers keep playing this season despite construction? oh and i love the comments section of the katu.com article, it reminds me of all the idiotic comments in the salt lake newspapers when the stadium fiasco was going on there. nothing but morons thinking that the team was going to die a horrible death, move out of the city and leave the citizens with huge tax bills, attendance would suffer horribly and nobody cares about soccer, blah blah blah. 2 years later the team wins the MLS cup and nobody can even remember all that bullshit. RSL is one of the most consistent attendance wise, the team is making money and the stadium is a jewel of the valley. funny how all the naysayers disappear once the thing is completed and everything remains the same prior to all the bs that was said. the EXACT same thing will happen with the timbers. the construction will be done, people will bitch all through the process MLS 2011 will start up, attendance will be through the roof, the team will go through its up and downs and all these morons will disappear.
The construction will be staged to not interfere with either the Timbers 2010 season or the Beavers 2010 season. I believe PSU may be SOL for 2010 though.
I don't think PSU will care.. Their field is narrower, so they can still build some of the stuff. Plus they won't need the outfield for baseball.
The reason I think they might be out is this piece in the agreement I posted a link to above. Plus Puckett told us earlier in the process that PSU's 2010 season might be played elsewhere.
For the PSU football clause - am I reading it right. . . MLS has to allow them to resume use - but under our terms? So isn't this a toothless provision of the contract? We could allow PSU to resume playing for $20,000,000 a year? Or only on Sunday nights between midnight and 6 am? Is there anything in there that says that we have to play nicey nice with them? Otherwise if they are going to get kicked out for the 2010 and 2011 seasons - isn't there a good chance that they will find a better place that meets their needs? And we can have real grass instead of the new FieldTurf stuff? BTW anyone have a lead on what that new stuff is all about? I didn't see anything on the FieldTurf website that talked about a new product. I know in the past Wynalda worked for a FieldTurf competitor that used a different design to create a more natural bounce.
You watched the Sounders Houston playoff game in Houston that is why PGE Park will use field turf. Grass degrades alot if really used alot especially during football season. Its much cheaper to do field turf on the maintenance side. Then have to replace grass every so often.
i didnt know this, interesting. so does capacity go up even more? like around 25k? i was under the impression the restaurant would cut a couple thousand seats from the north end keeping the capacity around 22.5k or so.
I'm not sure the screen is even still in the plans, though that may simply not be required to be shown in the design shown here. That means 24K is the max if I've read my mud correctly. I was kind of hoping the city would get a cut of Providence revenue... something I could turn around and tell people would be a better revenue generator than AAA baseball for the city. However, it's not even part of the $31 million project. I think someone at the city will probably have a minor regret over that someday.
The situation for Portland was looking dim for a while but things certainly look bright right about now. Congratulations!
As someone who has kept up with the news on this via this forum for well over a year, I find it interesting that Bright has yet to chime in with a link on this. He seemed to get the negative articles up very fast, yet manages to stay away from the news that the final agreement has been signed. Quite telling, though I am sure he will come on here and claim otherwise.
I hesitate to say congrats cause i don't want to put a jinx on the final vote... but screw it. Congrats neighbors to the south. Bring food to the workers and spike it with caffeine and whatever else you can think of to make them work fast. Make sure they are done on time
you're just saying what everyone knew all along. bright was nothing more than a seattle troll who found solace in all the garbage links he found across the internetz. he thought he knew everything that was going on despite the fact that there are timber's insiders on the board and they constantly refuted his points. everyone knew bright wished this thing would fail, now that he has nothing to rag on he will go back into his troll cave to never be heard from again (hopefully).
Someone else put the link up, which is a good thing. Frankly, no one else was talking about everything that was happening this past year. When I did post about what was happening, a select few posters wanted to shoot the messenger and silence the news. I am glad everything worked out. One thing to remember is that after this year-long struggle, the city is still divided over the deal, over the local government, and over the Paulson family's involvement. http://bojack.org/2010/01/oh_the_places_youll_go_1.html
Do you really think this will stop bright from searching for problems and continuing to troll? Even if/when the vote is finalized on Wednesday, bright will certainly follow the construction process over the next 14 months, maybe pretend he is a civil engineer and critique the structural integrity of the infrastructure, or perhaps run breathlessly to report on the inevitable delays or construction challenges that always occur with projects like this. He will find something to harp on. As long as he lives and breathes, bright will persist in digging through the trash.
You just couldn't resist posting negative news. And you wonder why people call you a troll. And bojack is a BLOGGER! that's not news, that's a very distorted opinion. That guy is a douche among douches.
What points did they "refute"? I also had insider information, and I was careful not to reveal anything "New York bartender" style until there were citations to back it up. Some Portland posters have dropped some "inside information" that turned out not to be true because they were understandably excited to hear about it and wanted to share it. Like terraces. Some posters even tried to refute the screen in the north end saying article about the design review in which it was revealed was "inaccurate". It turns out the screen is still in the design. Portland is not some far away destination. It is down the highway, and I am down there quite often, despite some Portland thinking it is somehow "wrong" that a "Seattle fan" dare step foot in their city. Who cares anyways, other than some BigSoccer posters who are more interested in stoking interpersonal drama among anonymous posters than gathering information.
Classic troll style - trying to make the other person prove they are not wrong. Don't trolls usually get banned?