PORTLAND, Ore. (The Tribune) - Lynn Lashbrook took his pursuit of major league baseball in Portland to another level on Monday. Lashbrook, president of Sports Management Worldwide, visited Hillsboro Ballpark and met with the architects who drew up plans for the Class A Hops’ 4,500-seat stadium, which made its debut last June. The idea is to create a temporary facility to house the A’s for the two- to-three-year period during which a permanent stadium is constructed in Portland. The lease of the A’s at Oakland Coliseum expires after the 2015 season. The club is looking for a 10-year extension, but there are all sorts of problems involving the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, who share the coliseum, and city leaders, who are struggling to decide what to do in the future.
Portland isn’t a place with aspirations to be bigger or better than another city. Most Portlanders look at Seattle, a three-hour drive up I-5, and recognize the pitfalls of trying to be anything except what we are. Our traffic jams are mild (If you’ve been stuck in a Houston or Washington, DC, traffic jam, you know what I mean), our weather temperate…and we like it that way. We don’t want to be Seattle or San Francisco. For the most part, we like being overlooked. Enough people are migrating here as it is; the last thing we need is more attention and the emigrants who will inevitably follow. Portlandia is all well and good, but we’d really kinda like to go back to being undiscovered.
Like that’s going to happen….
One of the never-truly-resolved questions in the Portland area is how “major league” we want to be. Sure, we’ve had the Trail Blazers since 1971, and old-timers still reminisce about the team’s 1977 NBA title. (Until a few years ago, you could still buy a tape of the deciding game at a local furniture retailer.) Now the MLS’ Timbers have become our obsession, and many of us live and die with the fortunes of our local side. Is that enough, though? Should it be?
I’ve lived here on and off (I’ve left and returned on four separate occasions) for 30 years. Over the course of my time here, there have been the occasional ramblings about the wisdom of trying to attract an NFL or Major League Baseball franchise. This from a town that couldn’t come to a consensus on where to build a stadium for the AAA Beavers, causing the to pull up stakes and move to…wait for it…El Paso, TX. Yeah, there are times when Portland resembles Baghdad by the Bay (the late Herb Caen’s nickname for San Francisco), paralyzed by indecision and horse-collarsed by a disdain for conflict and a desire for consensus. Portland’s never really had a strong mayor, someone willing to elucidate a vision, put on blinders, and drive on until that goal is reached. That’s why this story about the Oakland Athletics (possibly, maybe) moving to Portland will probably remain something that sounds like a good idea but will never happen.
Portland doesn’t have an NFL team, but there is a new Arena Football League team, which seems to fit right in with our collective desire to be nothing but what we are. There’s no NHL team, but the Winterhawks, one of the Canadian Major Junior Hockey League’s best teams (they lost in the Memorial Cup finals last year to Halifax) are a popular diversion.
The question, then, is what happens when things get serious? What will Portlanders be willing to do in order to attract the A’s…or an NFL or NHL team? Will we be agreeable to cough up the millions in tax revenues it will undoubtedly take to attract a franchise? Will we be amenable to financing the construction of a stadium and accompanying infrastructure? Should we be open to providing a sweetheart deal to a franchise owner that will convince to pack up and move to Portland?
Portlanders have always been leery of spending tax money to attract a major league team. We’ve watched other cities be schmoozed and promised the sun, moon, and stars, only to see the reality fall far short of projections. For the most part we understand that sports franchises aren’t the economic engines that owners and league commissioners would have us believe. The concept for building a 35,000-seat stadium in the Rose Quarter- across the Willamette River from downtown Portland- raises more questions than it answers. The uncertainty over committing tax revenues to an uncertain outcome is one thing, but there’s also the debate over increased congestion and the possibility of a decreased quality of life. We Portlanders tend to be pretty particular about that sort of thing.
In the end, I think this will turn out to be what so many others past have efforts have turned into- a (possibly) good idea that never seems to come to fruition…and there are two ways to interpret this. Either Portland lacks the desire to think big and become something better and more audacious…or we’re wary of outsiders who come to town making grandiose promises we’re pretty certain they aren’t going to keep.
I used to date a woman who frequently bemoaned Portland’s small town ethos and resistance to change. I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but many of us like it that way. Bigger isn’t always better, and we don’t use “major league” to imply that it’s something we should aspire to. Sometimes, being viewed as the capital of quirk and a haven for hipsters is weird enough.
