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With a population of 583,776, you wouldn't think that Portland, Oregon would be a good example for Evansville to follow. But upon further examination, you will find that Portland, Oregon is the exact benchmark we need to be at with our sports facilities.
Back in 2007, I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to live in nearby Seattle, Washington while I was working for the Leadership Institute. Being just 3 hours north of Portland, I heard a lot of great things about the city with just about all of them being positive.
With a commission-based government headed by a mayor and four other commissioners, the city and region are noted for strong land-use planning and investment in light rail, supported by Metro, a distinctive regional government. Because of its public transportation networks and efficient land use planning, Portland has been referred to as one of the most environmentally friendly, or "green", cities in the world.
As someone who has a strong interest in rail, urban planning, the environment, and development of sports facilities for many years, Portland was a must see. Indeed, all of my visits to Portland lived up to their billing. The City of Roses is easily the most progressive and successful city I have visited. Let's take a look at their sports venues set-up...
As you can see from the above picture, Portland currently has two sports venues (I bet that scares the daylights out of those who support demolition). On the right, you can see the Rose Garden. It is a $267 million multi-purpose arena that opened in the fall of 1995, and serves as the home of the NBA Portland Trail Blazers.
In addition to basketball and hockey, the Rose Garden hosts a wide variety of events such as concerts, family shows and other sporting events. In 2009, the Rose Garden hosted the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball 1st & 2nd Rounds. It also hosts the same exact events that the Ford Center has hosted such as Bob Seger, Reba McEntire, and the Harlem Globetrotters.
On the left, you can see the Portland Memorial Coliseum. It is a 12,000-seat arena that serves as the primary home for the WHL Winterhawks, and served as the original home of the Trail Blazers. The arena opened in 1960 and was dedicated to serve as a memorial to veterans from all wars.
The Veterans Memorial Coliseum currently hosts over 150 events per year, and has recently hosted major international events, such as the 2007 Davis Cup and President Obama’s first campaign rally in Portland.
What makes Portland such a great example to follow is that they have been very successful in tying the entire complex together. The two facilities are both located in a complex called the "Rose Quarter." By far and away, this complex is one of the best laid out plots of land in all of the United States. The complex, which is jointly owed by the city of Portland and Vulcan Entertainment, which is a company owned by Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen, is surrounded by great amenities such as the Oregon Convention Center, the Steel and Broadway bridges, the Eastbank Esplanade.
But even with great amenities such as the Oregon Convention Center, the Rose Quarter still offers great amenities itself that DO NOT COMPETE with nearby facilities. Let's take at the amenities in the Rose Quarter around the Rose Garden and Memorial Coliseum...
http://www.rosequarter.com/AbouttheRoseQuarter/Venues/tabid/84/Default.aspx
Commons
A particularly unique attraction in The Commons is "Essential Forces" - a one-of-a-kind fountain composed of nearly 500 kinetic water jets. The two pillars of water and fire welcome guests to Rose Quarter events with its magnetic aura.
Exhibit Hall
Located below the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the 40,000 sq. ft. Exhibit Hall hosts numerous trade shows, job fairs, conventions, and the annual FrightTown haunted attraction.
What's ironic about the Rose Quarter is that if we go by their set-up, it would appear that it is the Centre and the Victory, not Roberts Stadium, that compete with the Ford Center as Portland converts their Rose Garden into a "Theater of the Clouds" where the arena is used as a concert hall instead of a separate venue.
Obviously, the main facility we need to look at for the purpose of this blog is the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Like I said earlier, while the Portland Memorial Coliseum is in a much bigger city than Roberts Stadium, their paths are eerily similar.
In 1960, it all began for the Portland Memorial Coliseum...
| http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2009/09/memorial-coliseum-listed-on-national-register-and-notes-from-the-first-rose-quarter-advisory-committ.html |
There is no question that building this facility was one of the biggest and best decisions the city of Portland made. Right off the bat, the city made the correct decision in hiring the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill who have designed other great buildings such as the Sears Tower in Chicago and Freedom Tower in New York City.
The design of Memorial Coliseum is extremely unique in that it is basically a bowl within a building. The bowl was constructed entirely separate from the roof. After construction of the seating bowl was completed, a roof, which is supported by only four pillars was constructed around it along with a concourse and glass walls all the way around the arena...
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The result was spectacular...
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One of the neatest things about the Portland Memorial Coliseum is that you can see the Rose Garden next door from your front row seat if you look out the glass windows...
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While playing their games at Memorial Coliseum, the Blazers captured 3 NBA Divisional Titles, 3 NBA Conference Championships, and 1 NBA Championship- 1977. Legends such as Clyde Drexler, Bill Walton, and Lionel Hollins all wore the Blazers uniform at Memorial Coliseum. On a side note, the venue for the 1965 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, where UCLA won its second of ten such championships in the 1960s and 1970s.
After the 1992 NBA Finals, which saw the Trail Blazers fall to the Chicago Bulls, construction crews broke ground on the Rose Garden next door. In 1995, construction was finished and Trail Blazers moved into the venue in the fall.
Since 1995, Portland's Memorial Coliseum quietly underwent a transformation from a premier arena to a mid-sized arena. In fact, even today, very few Portland residents realize that Memorial Coliseum still hosts more events than the Rose Garden due to the smaller mid-sized crowds these events draw.
In 2002, the city undertook a study to determine if the building should be converted to a different purpose, kept as a mid-sized arena, or sold to a private developer. You can view all of the data on this study here...
http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index.cfm?c=chedb
Just like we have heard here in Evansville, the citizens of Portland came up with a wide array of reuse options. Some wanted to see a natatorium, some wanted to a see a recreational sports gym, some wanted to see a BMX center or velodrome, while others wanted the city to sell the facility altogether. But in the end, the city made the correct decision to reposition Memorial Coliseum as a mid-sized arena.
In 2009, this plan was put to the test. The Portland Beavers, which is a AAA baseball team, needed to move out of their current home because it was scheduled to be renovated into a soccer stadium. After the team looked at several sites, they decided that they would work with the Trail Blazers and the city of Portland to demolish Memorial Coliseum and build a 9,000 seat ballpark on the lot...
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/04/bring_the_beavers_to_the_rose.html
Immediately, those who cared about the arena came out in support in favor of Memorial Coliseum. These groups included veterans who the arena was dedicated for, preservation groups, architects, and bloggers like me...
http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2009/04/save-memorial-coliseum.html
http://savethecoliseum.blogspot.com/
http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-4558-bloggers_architects_rally_against_memorial_coliseu.html
In the end, I am pleased to announce that those who support the Coliseum won. Even though those who supported the Coliseum were in favor of the Beavers building a ballpark at other sites (they even gave alternative sites), the Beavers were sold to the San Diego Padres who moved them to Tucson, Arizona.
Defeating the ballpark plan was just the beginning to keeping the arena (sound familiar?). There still needed to be a long term plan for Memorial Coliseum. You can read how the story unfolded here...
http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/memorial-coliseum/
In 2010, Portland assembled a task force to tackle this issue (once more, sound familiar?) which took feedback from the public who gave them a whole new batch of ideas...
http://rosequarterdevelopment.org/index.php
The amount of ideas that the task force received were enough to fill multiple pages...
http://www.rosequarterdevelopment.org/Concept_Summaries.php
But in the end, like before, the city made the correct decision to renovate the facility into a mid-sized arena...
(Make sure you watch the youtube video in this article to grasp just how similar Roberts and Memorial Coliseum are)
http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2011/11/city-council-to-discuss-coliseum-restoration-thursday-supporters-encouraged.html
(bolding has been added by me)
"The Beavers and their approximately 1,800 season ticket holders (in 2009) would not have comprised a sound economic development strategy for the Rose Quarter, especially during the majority of the year that isn't baseball season. It's truly unfortunate the team wasn't able to find a way to build a stadium elsewhere in the metro area - Beaverton, Clackamas, Lents and Vancouver all rejected overtures - yet a busy multipurpose arena like the Coliseum is much more of a continuous revenue stream for the city. It hosts over 150 events per year, as much as the Rose Garden - only with smaller crowds.
Because the two arenas are differently sized - the Rose Garden at approximately 20,000 and the Coliseum being downsized to about 8,000 - they each fill a different economic niche. Portland doesn't have another arena of the Coliseum's size, so we'd eventually have to build a new one. And a from-the-ground-up arena would cost far, far more than this $30 million restoration - only $17 million of which is coming from city money anyway - not to mention all the carbon and embodied energy that would be lost if the Coliseum were torn down."
Now that the city of Portland has agreed to renovate the Coliseum as a mid-sized arena, the next question has arose: What to do with the surrounding area? Like Memorial Coliseum, we too will have to answer this question. The following is the current plan which appears to be in the lead...
http://www.pdxactionsports.com/
(bolding has been added by me)
"The Rose Quarter, including both The Rose Garden and the historic Portland Memorial Coliseum, has long represented professional sports in Portland; residents and fans come to large, multi-functional buildings to watch professional athletes compete. Participation in the sports most often played in these facilities has declined by as much as 40% over the past decade. Action Sports, however, represent the next generation of athletics in the US; with participation growing, in some sports by as much as 90% over the past decade, new indoor and high-quality facilities for many of these sports are lacking. The redevelopment of Portland’s Rose Quarter offers an opportunity to create a world class facility that can combine the history of the old with the potential and excitement of the new while providing a safe place for families and friends to participate in a wide variety of active sports.
Our concept focuses on converting the area around Portland Memorial Coliseum into an highly sustainable, action sports complex and resort. The complex would include some of the best facilities in the world for sports such as surfing, skateboarding, BMX biking, rock climbing, kayaking, and white water rafting in one location. The facility would also include family friendly activities, including water slides, tubing, instruction and camps."
http://www.pdxactionsports.com/the_facilities/veterans-memorial/
(bolding has been added by me)
"The Portland Memorial Coliseum will turn 50 in 2010. It is an icon for the city of Portland, and is worth renovating to ensure another 50 years of life. Our proposal is to the leave Memorial Coliseum essentially intact, with updated seating and support facilities and a flexible-events program that not only includes ’showcased’ action-sports events but other events as well. Public opinion and numerous reports suggest the building is actually very well-suited for its current medium-sized events program.
Our proposal takes a long range urban planning outlook. We believe that the proper approach recognizes serious problems at the district scale (not just coliseum scale), and proposes infusing life into the area by fixing what is broken and making best use of what works, in essence, re-invigorating the district with action-sports activities while keeping the coliseum and the rose garden arena more or less intact."
For those who are unaware, it now looks like the two best ideas worth investigating for Roberts Stadium are 1. Convert it to an indoor BMX facility or 2. Renovate it to a mid-sized arena.
My opinion is very clear, and it aligns with the opinion of Portland residents. Roberts Stadium is just one aspect that we need to look at. If we are truly going to adopt a plan that satisfies the majority of the residents, we MUST develop a long term plan for the entire complex surrounding Roberts Stadium. We should consider the following ideas...
1. Roberts Stadium, like Memorial Coliseum, is positioned perfectly to be a mid-sized arena with indoor football, soccer, minor league and high school basketball, trade shows, mid-sized concerts, lacrosse, inline skating, and possibly USI basketball as tenants.
2. The surrounding complex is positioned perfectly to build a BMX indoor facility such as Ray's MTB in Milwaukee and Cleveland. With a skating park at Swonder Ice Rink, this facility would work perfect between Roberts Stadium and the golf course.
3. The complex is in a perfect position to be a "green" project. For those who want a lake, you have plenty of room behind Roberts Stadium. For those who want biking trails, why not use Roberts as an indoor trail hub for the Greenway?
4. The complex should addressed the aquatic needs of Evansville. When Hartke Pool is renovated, the city should partner with a private developer to build an indoor water park resort, an indoor natatorium, and an outdoor pool on the site of the current Hartke Pool.
5. Partnering the Ford Center and Roberts Stadium together will bode well for Evansville just like the Rose Quarter has for Portland.
6. We have the potential to avoid the only mistake Portland made. Our ball fields should STILL BE CONSTRUCTED and this location should be Kleymeyer Park next to Bosse Field. The fields should also replicate vintage MLB ballparks and pay tribute to legends such as Don Mattingly.
7. All of this should be done in phases not all at once.
For those who seek to make progress here in Evansville, you must look at Portland. For those who seek to satisfy the most while costing the least, you must look at Portland. And for those who want to know how Roberts Stadium fits into the big plan to promote the Ford Center and the complex around Wesselman Woods, you must look to Portland.
LET'S BE LIKE PORTLAND, OREGON, LET'S SAVE MEMORIAL COLISEUM & ROBERTS STADIUM!
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| http://blog.oregonlive.com/opinion_impact/2009/04/medium_coliseum.jpg |
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