Will the Portland Beavers find a home on Holgate Boulevard…?

By David F. Ashton

The Bee, Aug 6, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

Greg Peden tells a Woodstock audience of Rotarians why the plans of Portland Timbers owner, Merritt Paulson, to gain a Major League Soccer franchise here could result in his AAA baseball team, the Portland Beavers, moving to a new baseball stadium in Lents.

David F. Ashton / THE BEE

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In the not-too-distant future, when you hear the umpire cry, “Play ball!” followed by the crack of a bat, in Southeast Portland – it may not just be city league teams playing at Charles Walker Stadium in Lents Park on S.E. 92nd Avenue at Holgate Boulevard – it could actually be Portland’s AAA minor-league Portland Beavers!

That’s the picture painted by Greg Peden, of Gallatin Public Affairs, who represents Henry Merritt Paulson III – owner of the Portland Timbers soccer team as well as the Portland Beavers baseball team – both of them minor league teams. Peden spoke at the Southeast Portland Club Rotary meeting in Woodstock on Monday, July 14th.

The owner of the two teams is the son of Henry Paulson, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; he moved here in 2006 to buy and operate the Beavers and the Portland Timbers. Now he has a grander view.

Paulson plans to bring Major League Soccer to Portland within the next two years, Peden revealed. “Major League Soccer (MLS) currently has 16 teams around the country, and is expanding to 18. Professional Soccer is booming in the U.S. right now – both Philadelphia and Seattle have acquired teams in the last 12 months. Seattle sold 12,000 season tickets within six months of acquiring their team.”

If Paulson gets the franchise, MLS would require upgrades to PGE Park, Peden told the group – and those upgrades would require the Beavers baseball team to find a new home. Because of seating changes, PGE Park would become a soccer-specific stadium, making it impossible to share the venue with the baseball team, although PSU Vikings football could and would still take place there.

“We have identified two locations in the city that would work for a new minor league baseball stadium with about 8,000 seats,” revealed Peden.

One proposed location is Port of Portland’s “Terminal 1”, off Naito Parkway on the west side of the Willamette River. No longer a freight facility, it’s currently being used by the City as an industrial staging area for the Big Pipe program.

“Overlooking the Willamette River, that could be an attractive location,” Peden said. “However, it is an industrial area, and there are transportation access issues.”

Top choice: Lents Park

The ball club’s ideal location for a new stadium would be the northeast corner of Lents Park, only minutes from all of Inner Southeast Portland.

“To put it into perspective, Charles Walker Stadium [now on the site] has a capacity of 1,000 fans,” Peden explained. “We propose building a stadium with seating for 8,000 to 9,000 people. That may seem large, but it’s much smaller than Seattle’s Safeco Field, where the Mariners offer 40,000 seats, and smaller than PGE Park downtown.”

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