PGE Park plans for soccer, baseball go ‘through the wringer’

A new task force will evaluate a controversial proposal to remodel PGE Park and build a new Portland baseball stadium, slowing the process and opening it to greater public scrutiny.

The task force has been charged with taking a hard look at financing and is looking at sites beyond Southeast Portland’s Lents neighborhood, the preferred place in the original proposal.

Other possibilities include the site of Memorial Coliseum and the Terminal 1 property north of the Fremont Bridge on the west side of the Willamette River.

Over the summer, Merritt Paulson, who owns the Portland Beavers baseball and Timbers soccer teams, floated a plan to use $85 million in city-backed bonds to upgrade PGE Park for a new soccer franchise and build a Triple A baseball stadium in Lents.

– Excerpt from The Oregonian, November 25, 2008