PGE Park renovation renderings. (Portland Timbers)

Details of PGE Park’s $31million renovation for the Portland Timbers’ move to Major League Soccer in 2011 was released Monday to The Oregonian. Renderings show exactly how they plan on making PGE a soccer facility for good.

The biggest transformation will be the stadium’s east side. A public plaza at the corner of 18th Avenue and Morrison Street will form the main entrance, extend toward the field and include a team store open even on non-gamedays.

A sit-down restaurant will serve 1,444 midfield seats, a community meeting room will be built next to the restaurant and three group and family decks will be built for events and extra seating. A cover will jut over most of the roughly 4,000 east-section seats, echoing the existing wooden overhangs in the 83–year-old stadium.  Additional restrooms and concession stands will serve the new seating areas.

Work is expected to be done started in January in time for the 2011 season.

Timbers owner Merritt Paulson said the capacity will be expanded from it’s current 16,000 to somewhere between 20,000 and 24,000, including a north auxiliary area that will be closed for most games.

PGE Park Renovation renderings. (Portland Timbers)

The only real bad news is the field, it probably won’t be grass like most MLS fans would want.

The renovation details come with a concession: Though hard-core soccer fans wanted the Timbers’ re-vamped home to include grass, the playing surface almost certainly will be artificial turf, Paulson said.

The stadium’s reality is rainy springs and falls, and the need to accommodate the Portland State football team, high school games and other events. Crisscrossing field lines for football and soccer when those seasons overlap would be far more difficult to manage on grass, Paulson said.

“We’re going to have days where we play soccer right after football games, and on a rainy day, the field would be utterly destroyed,” he said.

I guess we can let the complaining on PGE Park begin out of fans and players. I know FieldTurf is an eyesore to most but it isn’t the absolute worst thing in the world and it’s come a long way from its AstroTurf days.

I think overall it’s exciting news to hear and see details of their plans for this stadium (finally). Hopefully the work gets done on time and things work out for Paulson and company.

PGE Park renovation renderings. (Portland Timbers)

Well now it appears the Paulson is once again a “100% committed” to Portland’s MLS efforts.

Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard said Paulson is back on track with where things were already going before Wednesday’s comments.

“We’re back on track, given his willingness to recant,” Leonard said. “He asked me what he needed to do, and I said, ‘Shut up.’ He said ‘OK.’”

Now the fun still remains in Beaverton where Paulson is attempting to get a new baseball stadium built. Apparently the town has a couple sites in mind for the stadium but they aren’t giving any official word as to where yet. But at the same time there seems to be some growing opposition for the new stadium.

But back to the MLS and Portland side of things. Paulson still has a few things that he will have to get to keep folks there happy, though most of these are in the long run. The city wants a written guarantee that Paulson will complete the stadium renovations along with confirmation from MLS officials that they accept the delay in the construction project and approval from the Pacific Coast League to move the Beavers out of Portland.

Just like I said the other day, Portland will be in MLS in 2011. Make no mistake about it but this baseball stadium situation is starting to put a very dark cloud over the expansion bid.

I guess Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson is just playing some hardball with the city of Portland now. According to Oregonlive.com, Paulson told Beaverton officials that the future of Major League Soccer in Portland hinges entirely on whether he can find a new home for his minor league baseball team.

So no new baseball stadium means no MLS in Portland huh Merritt?

“Yes,” Paulson responded. “But it’s conditional on finalizing the deal with Portland. And if I don’t get a baseball deal done, I’m not going to finalize the deal with Portland. So MLS will not come to Portland unless I do a deal for a new baseball park.”

Paulson is working on two deals with two cities, which won’t be easy from the sound of it. To me this just sounds like some hardball to get two different cities to do what he wants. MLS has already stated that they plan on having Portland in 2011 no matter what and from the sounds of things the city of Portland seems to be right on board for the soccer side of things.

More than likely the Portland side of things won’t matter for Paulson. He’ll still get MLS in the city but his baseball team just may not be going to Beaverton if a deal doesn’t go through. I don’t see him hanging a MLS bid out to dry over a baseball stadium in another town.

But as we have seen with this bid nothing is as clear as it sounds in the press. We’ll probably continue to see more of this story in the coming weeks.

Much of the financing responsibility for this stadium construction plan, the third to come to the council since March, falls on Paulson. He will contribute $8 million in cash and prepay $11.1 million in rent and ticket taxes to the city for years eight through 25.

“Basically, sports spectators are paying for this project,” Adams said. “Getting the cash upfront is reducing the risk. It’s better than a personal guarantee. If the team fails later, you’ve already got the cash upfront.”

The long-awaited deal scales back by more than $6 million the proposed upgrades from what was previously envisioned to fit within available funding sources. Paulson said some planned seating arrangements and press box changes would probably be cut back or eliminated, but he said it would take weeks to determine the impact of the shifting budget on the construction plan.

“I need a facility that works, but I need to recognize the times that we’re in,” Paulson said. “Ultimately I think it will be a good fan experience.”

You can read more about the whole deal at the link above.

After months of going back and forth and back again it seems the city finally found a way to make all the parties involved happy.

Think we can finally put to bed all of the issues surrounding Portland? Do you think the game with Seattle a couple weeks ago helped push this along a bit with people in the city knowing how important this team is to the community?

Wheeler won’t support the $15 million for PGE Park. Adams is hoping to find another way to get Wheeler on board.

“If people believe that renovating PGE Park again is more important than some of the critical services in our community then that is up to them,” said Wheeler. “But from my perspective, the answer is no.”

More and more these reports make this situation more interesting and troublesome for the league. No wonder we are seeing plenty of reports about Montrel getting in the mix for 2011 again here too. While I still believe we will see Portland in two years, things have to get in place within the next couple months or this bid could see some real San Antonio-like trouble if you know what I mean.

Portland city council has approved a plan to allow both MLS and minor league baseball in the city. PGE Park will get renovated as planned and the baseball team will get their new stadium.

The Portland City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution to support starting negotiations with Merritt Paulson over a financing plan to renovate PGE Park to accommodate a Major League Soccer team.

The move effectively decouples the $37 million PGE Park project from a proposed new $48 million baseball park for Paulson’s minor-league Portland Beavers.

Both the Beavers and Paulson’s minor-league soccer franchise the Portland Timbers share PGE Park. But because MLS requires soccer-specific stadiums for its franchises, Paulson is pursuing separate stadium projects for both clubs.

But efforts to find a location for the baseball park have stalled, leading to concerns that Paulson could miss his Sept. 1 deadline to secure a financing plan for PGE Park. The MLS team would start play in 2011.

Again, hopefully this is the last time we have to go back and forth on this matter. The stadium renovation has been a key issue with the Portland expansion deal and hopefully this matter is coming close to an end and the club can move forward in those renovations.

According to OPB News, the Oregon House approved a $5 million grant to help renovate a PGE Park into a soccer stadium. The money would come from income taxes paid by players and staff of the team.

The bill will now go to the state Senate in Oregon for consideration.

This is all good news as long as everything passes. Funding for the renovations has been a major issue for Portland, even with the bid from the league. No renovations to PGE could mean no soccer but from the sounds of everything the ball in rolling in a good direction to get something done here to help bring a club to Portland.

Merritt Paulson still has some work to do to get his expansion club in order before 2011. (Photo via NYTimes)

Quietly I worry about the expansion bid in Portland. More news continues to come out that stadium issues won’t be resolved.

An article on The Portland Mercury’s website says Portland mayor Sam Adams has withheld an economic study that indicates a new Portland Beavers stadium would actually result in a net job loss.

Merritt Paulson the Timbers owner and expansion leader for Portland is going to have to go back to the drawing boards of some sorts here to get things sorted out. As we know if the Timbers current PGE Park mates the Triple-A Beavers don’t get a new stadium like proposed it could smell trouble fot his expansion bid.

This may be a situation where Don Garber and the league get a little more involved to get this bid to where they need it to be. It could also mean the league and Garber back off on the notion that the club has to be the lone tenent in PGE right away. I know no one wants to see the club share the stadium with the Beavers but it could be an option that need to be looked at the make sure the club does enter the league in a decent manner.

Then again some of this could just be talk to just get things rolling more for the stadium deal in Portland. Either way it does sound like some things need to move fast before it gets out of hand there.

Also the city isn’t in great shape financially, just like most of the country. Their chunk of the bid looks shaky everyday as well.

The Oregonian is reporting on how Merritt Paulson and his group are still looking for some cash.

Paulson and city leaders remain confident they can finish the deal by their Sept. 1 deadline. “It would appear tenuous to most people, I agree with that,” said city Commissioner Randy Leonard, one of the deal’s chief supporters. “It’s not tenuous to me.”

To fill the gap, Paulson is lobbying the Legislature for state aid and hasn’t ruled out seeking federal stimulus funding. Leonard and Portland Mayor Sam Adams say they’re exploring more city urban renewal money and new taxes on booze and food near the soccer team’s home at PGE Park.

Paulson also pledged his “best efforts” to use his family’s deep Wall Street connections to sell the bonds to wealthy investors or corporations. His father, Henry Paulson, is the former treasury secretary and former head of investment bank Goldman Sachs.

“There’s a lot of work to do on all sides,” Adams said. “At this point with these kinds of deals that is not uncommon. What is uncommon is the financial landscape, the world economic crisis.”

…Paulson and the city are left trying to fill a $26.8 million gap.

Paulson, whose family’s net worth has run into the nine figures, said bluntly: “That will not be from me.”

Paulson’s lobbyist, Greg Peden of the Gallatin Public Affairs, is pushing House Bill 2531 in Salem to carve out state income taxes paid by soccer players and executives to support the PGE Park renovation.

Its a shaky time to be asking for money. I’m kind of in the boat as some other blogs out there wondering when some rich third party will step in and help this bid out. Maybe another Drew Carey or Steve Nash type. Who else from Portland is rich and loves the beautiful game? Anyone?

So who can step up to help this club get off the ground here?