Future
It was proposed that Memorial Coliseum be demolished to make room for a 9,000-seat new ballpark for Merritt Paulson’s Portland Beavers baseball team, since the team was moving from PGE Park to make room for the new Portland Timbers Major League Soccer franchise, also a Paulson-owned team. That proposal was dropped early in May 2009 with Lents Park being re-considered as a ballpark site.
Opposition to razing Memorial Coliseum included some veterans and architectural historians who successfully applied for National Register of Historic Places status for the building. Former governor Vic Atiyeh also opposed demolition if it led to the veteran memorial being forgotten. The Memorial Coliseum was given a rank of the highest importance in the city’s historic resource inventory of 1984.
Other proposed uses of the grounds include turning the site into an entertainment district, a recreation center, a retail center, or a multilevel center for arts, athletics, and education. Another possibility is to update and repair the facility to improve its marketability.
However, there had been talk about using two of the outer glass walls as part of the exterior for a new ballpark.
In December 2011, it was announced that the Coliseum will undergo a 30 million dollar renovation, partially paid for by the city and partially by the Winterhawks. The renovations would be completed in the spring and summer of 2012.
Read more about this topic: Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Portland)
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“‘Tis the world-old way of the rain
When it comes to a mountain farm
To exact for a present gain
A little of future harm.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)