Certainly not the 'Couv, unless someone cares to build a stadium here. The proposal to pay for it died at the hands of the county council, and if they hadn't killed it, the city would have. The Clark County ballpark is gone, and it ain't coming back.

I saw something the other day about a baseball team for Milwaukie, OR but can't find it again today....
I guess this is the reason for the mystery train?

Portland Native,
Makes sense for those who want the mystery train, and if they can get the people of Milwaukie to "really want" a baseball team, then they have the public support for the light rail!

Remember trying to "sell" the stadium to the Lents people, and enough people who live in Lents didn't buy giving up their URA money for the stadium or giving up their park land for the project. I believe there were some on the URA committee and others who would have gone along with Leonard's plan, but a good example of how a community worked to defeat that plan.

Maybe I'm too hopeful, but I don't see the citizenry in Clackamas County in general, or in the city of Milwaukie, going along with an Urban Renewal District funding scheme for a baseball stadium.

Nonny Mouse,
I hope so too, that the citizenry in Clackamas County won't go along with these schemes. Looks like Portland "went first" and the outlying areas can see what has happened here, that should be the driving force for them to fight as hell for their area.

I will add that I think more people in Portland, need to stop laying back about the agenda here and fight for our livability too, what is left anyway.

How about looking up in Slav Town...up around Vaughn Street? Used to be a pretty popular area for baseball in Portland.

No, the entire northwest quadrant of town is being reserved for apartment bunkers. No room for anything else.

yes, the Milwaukie ruse to force ODOT to vacate their long-standing facility right alongside McLoughlin Boulevard to vacate it for a publicly-financed ball park.

It appears that the Milwaukie Mayor/TriMet manager has figured out that using transportation dollars for non-transportation projects ought to be applied to the baseball field too. Instead of using that land for either ODOT's purposes until ODOT decides it should be surplus, or industrial land (which it is zoned for, being located between an expressway and a railroad).

If OR follows WA's lead, the big OLCC warehouses might become available... and they're right there on the north edge of Milwaukee. Just might be big enough for a 4-6K baseball stadium.

It's interesting around SE Clinton and 26th young college age and slightly older folks have been playing softball at the barebones baseball field set up at Hosford Middle School. The games are low key co-ed type with some of the players puffing on cigarettes while out in the field. Baseball is not dead even in avantgarde Portlandia. But I think the track record for professional baseball in Portlandia speaks loudly to not pursuing public spending on new baseball stadiums and such. Nothing wrong with keeping it low key in the school yards.

Hockey might actually be our next major league sport. Word is a multi-millionaire with Canadian Tarsands related monies bought the Valley Ice Rink out on Canyon road with the idea of developing local hockey talent; and this same guy is big into hockey and is active around the Portland scene; and he has an eye towards financing a major league hockey team in Portland. Might dovetail with the activist stump town city council's pathology of always looking for new ways to blow new construction monies...this time on the likes of the memorial coliseum renovation.

Only time I was to a Winter Hawk game was when a young gal at the office invited me to come with her to a game at the Memorial Coliseum. I got to see a bloody fight on the ice, and then, a hockey game broke out.

Bob, the guy you are talking about is Bill Gallacher who owns the Winterhawks now, as well as Valley Ice Arena (now known as Winterhawks Skating Center). He has been rumored to be looking to buy an NHL team and most recently tried to buy the Dallas Stars if reports were correct. (though that deal fell apart.) I wouldn't be surprised to see Portland get an NHL team in the next 2 - 3 years, and Gallacher being involved in some capacity.

http://www.winterhawks.com/page/bill-gallacher

http://www.oregonlive.com/hawks/index.ssf/2010/07/winterhawks_owner_bill_gallach_1.html

re a Portland hockey team, i recall the talk that it was an obvious move for Paul Allen to buy a team (from Pittsburgh?) to take up much of the empty Rose Garden time, plus to sell the game time etc to (any)the cable company he owns (ed)

Nobody here wants to watch minor league baseball. Who on earth would fund a stadium at this point? Nobody in Portland wants it, Beaverton doesn't want it, Vancouver doesn't want it. I doubt Milwaukie will pay for it either.

As for hockey, it seems like NHL only makes sense here if Paul Allen is involved. I don't think a professional hockey team can play at Memorial Coliseum, and any hockey team that shares the Rose Garden with the Blazers will be treated like second class citizens unless Allen has a buy in. I know Allen would profit from rent, but he'd (probably rightly) see the new hockey team as competition for sports dollars in this town.

Sorry to say it; but Portland is a rotten place to play baseball. Rain halfway through the season and wet, soggy fields. Even the Oregon & Washington college teams play a large part of their early season schedules in Nevada, California and Arizona where it's dry and sunny.
And most AAA baseball parks now seat at least 8-9000 in the Pacific AAA Division.

Portland Native,
This may be the article you were referring to.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=132509558932131400

A decision on a new baseball stadium proposed in Milwaukie’s North Industrial Area is on deck.

Milwaukie’s City Council plans a special meeting Monday, Jan. 9, to discuss the proposal. Community Development Director Kenny Asher said the council discussion “is going to be a big production — a decision point for the council.”

Sorry to say it; but Portland is a rotten place to play baseball. Rain halfway through the season and wet, soggy fields.

All the more reason for a top-of-the-line baseball stadium with retractable roof for year-round play, and seating for 50,000.

And we'll take it a step further - put it next to a railroad line, start a commuter rail service with the baseball stadium having its own dedicated station. (California Speedway, in Ontario, California, does have a dedicated train station for race day; the two stadiums in Seattle are next to the Sound Transit line and prominently feature game-day train service, and Sound Transit heavily advertises its services within the stadium.)