Portland Readies Bid for Expos

Portland, Ore., became a player in the race to nab the Montreal Expos earlier this week with the passage of a jobs bill in the State Legislature that would set aside $150 million for a new ballpark. The Oregon House, which had passed the bill twice already, ratified an amended version.

The City of Portland now must identify how it will pay for its piece of the ballpark financial puzzle. The project could cost anywhere from $300 million to $350 million, depending on where in the city the open-air ballpark is built. There are seven sites, and the public vetting of each site is expected to begin almost immediately, said David Kahn, the leader of the Oregon Stadium Campaign.

Portland now must not only figure out a way to pay its share of the ballpark project, it must retire the approximately $22 million in debt outstanding on PGE Park, the minor-league facility that was renovated three years ago for the financially ailing Triple-A Beavers. That stadium would act as an interim stop for the Expos before the new ballpark is ready in 2007.

To pay for the new ballpark, the city is eyeing a tax or surcharge on baseball tickets, plus a "modest" charter seat license program at the new stadium as the main funding vehicles, Kahn said. Under any charter seat program, season ticket holders would pay a set price up front for their seats with the right to perpetually purchase tickets in the same location every year.

If I were the folks in Portland, I would be asking myself: "Can we really afford this deal?" Maybe the Portland stadium should be one of the properties rolled into the REIT I described earlier for Cleveland's proposed convention center. Does anyone know if the Portland folks have considered a private financing strategy for the proposal ballpark?

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