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:
“[With the Union saved] its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the knowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)