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PGE debt, rent back on track

By todd murphy

The Portland Tribune, Mar 18, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

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Several years after former owners of the Portland Beavers and Timbers stopped paying their rent to the city of Portland for PGE Park — after getting $2 million behind in rent payments — the city doesn’t appear to be losing money on the stadium anymore.

With quite a bit of help from a special hotel and rental car tax.

Currently, the city needs a bit more than $3 million a year to make its debt payments on bonds it issued to renovate PGE Park in 2000. The city paid about $33 million of the $38.5 million in renovation costs.

Part of the money generated from a local hotel and rental car tax generates about $2 million a year for the debt payments.

And the current owner of the Beavers and Timbers now is paying about $1.1 million a year to provide the rest of the money needed for debt payments, said David Logsdon, spectator facilities manager for the city of Portland.

“We’re kind of at a break-even point at PGE Park, except for the capital improvements,” Logsdon said.

The city, which owns PGE Park, is responsible for all capital improvements — including, for instance, the recent $1 million it cost to replace the artificial turf at the stadium.

The current owner of the Beavers and Timbers, a group led by Merritt Paulson, pays an $800,000 “license fee” to use the stadium this year. The city gets another $200,000 to $300,000 per year from ticket sales at PGE Park — a fixed amount for most Beavers and Timbers games and a percentage of sales for other events.

The city still is in the red on stadium rent — because of the financial problems of the first post-renovation owners of the Beavers and Timbers, a now-defunct group called Portland Family Entertainment.

The city set a goal of recovering $800,000 of its $2 million loss from PFE in subsequent contracts with Beavers and Timbers owners. So far, the city has recovered $383,000 of that.

— Todd Murphy

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Reader comments

Re: PGE debt, rent back on track

This is disingenous reporting. The new taxes the city invoked have little to do with the stadium, because very few tourists renting hotel and cars are coming to Portland to go to PGE stadium events. The new taxes could have been imposed regardless of whether PGE stadium actually even existed. The stadium renovation investment still remains a significant drag on city finances. This should be the title of the article not the myopic "PGE Debt/Rent back on track."

"Bob Clark"

(email verified)

Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:25 AM

Re: PGE debt, rent back on track

Say what you like, the Beavers games are great family affordable outings, one of the few in town, expecially as far as sporting events go.

Where as the Blazers tickets that you can get for a family of 4 are over priced oh and you are at the very tippy top of the arena so you can't really see anything.

""

(email verified)

Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:35 AM

Re: PGE debt, rent back on track

And for all those " great family affordable outings ", there exists yet another tax.

'nuff said ?

"chris moore"

(email verified)

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:48 AM

Re: PGE debt, rent back on track

just makes me glad we didn't get MLB here - The City of Portland can't even be honest and run a minor league stadium. I guess they can create a couple of new taxes, and then call PGE a success (and don't think for a moment they wouldn't either)