Portland’s crown jewel or a clunker?

Coliseum languishes as the city debates its uses

By Jeanie Senior

The Portland Tribune, Mar 5, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

A Portland Trail Blazer executive warned this week that city leaders need to hurry up and decide the future of the aging Memorial Coliseum.

Mayor Vera Katz Ñ who rejected several Coliseum re-use proposals last year Ñ wants the Coliseum’s future to be determined by the end of the year. According to her spokesman Scott Farris, the mayor, with an advisory committee, “has been reviewing a variety of potential uses for Memorial Coliseum.”

The proposals range from converting the contemporary glass-walled building to a recreation complex to installing one or more big-box retailers, such as Costco. Others, like Portland Winter Hawks President and General Manager Ken Hodge, want to see the Coliseum restored to its former glory.

A final decision rests with City Council.

“Yes, we’re aware of the maintenance needs,” Farris said. “They have been deferred while we go through this process of deciding what the possible uses are for Memorial Coliseum.”

Katz wants to move quickly to a decision, he said. “Obviously we don’t want it to get too run down, but we’re hesitant to make major capital investments at this time until we know what we want to do with the property.”

The mayor has promised veterans that she would not allow the coliseum, built as a veterans memorial, to be torn down.

Any decision will be unaffected by last week’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Oregon Arena Corp., which has managed the city-owned facility since 1993.

“It can’t really languish much longer,” said J.E. Isaac, senior vice president for business affairs with the Blazers organization. “The Coliseum is very much in need of capital repair right now, and we’ve been delaying that while the city makes up its mind.”

On a recent tour, he recited a litany of the 43-year-old building’s problems. The roof leaks. The heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems are antiquated and balky.

The lighting system, controlled by a panel that looks as if it came from a World War II-era bomber, needs regular attention. The concrete flooring is patched in places where the ice-making system underneath has been repaired. The ceiling is stained and dirty, but because of its construction, it’s virtually impossible to clean. The seating is shabby.

Daylight shows through splits and holes in the black curtain that hangs above the seating area, there to block light from the Coliseum’s glass exterior walls. “We don’t even patch it any more, it just makes bigger holes,” Isaac said.

As for the leaky roof, it’s close to needing replacement.

Little repairs add up

“We spend a lot of money just doing these case-by-case repairs,” Isaac said. “That’s why the city has to make a decision soon. If we’re going to keep running it as an arena, we’re going to have to replace some things. É The real question is, does the city want to put in the $7 million to $10 million it’s going to have to spend to keep this going? There’s really no opportunity to ever recoup the money.”

Spending city money to maintain Memorial Coliseum as a secondary arena “is just not done,” Isaac said. “Most other places where there’s been a secondary arena, they’ve torn it down or converted it to some other use.”

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