Alternatives abound for coliseum’s future

SECOND OPINION • A local urban planning expert offers other options for proposed makeover of Memorial Coliseum

By William P. Macht

The Portland Tribune, Jul 4, 2003, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Recent news stories have indicated that the choices for future use of Memorial Coliseum have boiled down to what an Oregonian editorial described as the “pie in the sky” athletic complex proposal recently put forth in the Tribune (Revive Memorial Coliseum as new athletic complex, Insight, May 30) and the “ham sandwich” Home Depot-Costco retail center.

That menu is too limited and the palate, the place and the public deserve more options.

Over a year ago, I taught a three-month development planning workshop in my class of graduate urban planning and development students in the College of Urban & Public Affairs at Portland State University. We produced four alternative uses for the coliseum that deserve consideration Ñ a headquarters hotel, an arts complex, a sustainable technology center and an urban home center.

In an effort to inform the public debate and assist public policy decision makers, here is a brief summary of the four adaptive reuse plans. Please note that although each of the four proposals incorporates a veteran’s memorial as part of the project, that discussion is excluded here.

Headquarters hotel

At the intersection of three light-rail lines, the two main interstate highways and the high-speed rail corridor, and served by more than 12 bus routes within Fareless Square, a 650-room headquarters hotel built within the glass box would permit conventioneers to take light rail straight from the airport to their hotel and convention center and easily go downtown.

When intercity high-speed rail is built, the hotel’s west side would become the front door to Portland.

Reusing the enormous glass box, measuring 3 1/4 blocks square and more than seven stories high, the project is conceived as a hotel inside a botanic garden.

Unlike enclosed central atrium hotels, four glazed-corner atria would look out over the city and across the Willamette, each forming a microclimate representing the diversity of Oregon biomes.

Every room would have a view. Cafes and restaurants would fill the base of each atrium and would become inviting places open to the public 24 hours a day Ñ much more accessible than even wholly public uses.

Unlike the potential headquarters hotel sites across Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from the Oregon Convention Center, the coliseum is visible from Interstate 5 and from downtown, primary criteria for hotels. And since a headquarters hotel cannot survive on convention business alone, its short five-minute walk from the convention center through three existing public plazas gives it just enough separation to attract Rose Garden visitors, business travelers and tourists.

The hotel is feasible because the city owns the land, building and parking, which it need not finance; improvements can be financed with tax-exempt revenue bonds, and no new taxes or subsidies are required.

Portland Memorial Arts Center

At a time when Oregon Ballet Theatre, Portland Opera, Portland Center Stage theater company and the Oregon Symphony are entertaining the idea of acquiring or building their own facilities, Memorial Coliseum offers the only site where all four could be accommodated at the lowest capital costs and with the greatest operating savings.

In turn, this could lead the organizations to lower ticket prices, expand the market to younger and less affluent groups and achieve greater solvency Ñ a rare feat among arts organizations.

The Portland Memorial Arts Center could adaptively reuse both the existing bowl as well as the glass box, preserving its architectural heritage. The bowl could be divided into four main spaces housing the major users; there still would be enough space for a variety of other uses in the large complex:

• 2,200-seat symphony hall

• 2,000-seat dance and opera house

• 500-seat dramatic theater

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