[babs]

Both of you guys are both right and wrong.

The reason there are so many graduation and other events during late April, May and June at the Memorial Coliseum is that the Blazers are required by the NBA to leave many of the dates available in case the Blazers make it to the NBA finals. Every NBA arena has to deal with this requirement. The dates open up after they either fail to make the playoffs or get eliminate but that's too late to fill dates. There was a time when Portland graduations were held at Keller Auditorium. Not sure when it's not used for that anymore. Also keep in mind the new PSU arena is coming online soon. There's also the Chiles Center.

Fright Night is at the Coliseum events center because it's centrally located and the rent is cheap. It's a terrible space for most events and the Expo Center and Convention Center compete for that space.

A lot of the smaller, lightly attended events could also go to the Convention Center. They have the bleachers to easily set up a 3000-5000 seat arena in their halls. As for the Grand Floral Parade, notice that most of the seats inside were empty?

Without a pro or college sports team as a resident tenant, the business case to restoring the Coliseum as a sports arena is weak. I just don't see it.

Don't get me wrong, I think the glass box is a pretty cool building but I wish we'd expand the conversation to see what else we can do with the interior beyond a sports arena. We've got enough clever developers in town to figure out something new and exciting.