Posted Sep 6, 2023, 6:55 PM
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Moderator
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Portland
Posts: 7,529
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Quote:
Portland Music Promoters Dread the City’s Big Plans for a Live Nation Invasion
Portland remains the only large American city without a Live Nation venue, for now.
![](https://wweek-wweek-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/jVcSwadPKhNRpslcr5VOGWmkgAo=/800x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/wweek/V6S5YOYUFBCBNK7DCEKKEWWJPE.jpg)
At first glance, it looks like a great deal for a town that needs a jump-start.
A developer would build a new music venue seating almost 4,000. Building the ballroom would create 411 jobs paying out $35 million in wages. Once it’s complete, the owners would pay almost $600,000 in property taxes each year. Hotels, still hurting from the pandemic, would fill 5,000 rooms a year with those about to rock.
All of this would happen on a piece of vacant land on Southeast Water Avenue, just north of the Hawthorne Bridge, bringing more life to a neighborhood beset by blight. Best of all, maybe, when Wilco plays Bend, they might not skip Portland.
All of this is described in a draft study commissioned by Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, which owns the land and is pushing the project. The developer is Beam Development. The builder is Colas Construction. Both are local, and Colas is Black-owned.
“As outlined in this report, the proposed development is projected to have a range of economic and fiscal impacts in the city of Portland and Multnomah County,” says the study, newly obtained by WW. “The impacts include new employment, payroll, spending with vendors on construction and operations, new tax revenue, and indirect and induced economic activity.”
So what’s the problem? Two words: Live Nation.
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...continues at Willamette Week.
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