Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 3:12pm PST | Modified: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 3:25pm
Portland Business Journal - by Wendy Culverwell Business Journal staff writer
The Portland Trail Blazers launched a campaign Tuesday to build public support for a plan to remake the 36-acre Rose Quarter as an entertainment-themed district alive with activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Blazers organization is teaming with The Cordish Co., a privately-held California developer that has created similar districts in Kansas and Baltimore and currently is developing more in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
Trail Blazers President Larry Miller said the organization began re-evaluating the Rose Quarter about 18 months ago after concluding it hadn’t lived up to its original vision. Restaurants and entertainment venues that opened there closed for lack of business when the signature venues, the Rose Garden and Memorial Coliseum, were dark. The two facilities host about 300 events each year, translating to activity on the campus about 250 days out of the year.
Miller said the team wants to work with the city of Portland to create a uniquely local entertainment district, with sustainability driving re-development plans.
“It would be the first green entertainment center in the country,” he said.
Miller said Nike Inc. is interested in constructing an interactive museum at the site to tell its company story.
J.E. Isaac, the Blazers’ senior vice president for business affairs, said the Rose Quarter has about 10 undeveloped acres as well as four acres on the Willamette River that it purchased in 1992. The site once held a hotel, long since demolished and now ready for re-development.
Accessing the river is key, said Port Telles, development director for The Cordish Co., a fourth-generation family owned development business with headquarters in West Sacramento, Calif.
“Our motto is: ‘Water is magic,’” he said.
The re-development plan currently does not include taking over the busy grain terminal that separates the Rose Quarter from the Willamette to the north of the Steel Bridge. The owners have said they don’t want to sell, Miller said.
The re-development team emphasizes that talks are preliminary and the public will have plenty of time to scrutinize any changes made at the Rose Quarter.
Generally, the redevelopment would add entertainment venues, office space, residences, restaurants and night clubs. Memorial Coliseum, the under-used arena owned by the city, will be studied for possible demolition and redevelopment. Any major change would be careful to respect the military veterans for whom the facility was named.
Any project would involve financial support from the city, most likely through the Portland Development Commission, which invests in public projects by issuing bonds repaid with taxes collected within local areas.
Funds would be provided by The Cordish Co, which self-finances its projects, Telles said.
The Rose Quarter is part of the Oregon Convention Center Urban Renewal Area and the original Rose Quarter development was financed through similar public-partner arrangements.
Miller and Isaac said the Rose Quarter re-development project will suit another PDC effort to bolster the Oregon Convention Center by constructing a 600-room “headquarters hotel” to the north and east of the Rose Quarter.
Isaac said the Blazers are long-standing supporters of the headquarters hotel effort. Transforming the Rose Quarter into an all-hours destination will be good for its neighbor.
“Our project would bring new conventions to the convention center,” he said.
In addition to the Trail Blazers and The Cordish Co., the project team includes the Trail Blazers’ owner, Vulcan Inc., and AEG, the subsidiary of the Anschutz Co. that manages entertainment venues. It may play a role in developing a portion of the Rose Quarter project.
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