It’s been almost four years since Queen Vera of Portlandia snookered her city council and we citizens of her Fantasyland by signing a contract with Portland Family Entertainment to operate a revamped Civic Stadium as PGE Park.  The contract’s details were not spelled out for the edification of the Fantasyland council who blithely approved  the deal Rose City mayor Vera Katz had made.  It soon became apparent in the first few months of the new PGE Park operation that the financial forecasts by the initial contractors were not only insufficent, but ludicrous.

Photo of Vera Katz by Jayne Carroll

Minor league baseball, soccer and a struggling Portland State football program all contributed heavily to the first year’s shortfall at ol’ PGE Park.  The local investors who followed our mayor’s lead soon realized that Portland Family Entertainment principals had grossly inflated their projectons and vastly underestimated their losses.  The investors’ demand for a contractor replacement was heeded as this second year of Park operation began this spring.  The new operators have a profitable history of operating minor league athletic enterprises in the midwest and east, but well into their first year of running the late (and now lamented) Civic Stadium, the new contractors have failed with their projections, leaving everyone still unhappy and unpaid.

Mayor Katz has just quietly approved the hiring of an independent attorney (Steve Janik of Ball, Janik LLC) to review the city’s star crossed contract with the current PGE Park operators…at a cost of close to $60,000 in fees.  This is certainly far cheaper than a single one of those new downtown (and seldom ridden) streetcars for which the mayor successfully lobbied  It does, however, raise the question as to why the city attorney, already on the taxpayer payroll, has been unable to allay Mayor Vera’s current ball park troubles. 

Sound proposal ignored

And this ongoing fiasco at our remodeled arena does remind one of the fact that a very well connected, thoroughly researched proposal for a major league stadium facility was ignored by Vera in favor of selecting the original Portland Family Entertainment bid, honchoed by one Marshall Glickman, son of Harry, coordinator of the initial Portland Trailblazer NBA franchise that brought this city a national championship.  Harry’s offspring Marshall made many enemies after inheriting a Blazer management mantle under the new Paul Allen ownership, which finally dispensed with his services.

Unfortunately, Marshall stayed in town to conjure up a flawed PGE Park proposal only a mayor could love.  And thanks to the never ending fantasies that seem to spring from our city hall, Rose City citizens are still stuck with it.  Well, it’s a nice little park for PSU and prep football.  Now, if only those activities could cause  turnstile spinning…it’s a cinch that won’t come with AAA baseball and the dregs of pro soccer.  A centrally located arena well served by our transit system could have been designed to attract major league athletic activity…a concept that blew right past the mayor’s chair.  City hall under its current leadership is a deterrent to encouraging economic development.  The lady in charge of Fantasyland is a fancier of the arts and the underprivileged in our society…a proponent of spending government dollars on things that don’t return money.  It is far past time to bring reality to the conduct of our civic government.

The urgency of that statement is easily summed up with City Hall's recent proposal to purchase and operate Portland General Electric...a proposal undoubtedly inspired by the sterling moves our civic seers have made to date concerning PGE Park! 

Related story: Dysfunctional City Government

© 2002 Oregon Magazine  Top photo links to Portland city website.