Isaac Laquedem

An examination in economics for the Portland City Council

On which did the government of the City of Portland work harder and spend more time and money: (a) helping Merritt Paulson move the soccer franchise from one soccer league to another, or (b) persuading Columbia Sportswear to retain its corporate headquarters in the city?

Extra credit question: How many persons will the promoted Portland Timbers employ within the City, net of the jobs lost when the Portland Beavers fold or move away?  How many persons would Columbia Sportswear have employed within the City if the company had not moved to Beaverton when it couldn't get straight answers from the Portland zoning people?  Compare these two numbers with the respective efforts put forth by the City, and explain any difference.

Bring UP the curtain on Memorial Coliseum

Professor Bogdanski linked to this essay by William P. Macht, Associate Director of the Center for Real Estate at Portland State University, in which Professor Macht gives a number of alternate uses for Memorial Coliseum (not to mention simply using the building for its intended purpose) and makes a compelling case for not tearing it down. 

I was struck by one sentence on page 6 of Professor Macht's article, where he writes of the interior bowl of the Coliseum, "The blackening curtains that surround the bowl when darkening was needed are no longer operable and are left closed, thereby depriving the interior of the benefit of daylight."  I'd nearly forgotten about this unusual design feature of the Coliseum: all around the rim of the bowl are blackout curtains that could be raised to let in light, or lowered to keep the arena dark.  (See the picture at the bottom of page 19 for the Coliseum's appearance inside when the curtains are open.)  

The question that came to my mind is to ask why the curtains "are no longer operable."  Were they operable when the City turned management of Memorial Coliseum over to Paul Allen's Oregon Arena Corp.?  And if the curtains worked then, is it through the neglect or active fault of Oregon Arena Corp. that they don't work now?  And if it is the fault of Oregon Arena Corp. that the curtains don't work now, does the City have the right to declare Oregon Arena Corp. in breach of its management contract and to take back control of the building?  Just wondering.

Who's the bigger draw: Beavers or Winter Hawks?

I've spent the last few days combing through references to the paid attendance for the last few seasons at the Portland Beavers baseball games and the Portland Winter Hawks hockey games.  Each team seems to have poor attendance and good excuses. 

The thought that occurred to me is that if the Winter Hawks outdraw the Beavers (which might be possible) then it doesn't make sense to tear down the hockey team's home to put in a baseball field.  But as I'm not a fan of professional sports, I might just be carping to the converted.

What to name the seemingly inevitable baseball field on the Memorial Coliseum site

Allowing that Memorial Coliseum has its problems and needs some repair work, I remember when coliseums had nicknames instead of sponsored names.  Memorial Coliseum didn't have a cute nickname.  One local radio announcer (I think it was Bill Anderson, who called the Buckaroos games on KPOK 1330) occasionally called it the Glass Palace, after its most prominent architectural feature.  He (or whoever called it the Glass Palace) took some flak from members of the public, who rightly thought that it would be inappropriate to call a memorial to fallen soldiers by a cute nickname.  (Imagine your reaction to someone calling the Vietnam Memorial in the nation's capitol something like "the Tall Wall.")

I could picture replacing Memorial Coliseum with a baseball field (though I think it's a scandalous waste of money) if the memorial wall next to the Coliseum is preserved in some somber location on the site and the field is called Memorial Field. 

Not Exxon Field.  Not Nike Field.  Not Goldman Sachs Field.

Memorial Field. 

How I know that the City's projections for the Triple-A ballpark are wrong

The easy way to demonstrate that Portland will lose money on the proposed triple-A baseball stadium is that if it could be run at a profit, Gerding Edlen or Williams & Dame would be proposing to build and own it.

Schmalz on the slopes; or, Dr. H. Clagett Harding didn't just walk his dog

Whenever it snows in Portland, I recall the late Dr. H. Clagett Harding (known more pronounceably to his friends as Larry) and his family's dog. 

Dr. and Mrs. Harding and their children liked to ski.  They owned a cabin near Mount Hood.  They also owned a dachshund, which they named Schmalz.

If you own a dog, and you ski, what do you do with your dog when you go skiing?  You can leave Fido at home, or at your cabin, or you can do what the Hardings did:  teach Fido, or in this case Schmalz, to ski.  Schmalz learned to ski at age 1-1/2 and remained a skier for most of the rest of his 15 years, heading down the slopes in Oregon, California, and even in Europe.  No snowy winter in Portland was complete without a photograph in the Oregonian of Dr. Harding and his skiing dog Schmalz, schussing down a street in the West Hills. 

Dr. Harding died in 1979, and Schmalz went to the Big Slope in 1981.  Since then I haven't read of any other skiing dogs in the area.  The famous St. Bernards at Timberline Lodge don't ski.  Portland could use another skiing dog, even if only to show our commitment to multimodal transportation.

Isaac survives Quebecois curling

The leaders of a business group that I joined some years ago convene every fall to plan for the upcoming year.  Each gathering features one or two special events.  (For example, a Washington meeting included dinner in the halls of the Supreme Court.)  This year's meeting, in Montreal, included a reception at the Royal Montreal Curling Club, with a chance for anyone who wished to sample the sport of curling.  Curling is played on a long court, maybe the length of a bowling lane, with concentric circles at each end.  The markers are round heavy stones with handles embedded in the top.  Each team gets eight stones.  The object is to slide the stones from one end to the other and have them come to rest in the circles, and to knock the other team's stones from the circles.

The only catch is that it's played on ice, without any devices to enhance traction.  The effect when novices (such as I) play it is rather like shuffleboard redesigned by orthopedists who need more business.  The goal of my fellow players and I was not so much to score (most of the teams didn't) as simply to not fall down in front of so many of one's professional colleagues.  The three young Quebecois instructors must have worked before with unathletic groups such as ours; they worked hard to maintain their straight faces at our pratfalls.  I think I'll stick to more sedentary amusements.

Judge to Cubs fans: "This Bud's for view"

When Tom Gramatis bought a building near Chicago's Wrigley Field this June, the purchase included a rooftop advertisement for Budweiser, for which, apparently, the beer giant pays more than $300,000 a year in rent.   

One side effect of the Cubs' success this season is that Mr. Gramatis is more aware of the value of the sign than he perhaps was when he bought the building.  This fall, when the Budweiser people didn't pay the rent on time, Mr. Gramatis draped a tarpaulin over the advertisement.   Anheuser-Busch did the honorable thing and sued him, saying that the only reason they hadn't paid him was that he hadn't sent them a bill, and last week a Chicago judge gave Anheuser-Busch permission to remove the tarpaulin.    Three hours later, the beer people had the sign uncovered again.  "With any luck, I'll see the sign when the White Sox play the Cubs in the World Series," the judge said.

Thanks to the Chicago Tribune for the story, which you can read in full here.  The image is swiped from ballparkroadtrip.com and dates from 2000.

Isaac proposes another campaign pledge

Let's ask the Portland City Council, Metro, and the Multnomah County Commission to take the temperance pledge: not one dollar for building or upgrading regional sports facilities and convention centers until the Sellwood Bridge is replaced.

George Douglas (1924-2008) and the Sauvie Island Golf Course

Once upon a time, in the mid-1980s, a man named (if I remember rightly) McCutcheon approached a farmer and orchardist named George Douglas with a sporting proposition.  "How would you like," asked Mr. McCutcheon, "to sell me 150 of your acres, where I can build a golf course?  I can pay a lot more per acre than what farmland is selling for."  "Fine with me," said Mr. Douglas, and they struck a deal that was conditioned on Mr. McCutcheon getting approval from the county land use people to put a golf course on the Douglas family's farmland.  Once Mr. McCutcheon had his land use approval, he would buy the land, and the Douglases would get their money. 

The only hitch was that the Douglas acres were not just any farmland (land-use-wise), but were in the middle of Sauvie Island, the most protected patch of farmland in Multnomah County.  (Cynics might say that the county protects it not so much for farmers as for bicyclists, but that's a story for a later time.)  Mr. McCutcheon, who was only 25 years old at the time, had the good sense to stay in the background and to ask Mr. Douglas to present his case to the county planning commission. 

Mr. Douglas, who died this week at age 84, had dirt under his nails and a sort of "aw, shucks" air to him, and he had little trouble getting the county planning commission and then the county commission to approve the project.  The county planning staff did ask how much traffic the golf course would generate, and Mr. Douglas, backstopped by one of the local traffic experts, gave some numbers, based on Mr. McCutcheon's projections of how many people would come to Sauvie Island to golf. 

Not too long afterward, Mr. McCutcheon realized that he had made a mistake.  An area of 150 acres was enough for a golf course, clubhouse, and restaurant, but it wouldn't be enough to allow the golf course to host a tournament, because the spectators would need room to stand and their cars would need room to park.  Another 50 acres would do the trick and work quite nicely.

So Mr. McCutcheon came back to the county to ask for permission to make the course 200 acres, instead of 150 acres.  (George Douglas had land to spare.)  In the meantime, County Executive Gladys McCoy had appointed Mr. Douglas to the county planning commission, the body that was to vote on the application.  When the time came for the hearing, Mr. Douglas stepped down from the dais, walked around to the microphone, and presented Mr. McCutcheon's case.  This time, however, the county staff said "no," telling the commission that the traffic study for the golf course covered only golfers and people eating at the restaurant, but didn't make any allowance for spectators.  As Mr. McCutcheon didn't have any evidence that the island's two-lane roads could handle the spectators that would come to a tournament (think about what Scholls Ferry Road is like when Portland Golf Club hosts the Fred Meyer Classic), the county couldn't approve adding 50 more acres for the spectators.

The Knower of All Things says that the planning commissioners later told Mr. Douglas that they were sorry they had to turn him down.  "That's all right," he said, "McCutcheon already bought the 150 acres."  Later on, Mr. Douglas brought in some peaches from his farm and passed them around to the other commissioners and the planning staff.

The golf course was never built, and the land is farmed to this day.  George Douglas enjoyed another 20 years of growing corn and selling peaches.  I haven't heard what happened to the developer.