The City Council will hold one more public meeting Wednesday with the mayor and Paulson present and then the council will vote next week to plan deadlines and schedule financing, etc. September 1st is the deadline for Portland to propose the details for the financing and renovating of PGE Park as well as have a plan in place for the Beavers new home. If they fail to provide an adequate solution, MLS will pass the bid to another city
Now, I'm not sure how much of a MLS insider Wynter Kaiser is (although I'm pretty sure that in the history of sport there has never been an insider that replaces "Is" with "Ys" in the spelling of their name), but it is interesting to see reports coming out of Portland that are suggesting the possibility of the bid being pulled.
It seems unlikely -- the league will work hard to avoid the optics of it if nothing else -- but still...
When the stadium plan was approved last month there was a shortfall of about $15 million (others have pegged it higher). The city still hasn't agreed on how to find that money and there is a possibility that the project could get delayed.
And with Montreal once again lurking in the shadows...I think everyone in Portland and MLS will be happy to see the shovel go into the ground on this project.
3 comments:
Nice, ... Ottawa and Montreal be ready.
This isn't the first time that it's been reported that the bid might be pulled. There's been rumblings about that in Portland ever since it came out that the shortfall is closer to $26 million and not $15 million. I don't know what MLS could do at this point to prevent this from happening if the city of Portland itself would be blocking the move. It would be a lot easier and less messy to just hand the bid to someone else.
"Nice, ... St. Louis and Montreal be ready."
Fixed!
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