Mrs. Fonzi was given tickets to a suite for last nights game. So we went... My question is, how can Little Lord Paulson and his band of minions claim a sellout, when the top quarter of the grandstand seats were covered with a green tarp, making them unuseable ????????????

Thanks for the info -- I wondered about that. The capacity of PGE for soccer and baseball is listed as 19,566. Last night's attendance was given as 16,382.

It's amazing that the Paulson lease with the city allows him to hold events and block off seats. Especially when, if you believe the soccer nuts, there were thousands of eager spectators turned away.

Prevailing Wage - Yes
No-bid contract - Yes
Chance of being within budget - None

No one knows the cost of this project by the time it is thru.

BTW - For you conspiracy types, some eerie similarities between Paulson and Marshall Glickman (PFE fame) both:
- Have powerful fathers
- Want to establish their own identity
- Want CoP to pour at least $30M into PGE Park
- Have zero budgeting accuracy
- Wanted to build a single-sport park
- Said their sport is going to be the next big thing and a guaranteed money-maker
- Had City Council shove this thru without any analysis

The only diff between the two is Paulson hasn't officially burned CoP yet. When will the clowns in local govt learn?

I believe they tarp off the top most seats because the concourse at PGE Park cannot deal with that many people during an event.

I was at the game last night too and can say that virtually all the uncovered seats were occupied (a few dozen in the corners were empty, but given that a bunch of people are down in the beer garden not occupying their seats, that's not surprising). I was pretty pissed about the seats being covered too, since I had to have someone wait in line for me at 5pm to pick up two of the 400 tickets which were released for sale before the match.

I dunno about "thousands" of people being turned away, but hundreds would certainly seem reasonable. $15 GA tickets were being scalped for $50 outside the park when I walked over an hour prior to kickoff.

I want to second Soul; PGE Park decided to close off some of the top seats to avoid concourse congestion.

by the way bojack, for all your anger about the mls deal, having 16000 fans show up for a minor league soccer game on a wednesday night (with 80% of those tickets sold out a day before the game) seems to disprove all the stuff people comment on your blog. Perhaps Portland can support the timbers afterall. I appreciate your watchdog status on keeping tabs with the city council, but perhaps throwing a few million into a stadium that contributes to the community's interest in summer sports isn't a terrible thing.

"having 16000 fans show up for a minor league soccer game on a wednesday night (with 80% of those tickets sold out a day before the game) seems to disprove all the stuff people comment on your blog."

Not when they only had 5000 show up a few weeks back another game. Basing future perf on one-game attendance figures is like giving Rasheed a 7-year deal for one good playoff series.

"perhaps throwing a few million into a stadium that contributes to the community's interest in summer sports"

I believe we did that about 9 years ago to the tune of $35M and we're still paying for it.

Except for the fact that the field is set up for soccer, that photo looks like the 7th inning of a Beavers game with an announced attendance of 5,000.

I think it's time to get sensible here. Long past time. What I saw last night on TV was a downtown stadium working as a venue for soccer, just as it has since Pele played there in his last competitive match also against the Seattle Sounders. By the way, I was at that Cosmos match in person. I'm a soccer fan.

The reason - in my opinion - that they're not giving the plan out is that Paulson wants to add seats on the far side and that will need some kind of roof. Even then, the fans will be staring into the sun for quite awhile but at least they won't get wet. That leads to a real problem. Unless it sort of resembles the roof that's already there, it will look like a home-improvement project gone bad, and making it look substantial is going to take some serious bucks. We could always go the cheap route and put a tin cover on some poles, but this is about looking good right? This is about ambience.

As with all city council projects the 33 million dollar number is - in my opionion - a joke. If they just improved what we have with better and more amenities, and better actual individual seats, we could go through that much. And I'm not impressed that Paulson has agreed to pay the cost overruns. I predict we'll get squeezed into paying much more or the council will pull an elaborate scheme out of thin air, where we shovel money to Paulson in exchange for him paying the cost overruns.

However, if we remain sensible here, we can avoid all that. And this way we would still have a baseball team playing there all those dates. Soccer has to realize Portland woke up today talking about Hedo Turkoglu. Save your league by not sinking too much money into things you don't really have to do. After last night, MLS would be nuts to turn away from us. We have the leverage.

What also really bothered me is all the times I've heard about the game looking good on TV. That will not really change with the permanent seats to the East. The "Money Shot" is facing west. PGE Park looks great on TV facing west. It's impressive. The crowd would have been in every shot especially at the end where the Timber Army has set up camp. All we have to do is establish a little covered media place and point the cameras towards the west. The shadows are not a problem. The field and the stands were all in the same light. It was the east side past the pitch that was blazing bright and drew too much attention on TV. Leave the empty parts as family picnic areas or for folding chairs, but keep the baseball.

Keep it simple. Keep both teams. Save a fortune, and more importantly, don't let them screw us over again as they did with the Tram, South Waterfront, and a dozen other scams including the LAST TIME we did this with PGE Park.

Finally, to the "fan" who clocked the injured Seattle player with a water bottle, and to the fan who got tasered, and to the fans who were arrested, thanks for enhancing our international reputation. We really needed that.

That scalpers were making $50 per ticket suggests a way that Sam, Randy and Dan could pay the $3-4 million that the city looses on PGE park each year. All they need to do is stand outside the game and scalp about 5,000 tickets per game and we'll break even. Of course after upgrading the park they'll have to sell two or three times that number.

Paulson did the right thing by only opening up 16,400 tickets.

The concourse is not large enough to handle an extra 3,000 people without leaving many with an uncomfortable experience at the park. The majority of the fans just stayed in their seats last night because they knew how packed it would be trying to get food/drinks or using the restrooms. Each mens bathroom only has like 3 urinals... anything more than 16,000 people would not have been good.

The fact of the matter is with a USL Timbers team against an MLS sounders.. we packed that stadium and the atmosphere was incredible. Not to mention 500 Seattle fans traveling to Portland spending money in our city. Imagine when the Timbers become an MLS team with top level talent and when the front office actually does some substantial marketing. The fact that we sold 16,400 tickets via word of mouth alone is pretty impressive. All you doubters need to just shut it.

Here's how the cost overruns and the city's taxpayers will be shafted.

There's the minimal, undefined project description for PGE Park.

Then there's the loosely defined Agreement between the City and Paulson. Attorney Janik will make sure it has "interpretive" words and clauses that make it seem like everything is covered, but not really.

Then someone will suggest that we have to have a "linchpin", a "statement", "world class", "sustainable" component added to the project after the Agreement signing.

Now we're at the defining moment. Paulson will claim that his assuming "cost overruns" in the Agreement didn't include about every item one could think of as being in all the above-beyond the scope of what he thought was in the project. Randy will fluff his feathers, require mediation, get tough then end up having the taxpayers paying for all the "in the category of costs beyond cost overruns".

Paulson will relent on a few items and come up with $549,000 for brick paver price increases while taxpayers will fork over another $19.9 Million. Randy will claim that "continuing being tough will just cost the city more in the long run in attorney fees, respect, bad press for Portland, plus I want to meet MLS's timeline".

Just like the Tram, The Eastbank Esplanade, the Transit Mall........

Funny how the Little lord Paulson shills who have posted here, fail to remember how well PGE Park handled the 19k plus crowds for the Mariners game played here, and the Womens World Cup matches in its current state..........

What I can't quite understand is why you all hate Paulson so much.

I was at the park 3 hours early and I saw Paulson personally go out to the street with a stack of water bottles handing them out to the people waiting in line for the last batch of tickets.

You all need to give the man a break and stop tying his actions to that of his fathers.

Lee,
I see you've been to this movie before. I also imagine a list of basics that the city is required to provide. I'm winging this here, but this scam has been run many times:

The original money is spent 100% on frills and then Paulson says he doesn't have to pay the cost overruns for the basics because it is our legal obligation to provide them so therefore we are forced to pay for them. This is a murky hunch but I've seen that movie before too:

They use the available money for the fun stuff and then say, "If we don't get more emergency revenue now, basic services will be cut, these prisoners will be released, and third through sixth grade will be cancelled."

In this case, I predict the project uses the big bucks adding onto the stadium and then accuses the city of not providing basic services such as enough bathrooms, etc...Paulson could then say, "You have given me a setting that is a health risk to my customers, and I must sue you if you don't pick up the tab to fix it." Something like that. All speculation of course.

End of movie.
Fade to black. Or make that "Fade to Red" as in Red Ink.

Mike,
I didn't mean to hop your comment like I was ignoring you. The handing out of the water was nice.
I resisted drawing in the Dad until I read that Goldman Sachs is involved by Merritt in the financing here, his Dad is a part owner of the current team, and the money for the franchise - I've been told - also came from his Dad. I don't know that for sure - Merritt has never addressed the financial connections that I've seen. As with the bailout, we are supposed to present the money and not ask any questions.

Meanwhile Goldman Sachs was one of a few firms responsible for the disastrous downturn we continue to be in, and if Matt Taiibi is right Goldman Sachs has been running this bubble-crash cycle for decades.

Mike, I will say one thing: If you got a bottle of water out of this family, you did better than most. The rest of us were busy turning over TARP money to Paulson Senior. Ask yourself why we have to continue shelling out millions/billions/trillions every time a Paulson plan goes into effect? Can't they ever do anything on their own? Are we here as a revenue stream for the rich and powerful? Is this what is destroying America?

And then ask yourself if you're being played by the biggest con artists who ever
walked the face of the earth.

I sure as hell don't get it -- how does a "sellout" of an "unimproved" stadium serve to justify (a) grabbing taxpayer dollars to (b) improve what clearly does not need improving?

For the 1,000th time, nobody had a problem with the Barefoot Lord until he made a pitch for big taxpayer dollars. If he would get his hands out of the till, there's plenty of people who would be happy to support soccer. But as long as we're talking cuts in municipal services and state budgets, the thought of giving a single thin dime to the spawn of Hank Paulson is anathema.

That he is managing to single-handedly live up to every single stereotype about the self-absorbed rich and entitled (engineering deals in the dark while babbling about "openness," conjuring up one phony deadline after another to get the rubes to bite, playing bait and switch on the location of the unneeded baseball stadium, etc etc. etc.) is not a point in his favor. But all the hate and discontent about that goes away the minute three commissioners come to their senses and say, Basta! and tell his Pretentiousness that he can take one or both teams wherever he wants but the city is not going to be his silent partner (oh, and pay your own damn living wage to your peanut vendors).

my question is still, what happens when PGE is converted to soccer only and the MLS fold (which it is bound to do)?