The underutilized Portland Expo Center could be remade into a big sports complex with skating rinks, indoor turf fields for soccer, running tracks along with courts for basketball, volleyball and pickleball.
The Metro Council will discuss the proposal Tuesday, considering whether a big new athletic facility in North Portland could boost the region’s beleaguered visitor industry by attracting sports tournaments from outside the area.
The price tag may prove prohibitive to some of the project’s wider ambitions — one proposal’s estimates approach a half-billion dollars. Other scenarios with fewer amenities are projected to cost around a quarter-billion dollars.
The Expo Center — which Metro runs — started as a livestock exhibition in the 1920s and now hosts conventions and trade shows among other events. However, several of its structures are more than a century old and a renovation feasibility study released earlier this month said Expo Center attendance hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Metro says some of these century-old buildings need significant repair, but the Expo Center’s revenue stream is unable to fund renovation. Most scenarios propose tearing down and replacing three of the center’s five aging halls.
New buildings would then be constructed or expanded, to accommodate indoor facilities for various sports. Two of the Expo Center’s existing, newer buildings would remain for expositions and trade shows, with the potential for sports to expand into them if the renovation proves lucrative.
The study found limits imposed on indoor sports around Portland due to a lack of supply. Oftentimes, it found, sports leagues are unable to host larger tournaments because there isn’t enough space for teams.
The study outlines four areas of sports it aims to increase capacity for, including:
The renovation could include up to two ice rinks, nine basketball courts – convertible to as many as 18 volleyball courts – plus a 200-meter track, a turf field and a training facility. Hunden Partners, consultants hired by Metro to study the feasibility of the sports complex, say the project would cost between $226 million to $446 million, depending on its scale.
The consultants made no estimates of when the renovation might take place or how long it would take to build. But it would surely require several years of planning and construction.
It’s unclear how open the facilities would be to residents. However, the study’s attendance projections are based on assumptions that the courts and track would be free during weekday daytime hours, available for rental on weekday nights and reserved for tournaments on weekends. The study estimates the renovated center could produce more than 700,000 new day trips yearly.
The consultants say this investment could bring in millions of visitors to hundreds of events, and up to just over $4 million in revenue yearly to help cover operating costs.
Renovation plans also propose a museum documenting the property’s painful history. This would include a memorial to the Native Americans who lived in the area in the site’s pre-colonial times and a remembrance of Japanese Americans who were imprisoned at the site in World War II. It will also memorialize Vanport, a nearby area where a large population of Black Oregonians lived until a large 1948 flood destroyed the area.
Lauren Anderson, the director of the University of Oregon Warsaw Sports Business Center, said Portland cannot easily host large tournaments for hockey, volleyball or numerous other sports in existing facilities. The new athletic complex could turn that around.
“This feels like an opportunity for the city to grow,” she said.
If the city could bring in those tournaments, it would mean entire teams and families with “heads in beds,” Anderson said, giving the area a lot of revenue potential. Compounded with the restaurants and onsite hotels the renovation proposes, she said the project could bring tourism and hotel tax revenue back to Portland.
Anderson said one potential concern would be properly planning the center to maximize its potential benefits for tourism. Efficient scheduling and planning effective space use and parking should be a principal concern in planning.
Paying for the complex would also be a primary concern. Recent tax hikes to pay for new housing, preschool and a clean energy fund are testing residents and businesses.
The feasibility study lists several potential funding sources, including newly allocated public funds. The study says it doesn’t expect much private funding.
The consultants say the facility would probably need funds from multiple public sources. One would be an increase in property taxes — $0.07 per $1,000 of assessed value. This plan would need to be voter-approved in a referendum.
Other sources of funding, not requiring voter approval, could include a vehicle rental tax, a solid waste excise tax or other existing allocations and taxes.
One proposed funding solution for the project is an increase to Metro’s transient lodging taxes, a tax on hotel guests. Those taxes are meant to be used for projects that could increase tourism, which the renovation promises to do.
The last major project funded by a transient lodging tax was the 600-room Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center. That hotel — which used $60 million in revenue bonds backed by lodging taxes — opened in 2019.
Then the pandemic hit.
The Hyatt Regency temporarily closed just months after it opened as travel slowed around the world. Portland tourism has been especially slow to recover and the city’s hotels were a little over half full last year.
The city endured a slowdown in business travel and reputational damage associated with protests in 2020 and a steep rise in crime and homelessness that followed the pandemic. Crime rates are down sharply this spring but Portland is still repairing its image.
“We’re still working towards that point in time where sales match what we were experiencing in the year 2019,” said Jason Brandt, president and CEO of the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association.
Brandt, who is on the renovation project’s executive advisory committee, is supportive of efforts to upgrade the Expo Center. He said a sports complex could be one of the most powerful options.
The council’s meeting will be at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Expo Center, accessible via Zoom and YouTube.
— Andrew Miller covers business news. Reach him at amiller@oregonian.com or 971-803-2954.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.