Baseball on the banks of the Willamette River?
The Portland Diamond Project has worked for years to bring a Major League Baseball team to Portland.
In 2018, the group came close to buying three different properties, before each sale fell apart. First was the former ESCO steel plant, which was sold to another bidder. Around the same time, they made an offer on a Portland Public Schools property near the Moda Center, then withdrew their offer. Then late in the year, they reached an agreement with the Port of Portland to redevelop a site on the Willamette River in Northwest, before that fell apart.
Subsequent years brought efforts to put a stadium on the Lloyd Center property and at the RedTail Golf Center in Beaverton, but those plans never came to fruition, either.
The latest news is that the Diamond Project has reached an agreement to purchase the Zidell Yards, a 33 acre property in South Waterfront. This formerly-industrial land sits under the Marquam Bridge, stretching north to the Tillikum Crossing and south toward the OHSU property.
The agreement gives the Diamond Project 42 months to execute the purchase, which means they’ll now work aggressively to secure a baseball team, either through a team relocating or through baseball expanding, which seems to be the more likely scenario. If MLB awards the group a team, then the purchase will be finalized and we’ll be watching baseball right by the river, in a spectacular setting.
