In 2009 the City of Portland announced that the arena would be torn down in order to make way for a minor-league baseball stadium for the Portland Beavers. The team had been kicked out of its longtime home, Civic Stadium (now Providence Park), because the Portland Timbers soccer franchise was joining Major League Soccer, which required converting to a soccer-only stadium. But after public opposition led by the newly formed Friends of Memorial Coliseum, Adams reversed course. Instead, he convened a Stakeholder Advisory Committee to determine future uses. But eventually a third-party economic study found that no single use was as valuable as a multi-use arena. But a 2012 plan to restore the building did not come to fruition.
Memorial Coliseum had always been a veterans’ memorial, with sunken gardens at the entrance displaying the names of Portlanders killed in World War II and the Korean War. Veterans had also rallied to help save the building from demolition in 2009, including former Oregon Governor Victor Atiyeh. With that in mind, in 2011 local veterans’ organizations successfully lobbied the City of Portland to change the arena’s name to Veterans Memorial Coliseum (not to be confused with a Phoenix arena of the same name).
In 2015, the Coliseum was again threatened with demolition, this time when City Council considered tearing down the arena for affordable housing. Subsequent analysis found the site was ill-suited for that purpose, and the measure was defeated. But after being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, the Coliseum in 2016 was named a National Treasure by the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation. While the Coliseum is still awaiting a full-scale restoration, the city has made a continuing series of upgrades, totaling about $13 million over the past decade, including upgraded concessions, a reconfigured entrance, and a new roof.
What’s more important, though, is that the storm of demolition threats seems to have passed, and the Coliseum’s status as a beloved landmark is secure. Normally arenas like this never last this long. Most all arenas and stadiums are torn down within a few decades of their construction. Yet like the Rose Bowl, Wrigley Field and a few other gems, Memorial Coliseum is transcendent.
