The inevitable has arrived: The Portland Beavers are officially no more.

Beavers owner Merritt Paulson on Thursday announed he has reached an agreement to sell the team to the North County Baseball ownership group led by Jeff Moorad, part owner and CEO of the Triple A franchise's parent club, the San Diego Padres.

Moorad's group is negotiating to build a stadium in Escondido, Calif., about 30 miles north of San Diego.

According to a statement released by the Beavers, the long-anticipated deal is expected to close in December pending the approval of the Pacific Coast League and Minor League Baseball.

"What this means is that, as expected, the Portland Beavers' move will not just be temporary," Paulson said in a released statement. "As I have expressed many times, moving the team from the Portland area represents a professional and personal disappointment for me. It was not the outcome we anticipated and expected.

"It remains my strong belief that just as the Beavers returned to Portland in 2001 after being moved to Salt Lake City in the 1990s, Triple-A baseball will again return to Portland; only this time the return will be to a permanent baseball-specific ballpark home where the franchise can flourish and succeed. I remain committed to aiding in that effort as I can."

The sale price is to be in the range of the $15-16 million Paulson paid for the team in 2007, according to a source close to the situation.

Paulson was not made available for further comment.

Transfer of ownership is the final step in the demise of a franchise that's played in Portland with few interruptions since 1903. The team's fate was set last year when proposals to construct a baseball-only stadium in Portland and Beaverton fell through and the Portland Timbers soccer team, which Paulson also owns, was granted entry into Major League Soccer. That move required PGE Park, the home for both teams, to be renovated into a soccer/football-only venue.

Paulson hoped to keep the Beavers in Portland by building a baseball-only stadium that itself would be a fan attraction and make the team more profitable.

But several plans, including one to build a stadium at the site of Memorial Coliseum, failed to garner public and civic support despite Paulson's offer to pay for a large chunk of construction cost, unheard of for other recent stadium deals throughout the PCL.

Escondido, by comparison, is prepared to spend all of the $40 million it will take to build a stadium for the Beavers.

Escondido City Manager Clay Phillips said news of the agreed upon sale of the team was exciting but not surprising.

"We fully expected that that's what was going to happen," he said. "Now we're in the process of negotiating a stadium deal."

An agreement with Moorad's group, Phillips said, is imminent. The hope, he said, is to have a stadium built in time for the start of the 2012 season.

In the meantime, the team could be temporarily relocated to Tucson, Ariz.

Since the team's return to Portland in 2001, the Beavers have consistently ranked at or near the bottom of the PCL in attendance with the average typically falling around 5,500.

This season, with the prospect of the franchise's depature hanging over PGE Park, the Beavers ranked last at 4,265, less than half of league leading Sacramento (9,137).

Moorad's group, which includes NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman and several other businessmen, took over 35 percent control of the Padres last season with a plan in place to own 100 percent by 2014, according to a report from ESPN.

--

, follow him on