A lot of people are asking me about the latest news on the The Portland Diamond Project. The effort to bring Major League Baseball to Portland starts with a stadium, right?

Here's what I know:

-- The Portland Diamond Project withdrew its offer on the Portland Public Schools site. It was 13.5 acres. It was a great site, and would have been easily executable, but there was push back from some community groups and the PDP decided it had better options that also respected the wishes of those groups. I wouldn't view the pull back on the PPS site as anything more than the Portland Diamond Project abandoning the offer and zeroing in on their preferred site.

-- I've learned that the Portland Diamond Project has already secured land rights outside the City of Portland. It's a back-up site, however. The intention of the group is to build inside the city limits. I'll try to nail down what that back-up site is, but my best hunch points toward something on the river inside the city limits of Milwaukie.

-- The Diamond Project earlier made a preliminary bid for industrial property in Northwest Portland owned by ESCO Corp., which was snapped up by other developers for $33 million. They were also interested in city-owned Terminal One., but it was sold to Lithia Motors for $11.1 million.

-- The PDP will unveil and announce their agreement on their preferred site this month, I'm told. So that's roughly three weeks maximum. That announcement is going to be made in the month of November. Simple process of elimination given the sites that have already been reported/eliminated leaves city-owned Terminal Two as a strong possibility. It's on the bank of the Willamette River, northwest of the Fremont Bridge. I don't have that confirmed. Purely educated conjecture. But it would be a great site and that's what I know there.

-- I'm also told from people in the ballpark design world that the preferred site is unlike anything that has ever been done. That's exciting. But I want to see some renderings before I go all in on that. When I get them, I'll give them to you here. Until then, I'm thinking translucent roof? Natural grass? You?

-- There is a third site in play. Probably another back-up site. It's being handled very hush-hush, however. That tells me it's probably already tied up in some other way. I'm looking hard at other large plots of possibly available real estate in the Portland city limits. The 33-acre plot owned by Zidell Yards comes immediately to mind. Especially since they're on record as having already met with the Portland Diamond Project. It's directly on the Willamette and makes great use of the Tilikum Bridge. A city official told me the Zidell family is having extensive meetings with Zidell Yards this week. The development plan that the city and Zidell had teamed up on originally is in serious jeopardy. If that can't be rectified this week, I expect it becomes an attractive option for Portland's ballpark.

More as I know it...