

Veterans Memorial Coliseum entry (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Let me start as I always do when I write about Memorial Coliseum by admitting I'm far from an impartial observer. Stuart Emmons and I founded the Friends of Memorial Coliseum in the spring of 2009 to fight a planned demolition of the building, and after that initial victory we've spent the past eight years campaigning for a full restoration.

The $5 million "refresh," as this new remodel is being called, is not a full restoration. With the upcoming Phil Knight Invitational college basketball tournament (also known as PK80) coming to both the Moda Center and the Coliseum from November 23-27, however, the City of Portland has spent the past two years and $5 million on a series of improvements to the building: some cosmetic and very visible, others more physical and structural but just as important.

Even if it's not the full restoration we've been looking for, visiting the Coliseum a few times over the past few days, I can't help but smile at this mini-restoration overseen by Merryman Barnes Architects.

It starts at the arena's entrance, where the wood glulams between the panes of glass on the curtain wall have been stripped of their paint and stained to reveal the natural finish. The wood beams beneath the entry canopy have also been sanded down and stained. Even better, the unnecessary second wall of glass at the entry, which blocked views of the free-standing concrete seating bowl, have also been removed.



New concourse lighting and signage (Brian Libby)

Moving into the concourse, I was also very excited to see the new lighting, which is a custom remanufacturing of the Coliseum's original wagonwheel lights. That's particularly significant because the lamps project light both down onto the concourse and upward to illuminate the bowl itself. In historic photos of Memorial Coliseum taken after its completion in 1960, those lights caused the arena bowl to look like an illuminated spaceship floating inside the glass box. Also new in the concourse are redone concession stands with new electronic signage for menus and the capacity for serving more food and drink quickly, as well as repainted signage and surfaces along the outside of the seating bowl between the concessions.

Last summer, the Coliseum also got a new roof, which will help the building remain resilient in the face of increasingly inclement weather due to climate change. Thankfully the building is already well equipped to survive most earthquakes, though, thanks to an innovative system of ball bearings between the Coliseum's four columns and the roof trusses, which allows the entire roof to move on the columns.

There is also one addition to the concourse experience that is not actually inside the concourse and is technically a subtraction rather than an addition: the thinning out of the trees along the west facade of the building. This is still an ongoing process, and most of the trees will remain, but the building will no longer be quite so hidden away by trees when viewed from the west side of the city, and when in the concourse it will be easier to look out at Downtown and the Pearl District through the giant glass curtain wall. It's something we've been advocating for many years and are pretty excited about. As I understand it, only dead or ailing trees were removed, or ones that were impacting the building's foundation.

Inside the arena, there is an all-new LED lighting scheme that allows a wider variety of lighting options, but what people will really notice is the new video scoreboard. Until recently, the Coliseum still had a scoreboard hanging over center court (or center ice) that dated to when the Trail Blazers last called the building home in the mid-'90s. Now, the video-scoreboard screen in the Coliseum is actually a higher resolution than what exists in the Moda Center.

I can't wait to attend the Phil Knight Invitational and experience the Coliseum with a potentially full house of basketball fans from around the country. But it's also an exciting time for Veterans Memorial Coliseum even beyond PK80 and the $5 million refresh.



New signage commemorating historic Coliseum events (Brian Libby)

Recently a public-private consortium of leaders led by Meyer Memorial Trust chief investment officer Rukaiyah Adams and former Portland Parks director Zari Santner — but also including local leaders like former Urban League of Portland CEO Michael Alexander, Moda Health executive vice president Steve Wynne, former city commissioner Jim Francesconi and developers John Carroll and Tom Cody — came together to create what is called the Albina Vision, which seeks to re-establish a new version of the neighborhood that once existed here, before it was demolished by urban renewal projects including the Coliseum, Interstate 5 and Emmanuel Hospital.

In tandem with a planned I-5 widening at the Rose Quarter that will include a partial capping of the freeway to gain new blocks, the Albina Vision imagines a dense, mixed-use series of buildings, much of it multi-family housing that can accommodate multiple income levels, with easy access to amenities. That Albina Vision, designed by Hennebery Eddy Architects, not only imagines a future fully restored Veterans Memorial Coliseum but also makes a series of overdue urban design changes: namely burying the Rose Quarter's parking garages underground in order to build tall buildings on top of them, which also enables large public open space leading from the RQ north to Broadway and west over (a newly capped portion of) Interstate Avenue to a new riverfront park between the Broadway Bridge and Steel Bridge—essentially a new extension of the Eastbank Esplanade.



Albina Vision (Hennebery Eddy Architects)

Given the expressed support for a Veterans Memorial Coliseum full restoration from a majority of City Council members, including Mayor Ted Wheeler, Commissioner Nick Fish, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and Commissioner Amanda Fritz, there is more reason than ever to believe this $5 million refresh is only the beginning.

After all, a 2015 third-party economic study commissioned by the City of Portland shows that the city needs a venue in the 5,000 to 8,000-seat range, which doesn't otherwise exist in the city. The study even showed that a venue of this size would be fairly unique in the entire Pacific Northwest, meaning the Coliseum could attract a lot more concert and entertainment business than it does today. The larger renovation would help modernize some of the behind-the-house infrastructure any arena needs, like a loading dock large enough to accommodate multiple vehicles and ceiling rigging robust enough to accommodate elaborate stage sets. In other words, as the study laid out, these Coliseum investments would pay for themselves through increased bookings, amounting to an estimated $2 billion in economic impact over 20 years.



Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Art Hupy/University of Washington)

As we know from eight years of campaigning, getting a historic building restored is a long process. Even if things go our way, it probably will have taken a decade before we see a fully restored Veterans Memorial Coliseum. But as Mayor Wheeler cut the ribbon on the arena's $5 million refresh last Friday, it was more than a celebration of a new roof, video scoreboard, concessions, stained-wood glulams and signage. It was an unspoken acknowledgment that the Coliseum is going to be part of Portland's future.

It started little by little in 2009 with Mayor Adams rejecting the planned demolition for a minor-league baseball park, and continued with the Coliseum's National Register listing in 2011, with City Council's rejection of a Commissioner Steve Novick-led demolition effort in 2015 and the Coliseum's ensuing National Treasure listing from the National Trust in 2016. All along the way, the public at large, across America, continued to see mid-20th century modernism as a golden age of architecture and design. The building isn't truly saved just yet because it isn't fully restored, yet it's not hyperbole to suggest its whole future is what's really been refreshed here.

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