Tortuous History of a Mid-Century Modern Landmark

 

In the early 1950s, Portland’s civic boosters feared that Portland was falling behind major West Coast cities in erecting a center for sports and conventions.  Even in the backwaters, Spokane, Washington, was opening a new 5,700-seat indoor venue.

Portland’s response was a May, 1954 ballot measure calling for the creation of a new city agency, the Exposition-Recreation Commission, to build a sports and convention center for $8 million.

 Alas, the successful measure didn’t specify where it would be built, or even for what sorts of events.  Could it be more than one facility?  What about baseball, football and the Pacific International Livestock Show? How realistic was the $8 million figure?

 Controversies raged over the next six years, including three more ballot appearances, fights between the Portland City Council and its own Exposition-Recreation Commission and insurgence of East Portland voters.  By 1960, the new Veterans Memorial Coliseum finally landed in a location that never had rated as a favorite. (By then the livestock show that had been a major booster of the project found itself squeezed out.) 

 Portland author Michael A. Orr reveals the convoluted, messy origins of the Coliseum in his new book, “Building Portland’s Memorial Coliseum:  A Mid-century Political Firestorm.” Orr’s massively-researched and richly detailed narrative includes novel factors at the time such as plans for new freeways, Lloyd Center and federal urban renewal money that played indirect roles in the Coliseum planning.

  In the early going, the five-member City Council by 3-2 favored a downtown location at or near the Civic Auditorium for the new building.  The Exposition-Recreation Commission, also by a 3-2 split favored the East Vanport/Delta Park site in North Portland that had been devastated by the 1948 flood.  City commissioners worried about another flood and possible geological instability at Vanport.

The city attorney essentially scrubbed the Vanport site by advising the council that they did not have to cede the city-owned Vanport site to the Exposition Commission if they didn’t want to. And they didn't.

In response, East Portlander’s headed by the East Side Commercial Club sponsored a 1956 initiative declaring that the new facility had to be located east of the Willamette River.  The measure passed by a razor-thin 303 votes.  Two more ballot measures later I 1956 affirmed the earlier vote, paving the way for the Coliseum to be built between the east ends of the Broadway and Steel Bridges.

Clearing approximately 13 square blocks for the Coliseum and surface parking meant some 1,400 mostly Black renters had to be evicted.  As Orr writes, “the city destroyed the heart of Portland’s Black community flourishing in the years following the 1948 Vanport flood.” The former tenants received no recompense.

 The landmark mid-century modern Coliseum suffered from deferred maintenance after the new Rose Quarter arena (now called the Moda Center) opened in the 1990s, leading some to believe the Coliseum's future was in jeopardy.  Orr says recent renovations once again have made it a pleasant event venue.  “It doesn’t feel like a dump anymore,” he said.  “Now it looks as if someone cares.”

Sometimes history does swirl around to repeat itself.  The current squabble over public funding for Moda Center renovations could prove over time to be almost as messy as the Coliseum saga the Orr so deftly examines.   

 ------Fred Leeson

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