PORTLAND BEAVERS CLUB HAD THE FIRST OPTION TO BUILD A NEW STADIUM OFF SE 82nd

The final price became to steep so Anderson Construction built Eastport Plaza instead.

Comments

[john]

as much as i liked them in civic/multnomah stadium and eventually pge park. its a shame they never built this park, maybe we would still have baseball in portland today.

[Joel]

I think moving the club to what was a site way out on the Eastside would have probably hurt attendance. Would fans who lived in Beaverton and other Westside locations been willing to drive clear out to 82nd Street to see a game. I doubt it.

The thing that killed the Beavers was the farm system. Any time a Beaver player showed promise, he was immediately promoted to the parent MLB club. There's also that the Triple-A had become the place where old ball players went to die. The Beavos and other Triple-A clubs just didn't give the fans a chance to develop a relationship with the players.

The talented young players who had a chance of playing in the bigs weren't assigned to the Triple-A farm club. Triple-A players were those who had been up to the bigs, and didn't make it. Or they were players in the system who weren't considered to be top talent. Triple-A was their last chance to prove they could play MLB ball. If they didn't make it out of Triple-A, they were sent packing.

[DG]

The building of Eastport Plaza from new archives
Circa 1945 the Portland Lucky Beavers bought 18 acres from fruit farmer Alfred Folkman (85 yrs.) and his wife Robertina. The Folman's retained a 2 acre tract with their house and barn at 4024 SE 82nd. The Beavers plans were to build a 25,000 seat stadium with parking for 2,500 cars with construction to begin in 1948, but cost and the viability of the Pacific Coast League caused the Beavers to abandon the project and occasionally rented the site to evangelist who would pitch large tents for month long revivals.

In 1955 the Beavers sold the 18 acre site to US Bank, and that same year the San Francisco investment firm Fligelman & Melzer purchased the site from US Bank with plans to develop the shopping center. The 18 acre site was to small for the planned shopping center, and the developers began to purchase adjoining properties with the first being the property of Robertina Folkman who died in 1956 ( Alfred died 1952), and by the time construction began they had created a 28 acre site.