Category: Stadium

I took the liberty of doing a little photoshop action to the Turner Construction sign….

Who wants to look at 20 not-so-timely pictures from inside the stadium shortly after they removed the old artificial turf, but before they started installing the new turf? You do. If you’re hankering to get your own inside look, you can go to the “soft opening” AKA T2 matches on May 25th and 29th. It’s bittersweet as I will miss yelling at the opposing players and ref watching T2 at Merlo. More pics after the jump.

Opening day is going to be amazing. Pictures don’t do the size of the addition justice. You have to see it in person.

[Photo: Nick Brusich]

Here’s some pictures of the video displays and turf installation thanks to Fran Poodry and Cola Whitchurch.

No, no, no… I’m not talking about the end of our chances given the poor start to the season. I’m talking about the end of the construction. The outward facing bits are mostly done. The rest of it appears to be mainly cosmetic, apart from the interiors which we can’t see. It looks like the hard work has been done. If you want a more, err.. ahh… in depth but not necessarily factual report, check out this episode of Soccer Touchdown.

Check out these stills from some drone footage shot on 3/30/19. It’s not publicly available yet, but our source was told it was OK to share.

The interesting bits of the stadium expansion are almost over.

Thanks to Erik Graham for letting me post these pics he took from an interior perspective of the Providence Park expansion project. He was there legitimately and didn’t have to bum rush Providence Wellspace at Providence Park. One of these days I will get in there to take some pictures too. I’ve contemplated just walking in with a hard hat and a vest, but the possibility of a regular season ban from Providence Park makes it not worth it to me, despite the fact that I have 10’s of readers…

Last week’s Timbers in 30 featured a lengthy segment with Merritt Paulson talking about all things Timbers, including the fact that the overall really good 2018 season was overshadowed by the loss in MLS Cup. About 12 minutes into the segment we get to see some video shot from the new seats.

They’ve started adding the seats to lowest level the stadium expansion, a week or so after they started connecting the exterior anchors to the top of the new roof outside the concourse. I spoke to a guy in a hardhat who said the scaffolding on the west end is being used to install news video boards. The work continues, run, snow, or shine. Brace yourselves, this is quite a large dump of photos.

The construction cam goes in and out of focus every half hour, which makes for very trippy viewing of the time-lapse video if you’re in the mood. Highly recommended! What’s going on? They’ve started dismantling the big yellow crane, digging the foundation for the exterior retail store, and there is some interesting scaffolding up in the West end between the press box and the box suites.

Stadium cam is still out of focus, but here’s a few shots taken from one of the cranes thanks again to Travis Glen Blankenship via Walt Jensen. Or is it Walt Jensen via Travis Glen Blankenship? How does that work? Walt took the pics. Travis sent them to me. In the top left you’ll notice they are adding extensions to some of the trusses that are acreage up.

For the past couple of weeks, all the stadium action has been happening out of view from the security cam feed. There were 3-4 new struts being constructed, and then the snow hit. It wasn’t the massive (by Portland standards) dump we were expecting, but it still managed to fog up the housing on the stadium cam, rendering everything out of focus. Thanks to Scott Brown’s unnamed friend we have a visual update. If you’re looking for another round of slightly older ground level shots, keep clicking through.

Another photo courtesy of Walt Jensen. Snow in the stadium, just like that time in 1953 when they built a downhill ski jump for the Rose Festival. Rose Festival? Yes, it was artifice snow, brought in on trucks. I always thought that ski jump was a one time deal, but I’ve found photos online dated at 1953 and 1961.

Are you sick of these yet? I’m not. Thanks to Bruce Harris for these photos.

Of course, 30 minutes after I got back from my trip downtown to photograph the roof struts yesterday, they actually started lifting one of them up.

UPDATE: Added another shot from a crane.

I’m not going to lie. I spend way too much time refreshing the live construction cam at Providence Park, but for the past few weeks all the assembly action has been happening out of frame. The official Providence Park feed doesn’t update daily, but I did find another Twitter feed from @bobthebuilder4u that’s got some gold in it. Welding and semi trucks driving around on the pitch look so… wrong. Bob makes more updates than Providence Park. He’s a construction guy so he’s chiming in on what’s going on. After you’ve watched a few of his videos you realize he’s not on the actual crew, and he’s just a guy who belongs to the MAC club. Yes, I said “MAC Club,” But at least I didn’t say “The MLS.” On a side note, it drives me nuts that Bob holds his phone in portrait mode while he shoots those videos, so I drove downtown to try and get my own photos. I ended up slinking into Providence Sports Care Center until I was politely, asked to leave. All the photos from inside the park were taken behind the glass.

The Portland Timbers posted a gallery of construction pics on Facebook. from all kinds of angles your average poacher can’t provide. Definitely worth checking out.

Eagle-eyed Bruce Eaton noticed what appears to be a discrepancy in the original renders and the live construction shots. The original renders show what appears to be a 4th row of seats at the very top that are missing from live construction cams and newer renders.

UPDATE:  Added a few new renders and a link to the 3d model that shows the new additions.

More construction action not visible form the security cam. This picture was shot from a crane by Walt Jensen.

– Thanks to Travis Glenn Blankenship for the tip.

For the past few days the construction cam made it seem like outdoor work had stopped, but the Providence Park Twitter feed shot from another direction revealed parts of the roofing structure being assembled on the pitch.

– Thanks to Mitch Gray for the tip.

Check out the live construction cam set up at Providence Park. Shots are uploaded every 15 minutes, and there’s a time lapse available. You can also click through previous photos, but so far I haven’t gotten the date picking functionality to work.

Update: Added some more stills of precast sections and crane at work.

OregonLive.com posted some additional renders of the proposed expansion of Providence Park. Another baby step, the plans have been presented to the city’s Design Commission, and were met with “general support.” The more I see of the renders, the more I like it. Still not crazy about the strip mall feel* from in the inside view, but the exterior is looking good.

*As I scroll down to look at those first renders, I realize I no longer have any objections to the way it looks on the inside. Must have just been the initial shock of seeing them for the first time.

The Portland City Council passed a resolution expressing formal support for the stadium expansion plans, opening the door for the rest of the things that need to fall in place as well. Three things of note, there will be a special exemption from the competitive bidding process, I assume because construction is being paid for by Peregrine Sports. The second thing, and one that has a few people grumpy, is that the 4,000 new seats would be exempt from city ticket taxes for a period of 10 years. Some see this as a government subsidy, while most reasonable people feel it’s a fair concession considering tax dollars won’t be spent on construction. The final point of interest, Peregrine’s representative would not comment on the time period required for the Timbers to recoup the investment, because the project had not been finalized yet. The section of the hearing relevant to the Timbers starts at around the 2 hour and 13 minute mark and runs for about 35 minutes. Some of the mechanics of the deal and the different ways it can be interpreted are fairly interesting.

Today the Portland Timbers released renders of the proposed new stadium expansion that would add 4,000 seats to our current capacity. It’s safe to say the entire fanbase is excited about adding more seats, but reactions to the renders are somewhat mixed. Personally, I don’t think it fits very well with the style of the existing stadium. I had a feeling this was going to be difficult to achieve, and I’m sure many people felt like the current Key Club section didn’t fit in very well when it was new. To it’s credit though, the roof style did have a connection to old park. This new one, not so much. In the release they compare the new stadium addition to the “iconic” La Bombonera stadium in Buenos Aires, that quite frankly looks garish and tacky in the picture they chose. More like a stacked strip mall than anything I’d want to brag about. I showed the interior shot to my 9 year old thinking he’d be excited, and his first reaction was “It’s ugly.” Hey, it could be a lot worse. It could be Soldier Field.

However…. it’s already grown on me since the first time I looked at it earlier in the day. I’m excited about it, top-heavy or not. The biggest surprise is that this huge addition only adds 4,000 seats because it looks like so much more. The best news is that the whole thing is going to be privately funded! An extra 4,000 seats and the new $10 a beer price tag ought to help out some. Projections say the work can take place  during the off-seasons with a completion date as early as 2019. Let’s hope the NIMBY’s can be kept in check. I imagine the neighborhood will want to talk about parking.

The sooner we get started, the sooner we can work on that South end too! Merritt, on the off chance you’re reading this, don’t forget to add hooks for tifo rigging, and thanks for picking up the tab in Columbus!

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