Crews are adding finishing touches to the newly named Jeld-Wen Field with the goal of work wrapping up before the April 14 Major League Soccer showdown between the Portland Timbers and the Chicago Fire. Under the direction of general contractor Turner Construction, the $31 million renovation project not only resulted in a new name for the former PGE Park, but also transformed the stadium into a venue capable of handling MLS events. The field is expected to become a venue for more than 250 events, including Portland State University football games, youth sports competitions and community events.

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The $31 million renovation of PGE Park remains on schedule, but it’s still unclear how many seats the finished product will have.

Workers from Turner Construction recently finished installing structural elements of the new eastside seating area of the complex, but the seats won’t be put in for another week or two, said Chris Metz, a spokesman for the park.

“It will be probably around 19,000 seats, but we’ll get a better gauge of that once the seats are installed,” Metz said. “Right now we don’t know exactly how many will fit.”

There are about 200 workers currently on the project, he added.

So far, construction of the exterior glass façade and roofing is finished, and workers have begun installing drywall in the building’s interior.

The new playing surface for the soccer and football stadium is almost ready for installation as well, and work on that should begin in early February, Metz said.

“The goal is to have everything finished in early April so we can have some run-throughs before the first game on April 14,” Metz said.

Workers have also started installation of camera platforms and are still working on the press box and team facilities, he added.

When complete, spectators will be able to sit closer to the field and view events from all angles.

“The big thing people will notice is a whole new east side grandstand seating structure, which will include 360 degree views of the field,” Metz said.

The stadium will also have larger capacity for vendors and more bathrooms, he added.

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After a decade of playing at PGE Park, the Portland Beavers will play their last home game at the stadium on Sept. 6 against the Las Vegas 51s.

A few days later, while the Beavers are packing up their bats and leaving Portland in search of a new owner and a new home, the stands of PGE Park will begin to fill up with construction workers pushing to complete renovations in time for the first home game of the Timbers, the city’s new Major League Soccer team.

Greg Holloran, project manager for general contractor Turner Construction, said the construction side of the project should be relative easy to tackle. The timeline, however, is another matter.

“It’s certainly going to be challenging with such a tight building window,” Holloran said.

Turner and its subcontractors will have to squeeze the equivalent of nine months of work into six months. With such a small time frame, crews will be working selected overtime to complete the stadium on schedule. In addition, as with any job in the Northwest, crews will be battling the elements and working throughout the rainy season, Halloran said.

“The benefit with the stadium is you have a large site, so you can spread people out over a large area and have different crews work on different projects,” he said.

When the project to renovate PGE Park first got the green light, Turner realized work would need to be done on a fast track, so the project was split into two stages.

During the first round of work, which was conducted last fall, the playing field was peeled back and a foundation for new stands was poured.

The next round of construction, which is scheduled to begin shortly after the Beavers’ last game, will begin by peeling back of the playing field again so crews can reach the foundation. Workers will then focus on building a seating bowl, which will connect the stands that once bordered the first-base line with those that bordered the third base-line. The new seating structure will be composed of steel with precast treads and risers and will transform the stadium into a configuration fit for only football and soccer games. A large steel canopy also will be constructed to cover a great deal of the eastern stands.

“The new construction is really going to transform the stadium into one of the most authentic soccer environments in the country,” said Chris Metz, spokesman for the Timbers. “It’s already such a great place to watch a match, but the addition of the east-side grandstands creates a whole encompassing feel to the field and gets people closer to the action.”

When complete, the additional stands will increase the capacity of the park from 15,418 to about 20,000.

In addition to the new seating, a new physical therapy clinic with views of the field will be constructed at the southeast corner of the stadium. The new construction will also result in a new club restaurant and the expansion of the concourse on the south and east side of the stadium.

Construction is set to wrap up in early April, about one month after Major League Soccer’s season starts. The Timbers are hoping the league will let the team begin its 2011 season with a series of away games until the stadium is ready, Metz said.

Metz said this is also the final year of the PGE naming rights deal with the stadium, and although PGE has committed to stay on as a corporate sponsor, the stadium will be renamed upon entering a new naming-rights partnership. Metz said discussions are being conducted with a number of interested companies.

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Portland City Council today approved agreements between the city and Peregrine Sports to renovate PGE Park and bring Major League Soccer to the venue.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz was the only no vote, saying the project was too expensive and that the money being used for PGE Park could be better spent elsewhere in the city. However, Commissioner Randy Leonard says the money would not be available for other city projects.

“You can’t argue that money for PGE Park can be used elsewhere when it wouldn’t be available if Major League Soccer wasn’t coming to Portland,” Leonard said. “This deal is an outstanding opportunity for Portland. We have guarantees to insulate us from putting the general fund at risk.”

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The Portland City Council was set to approve an agreement Wednesday afternoon to redevelop PGE Park for Major League Soccer.

The council will vote next week, though a majority of council members have said they will approve the deal. When approved, the city would commit $11.9 million in bonds to help pay for the changes.

That money would be backed by Peregrine LLC, Merrit Paulson’s company, and by personal guarantees from Paulson and his father former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Peregrine would pay $19.1 million and be responsible for any cost overruns.

Commissioner Randy Leonard cheered the deal, which is scheduled to be finalized next week. “It insulates the city’s taxpayers and general fund from any liability and produces for us a guarantee by Merrit and his family that the rent at PGE Park will be paid for the next 25 years while minimizing risk to the city.”

Portland would make the money back through annual license payments and a 7 percent share of ticket revenue.

The remodeled stadium would also include a Providence physical therapy clinic that would be open to the public and also serve soccer players. The clinic would be paid for by Peregrine and Providence but subject to City Council approval.

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A has finally been struck between Peregrine LLC and the city of Portland to bring a Major League Soccer franchise to PGE Park.

The $31 million deal includes about $19 million from Portland Timbers soccer team owner Merritt Paulson and $12 million from the city of Portland.

According to an announcement by Mayor Sam Adams, the agreement ensures that whatever happens, there will be no impact from the project to the city’s general fund and that no urban renewal funding will be used. Instead, the newly renovated stadium will be financed through private investment by Paulson and by revenues from the sports park.

Another agreement ensures the city will receive projected revenues from the park, even if the franchise fails to be a success. The Paulson family guaranteed the city operating revenues for the next 25 years.

In addition, Portland State University‘s football team and other community groups will be able to use the park for events.

Peregrine had been working on a deal with the city since last summer. They intended to have the deal ready last week, but they got bogged down in legal details. The deal still needs to be approved by city council, which will meet on Jan. 27 to review the development agreement.

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Though project partners had hoped to have a draft agreement ready in time for this week’s Portland City Council meeting, negotiations for a development agreement for Major League Soccer at PGE Park are ongoing, according to Ty Kovatch, Commissioner Randy Leonard‘s chief of staff.

“Most of the issues are legal issues,” said Kovatch. “The differences between them could be found on the head of a pin. The legal guys are trying to wordsmith the document. Just when you think it can’t become anymore detailed, it does.”

Kovatch says the larger issues have been resolved, and now all that is left is to make sure it is written correctly and in the most succinct manner possible. A date for when the agreement might be available to the public has not been determined.

“Our objective is to get a legal document that is right because we have to use it for 25 years,” Kovatch said.

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Several news outlets that the deal for bringing Major League Soccer was being held up due to fears of construction crews damaging Tanner pipe, a six-foot diameter sewer and stormwater pipe that runs only seven feet beneath PGE Park‘s outfield.

But Dean Marriott, director of the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, says the pipe isn’t it problem, it will just require some finesse on behalf of the contractor.

“I’ve never viewed this as a problem that can’t be solved,” Marriott said. “The contractor will have to come up with a way to spread the load so that the weight of cement trucks and cranes does not damage the pipe. These are all fixable issues.”

Marriott also said there have been no problems in the past with heavy vehicles being driven over the playing surface at PGE Park. Turner Construction has been selected as the general contractor for the renovation of PGE Park into a MLS facility.

“I’m just speculating here,” Marriott said. “But the with the MLS deal, it’s more about who has responsibility for the risk. And you always want the other person to take the risk. We just want the public’s infrastructure to be protected and keep that pipe in service.”

As of Monday, the development agreement between Timbers owner Merritt Paulson and the city of Portland was scheduled to be filed this afternoon, so that it could be on the city council agenda for next Wednesday. If that happens, the agreement will be posted on the city auditor’s website at 4 p.m. tomorrow.

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A deal for Major League Soccer at PGE Park could be struck as soon as Thursday afternoon, according to Commissioner Amanda Fritz.

Fritz met with Ken Rust, chief administrative officer of the Office of Management & Finance, this afternoon to get an update on the proposal. The commissioner had expressed concern that city council had awarded Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson permission to begin construction on improvements to PGE Park to prepare the stadium for major league soccer without a development agreement being signed.

Though Fritz says she has confidence in Rust’s judgment, she wants to see the details of the MLS deal before she gives her approval. One issue that concerns Fritz is a zoning code change for a proposed sports medicine clinic at PGE Park.

“This proposed clinic is why they wanted a zoning change, but it doesn’t say that in the agreement,” Fritz said. “Why would we change the zoning language when we don’t know what is going in there yet?”

Fritz did say that some of her concerns regarding labor agreements and protection of the tax payers were alleviated after her meeting with Rust.

The development agreement will be up on the city auditor’s website at 4 p.m. on Friday but is scheduled to be filed Thursday afternoon.

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The city of Beaverton announced today that it has hired Don Mazziotti as its new community development director .

Mazziotti previously worked as the head of the Portland Development Commission, so he knows urban renewal and redevelopment, which is one of the four focus areas of Beaverton’s Community Development Department. The city of Beaverton was kind enough to mention that in a press release about Mazziotti’s new position.

He also previously worked as a consultant at Gallitan Public Affairs. where he helped scout locations for a guy named Merritt Paulson, who was looking for a new place in Portland to put a baseball stadium for his AAA baseball team called the Beavers. The city of Beaverton apparently forgot to mention this in its press release, so we thought we would be nice enough to do so here.

91ÊÓƵ reporter Tyler Graf got off the phone with Mazziotti not too long ago and is working up a story with more information from Mazziotti about his new role in Beaverton, including how he plans to handle the whole six degrees of separation thing between himself and the Beavers’ baseball stadium.

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