If the rumors are indeed true and Portland's PGE Park is set to be renamed after the Jeld-Wen Corporation, I have a couple of very mixed feelings. First of all, it's better than having Portland General & Electric ratepayers subsidize the name. Why on earth do mostly non-competitive public utilities need expensive, prominent advertising? "PGE Park" always seemed like a poor deal for everybody involved. At least the City (who owns the stadium) gets an influx of private capital to help finance the deal.
Second, this comes off reeking like a collusion of some of the deepest-pocketed Republicans in the state. Which is fine in the abstract- outside of political campaigns, rich Republican-leaning businesses should be just as freely able to spend their business dollars as rich Democratic-leaning ones. Jeld-Wen has a long, long, long tradition of supporting some of the most conservative, pro-sprawl causes in the state, but they did provide backing to a clear early winner in Democrat Ron Wyden last time around. I guess this is not surprising at some level- with the Hunt family and Phil Anschutz financially providing the early (idiocy-riddled) chapters of MLS, and the Paulsons coming into Portland, rich, conservative white guys have an established money connection with American footy.
I got hell from my friends back in the early days of PGE Park for regularly calling it Civic Stadium well into 2003-04. Like last time, I'm sure I'll adapt eventually, but for now it looks like we're back to square one.
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