Exterior rendering of the $50-million expansion of Providence Park, Portland, Ore..
With a growing directory of over 13,000 fans on the waiting list for season tickets to see the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer play in the team’s downtown Providence Park location, the announcement of an additional 4,000 seats coming to the venue will assuage a few anxious supporters.
The Timbers play in a 1926-built stadium remodeled for the team’s move into the MLS in 2011 and will expand on the 21,144-seat venue by going vertical on the stadium’s east side.
Currently downtown streets, light rail tracks and a neighborhood lock down the stadium on three sides, with the Multnomah Athletic Club capping the stadium’s open south end. To create more seats inside what is routinely ranked near or at the top of best stadiums in the MLS lists, designers at Allied Works Architecture decided to go vertical, inspired by the designs of the Shakespearean Globe Theatre, London, and La Bombonera Stadium, Buenos Aires, both strongly featuring upright vertical seating.
Rendering of the field-level upgrade coming to Providence Park, Portland, Ore.
The privately financed $50-million expansion will create a new street-level colonnade and, what the club calls a modern expansion that will bring more people to the venue for both the Timbers and the National Women’s Soccer League Portland Thorns FC.
The addition of a 93-foot-high covered structure includes four new levels on the expanded east side with three of those created for reserved and group seating to help meet demand. The structure will also make room for a pedestrian-friendly public arcade along Southwest 18th Avenue.
Since the club’s debut in 2011, Providence Park has sold out for every single Timbers regular-season and playoff home match. “Providence Park is one of the most special stadiums in sports,” said Mike Golub, president of business for the Timbers and Thorns FC. “With our proposed expansion, we will enhance the incomparable fan experience and intimacy and provide the opportunity for some of the more than 13,000 members of the waiting list to become season ticket holders.”
Work on the expansion will start either at the end of the 2017 or 2018 season and open in time for the start of the MLS season in 2019 or 2020. The design completes the original full horseshoe plans of architects from A.E. Doyle and Morris Whitehouse in 1925, essentially finishing a stadium nearly 100 years later.
“The expansion of Providence Park will continue to honor the rich history and traditions of the stadium and city of Portland and marry them with the best of modern stadia,” said Golub.
The club noted that Providence Park’s capacity sits in the bottom half of all 22 MLS clubs and to ensure the stadium’s urban environment remains financially viable the added capacity and community gathering space will better position the venue to attract additional, larger-scale soccer and special events as well as add benefits to other stadium users, such as Portland State University football. The added capacity has the potential to increase the city ticket tax revenue that benefits the City of Portland directly.
Next up includes working with the city and neighborhood associations on the specifics and an initial design-review process. “This proposed project is a win-win for everyone involved, and we’ve been very encouraged by the collaborative work that’s been put into this project to date,” said Golub. “We still have some work to do, but we are actively working with the city and neighborhood association, and everyone is excited by the prospect of an expanded Providence Park and ensuring the long-term viability of this unique stadium.”
The east side of Providence Park was actually a focus of the $40 million 2011 makeover that also removed the multipurpose and baseball awkwardness from what was originally dubbed Multnomah Stadium. The west side boasts the most seats of the venue, flowing toward the north past 24 stacked suites installed in 2000 to 6,000 supporters swaying in the north end atop original wooden benches looking down 35 feet below street level to the tight soccer pitch.
The historic fully enclosed concourse on the west and north ends opens at the intersection of Southwest Morrison Street and Southwest 18th Avenue with a 5,200-sq.-ft. club with covered seating that separates from the street only by iron fencing. The south end, tucked against the drab Multnomah Athletic Club building, includes a food cart patio and a 9,250-square-foot party deck behind the goal.