Lents Park can still give back with a stadium

I've lived down the street from Lents Park for most of my life, and I've garnered my share of great memories there.

Lents had the only nearby baseball field with lights, giving kids a chance to experience playing in a night game (provided you were able sneak in under the fence after the little leaguers left).

Lents provided many an opportunity for football on its 100-yard gridiron, complete with goalposts, something no other park in our neighborhood had.

Lents was my home for picnics, low-budget movie shoots, and was the place where I first started dating my now-fiance.

But despite all of that, I feel that the park, the area, and the surrounding neighborhood would be better off if Lents was the new site for Portland's minor league ballpark.

With the MLS Portland Timbers set to be the sole tenants of downtown's PGE Park in 2011, Portland had been busy trying to find a site to build a new baseball stadium. The field has been narrowed down to two options: tear down Memorial Coliseum and build the stadium there, or build it at Lents Park. Portlanders have been adamant that they don't want to tear down the unused eyesore that is the Coliseum, and yet, they also don't want to build it at Lents Park, saying that it would ruin the comfy, relaxed feel of a nice little neighborhood.

But those people are turning a blind eye to what the neighborhood is really like.

Anyone who has lived in or been to the Lents/Foster-Powell neighborhood knows that the area is deteriorating. Longtime businesses are closing their doors. Longtime residents are moving away and their homes are being replaced with low-income housing. The area, as far as economic or cultural advancement, has been stagnant. I went away to college for four years and when I got back, things had only gotten worse.

Lents Park is not a safe little haven isolated from what is happening to the surrounding neighborhood. If drugs and poverty keep affecting the neighborhood as it had, then keeping a park is not going to help it.

That's why this baseball stadium could be the thing that puts the neighborhood back on track. It could provide business that the area sorely needs, with the stadium providing jobs, a kick start to nearby businesses, and an incentive for new business to come to the area. The new North-South MAX transit line will help the businesses even more.

It also gives an influx of culture, and gives the area something to feel proud of. Regardless of what Portland west-siders and affluent downtown dwellers might say, Southeast Portland is still Portland, and it deserves to feel like it is a part of the city. If the stadium is built at Lents, Southeast families wouldn't have to plan a whole day around taking the kids downtown to see the Beavers play, or transversing traffic to get to the Rose Quarter, they could just take a stroll to Lents to catch a game. Kids in Southeast Portland wouldn't feel do distant from their sports teams; as soon as the final bell rang at Marshall or Franklin High, Binnsmead middle school, or Marysville Elementary, they can head straight to the game. Sure, the west-siders may have to make a trip out there, but now they would know how the other half lived.

The stadium would be a great way to bring a neighborhood together, and it doesn't have to be an eyesore, either. Let's keep the elements that made Lents Park so accommodating: a place for families to visit, play, spend quality time. Give the kids a play area, or a grassy hill to watch the game from outside the fence. Embrace the neighborhood by sponsoring activities with nearby schools, and make kids and families welcome. PGE park was tucked away so far downtown that it felt it was detached from kids, but Lents can give kids a feeling that the park is theirs.

It can be done, and it must be done in order to begin to rebuild a neighborhood that is going backwards. A stadium may not the the end-all solution to the problems, but it's a start in the right direction, and no amount of traffic hassles is worse than letting the area slip away.

I love Lents Park, and a huge part of me would be sad to see it go. It would be hard to see a baseball stadium in place of the fields, trees, and paths that have provided families with so many memories. It would hurt to know that I could never sit on the swings where I first asked out my fiance.

But I care too much about my neighborhood as a whole to see it continue to suffer as it has. There are still other great parks in the area (although, in my mind, none will ever compare to Lents), such as Essex and Mt. Scott, and my hope is that the new stadium will be designed as a place for all types of families to come together and make memories.

But with the neighborhood hurting big time, we need to step up to rebuild it. The Stadium at Lents Park would be a great place to start.