Since Mr. Allen´s Rose Garden opened 10 years ago, the Memorial Coliseum has been a stepchild among the sports venues of Portland. Several ideas for the building have been proposed in the last few years, ranging from tearing the Coliseum down and replacing it with, well, something else (maybe Steve Ballmer will fund it?), to turning it into an athletic center. This post on BlueOregon, written by Ted Hinds, suggests moving Memorial Coliseum to the University of Oregon.
Although for reasons given in the comments it´s impracticable to move more than the shell, Mr. Hinds hits on one important point about the Coliseum, which is that it´s a memorial to Oregon soldiers who died in war. That´s why it´s called ¨Memorial Coliseum,¨and whatever obsolescence may now afflict the ¨Coliseum¨ part of its name, the ¨Memorial¨¨ part still bears meaning, particularly the memorial wall that´s between the coliseum itself and the space where the underground exhibition halls used to be.
I don´t object to tearing the coliseum down, or replacing it with something else, but on one condition, which is that the memorial wall and the fountain in front of it must be kept intact. Perhaps that inconveniences redevelopment, but the sad fact is that war is inconvenient. War is messy. War kills people. It seems to me that the least we could do to show respect for those who gave their lives in our country´s wars, and whom we´ve chosen to memorialize in an important way, is to keep the memorial itself intact regardless of the inconvenience it might cause us in laying out real estate developments. A convenient memorial is a forgotten memorial.
I might suggest leaving room around the current memorial wall to mark the names of Oregonians who died in the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War, except that it´s unfortunately hard to tell how much room to leave.
Comments
2 responses
I have to disagree with you on this one, Issac.
I believe that a Memorial honoring our veterans should speak for itself…across generations.
Take a 15 year old boy, stand with him on the Broadway side of the current Memorial Coliseum and ask him who or what that building honors. I promise you will get a blank look in return.
I do not think the vast majority of Portlanders’ are aware that the current memorial exists. That is probably due to it’s location, down a virtually unused set of stairs in a location below grade level on the Coliseum site.
I think it is a shame that a Memorial honoring our veterans who gave their all to each of us is virtually hidden from the public.
I would support relocating the Memorial on the same site as the Coliseum is currently located but in a more prominent location. I do agree that it should be the type of design along with more space that lends itself to adding the names of those who have and will sacrifice their lives.
Perhaps the Memorial should be surrounded by a garden with water features as well. A place Portlanders’ can sit quietly and reflect on all those who came before us that sacrificed their lives so that we may have the opportunities we do.
Stand with the same 15 year old boy and imagine looking with him at a small park with a dignified Memorial Wall inside a garden with water features and a quiet sitting area that surrounds the Memorial. I believe he will be able to tell you what the Memorial is and who it honors.
We should honor our veterans in a way that we can assure ourselves that citizens 100 years from now will recognize the Memorial as a scared place that is as much a part of the Portland landscape as is Mt. Tabor.
I do not think the current Memorial meets that mark.
Commissioner, I´m willing to accept having the memorial wall relocated to somewhere else on the Memorial Coliseum site. I think its current obscure location was less obscure when the exhibition halls were on the lower level, because people going to conventions at MC would walk past the fountain and the wall. I would be very unhappy if the memorial character of the site were lost altogether, and I agree with you that the fountain and wall would be a better memorial if they were up at ground level instead of sunken below grade, as they are now.