PORTLAND, Ore. — Major League Baseball may be another step closer to coming to the Portland metro area: the RedTail Golf Course is being eyed by the Portland Diamond Project, the organization confirmed Tuesday.
The Portland Diamond Project said it is in negotiations to acquire the 164-acre RedTail Golf Course in Beaverton, which is owned by the city of Portland, for its planned ballpark.
“After careful consideration of many other Portland Metro area properties, we have decided that the scale, the timing, the availability, and the opportunity that this site possesses, simply could not be a better fit for our project,” said Craig Cheek, the Founder and President of the Portland Diamond Project, in a press release.
“We think this site not only will put us in the best position to acquire an MLB team but will afford the Portland Metro area the chance to build something truly transformative: a game changer, economically and socially,” he continued.
The $50 million purchase, according to sports columnist John Canzano, would be the biggest land development in MLB history.
RedTail is one of the more popular golf courses in the Beaverton area, and golfers KGW spoke to were torn about the idea of potentially having to look for a new course to play at. Though many golfers said they like the idea of a Major League team coming to the Rose City, they worry about the traffic that would flood the area near Highway 217.
The effort to bring Major League Baseball to Portland had narrowed its focus down to two sites last year: the Lloyd Center and the RedTail Golf Center. The RedTail site would offer far more land than the Lloyd Center for redevelopment — about 160 acres versus about 40, according to city property records — but the tradeoff would be a much more suburban location, without the Lloyd Center's easy access to the region's light rail system.
Canzano appeared to agree with the decision, saying, "I do know that baseball wasn’t coming with Lloyd Center as the site. It was small, expensive, and mired in red tape and politics. The RedTail stadium site gives the effort something competing cities can’t easily match — an MLB development unlike anything ever created."
Emails in June 2023 between the Portland Diamond Project and city officials suggested that Portland Diamond Project officials were aiming to reach a deal by the end of the year.