Trailblazers Submit New Plan for Rose Quarter

PORTLAND, OR-The local NBA team here is promoting a yet another new plan for turning the 37-acre Rose Quarter, home to its 13-year-old Rose Garden arena and the 50-year-old Memorial Coliseum, into a 24-hour mixed-use district. The Trailblazers organization’s latest scheme calls for keeping the old while adding condos, apartments, hotels, office space and restaurants and retailers in several new buildings. The Trailblazers organization is owned by billionaire Paul Allen of Microsoft fame, which also owns property next to the Rose Quarter on the nearby Willamette riverfront.

Marketing for the Trailblazers new plan, including the rollout of the imaginejumptown.com web site, is running alongside a public request for ideas on how to jumpstart the Rose Quarter by Portland Mayor Sam Adams and his new Rose Quarter Stakeholders Committee, which is accepting plans for fixing the Rose Quarter through its own web site, rosequarterdevelopment.org.

The Trailblazers’ plan includes a new name for the Rose Quarter, Jumptown, in deference to the area’s life in the 1940s and 50s as a home to jazz and blues clubs, which was chronicled in Robert Dietsche’s 2005 book, “Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz 1942-1957.”