Event management – Eugene vs. Portland

There are only 4,749 parking spaces at the University of Oregon’s Autzen Stadium, with a seating capacity of 54,000 and total attendance usually around 60,000.

The Rose Garden in Portland seats 21,300 people at basketball games. More than 2,600 parking spaces are available in the Rose Quarter, including 1147 in the Garden Garage, 363 in the Annex Garage, 544 in the West Broadway Garage, 533 in the East Broadway Garage, and 93 on the Benton surface lot. The Rose Quarter shuttle lots also offer 3,000 pay-parking spots off-site at 7th Avenue and Multnomah in the Lloyd District.

Rose Garden-sponsored parking totals 5,630 for 21,300 seats, on a MAX line in the center of Portland. Autzen Stadium offers 4,749 parking spaces at a venue routinely holding 60,000 people coming from all over the state. And my experience has been that it is way easier to get in and out of the Autzen Stadium area (both as a driver and as a pedestrian) before and after games than it is to use the Rose Quarter when events are happening there.

No new parking was added when the Autzen stadium seating was increased by 12,000 in 2002. About 10,000 local fans take public transit to games. Eugene now has dedicated bus lanes, some placed in the center median of main streets. Duck Transit buses are frequent, given priority by traffic management police, and take riders to convenient park-and-ride locations at nearby schools, churches, museums, and other locations with parking used for other purposes except on game days. There are 4,600 bicycle parking spaces on the University of Oregon (U of O) campus. And private businesses are allowed to donate their parking space to non-profit organizations, who then sell spaces to fans like us who drive from outside Eugene. The companies wouldn’t get much business anyway on game days, and I greatly prefer paying $10 for use of their parking to a church youth group, than to a parking magnate whose spaces would sit empty (like the Rose Garden structure and nearby commercial surface parking lots) most days of the year.

In Portland, a commercial parking permit requires a land use review in most zones, with no exemption for occasional sale of parking spaces donated to non-profit organizations by businesses. Portland’s rules benefit the owners of parking lots and structures. Eugene’s set-up benefits sports fans, the environment, and non-profit organizations.

Another example of a difference in values/benefits is seen in the concessions inside the arena. At Autzen, fans are allowed to bring their own refreshments – security staff check only to make sure beverages are in unopened plastic bottles, to avoid smuggled alcohol and glass/metal containers that could be thrown. And the booths selling hot dogs, nachos and such are run by parents and students from non-profit organizations – often school, faith, and athletic groups. So while my pretzel still costs $3.00, I feel good knowing the profits go to worthy causes. The U of O pays non-profit and school volunteers to help with trash pickup and recycling after the games, too, and the stadium is always remarkably clean.

Contrast that with the prohibition on food/drinks from outside at the Rose Quarter – longtime readers of this blog may remember the staff wouldn’t even let Steve take photographs of the Winterhawks. The maintenance contractor pays workers too little for too few hours to keep the buildings clean.

I know some people consider college sports too much like big business, so I’m wondering whether the difference in experience at the major football events in Eugene compared with professional sports games in Portland is due to the City government, or to the decisions made by administrators connected with the teams. Either way, or perhaps due to both City and University of Oregon decisions, I appreciate the civic values I see enacted in Eugene at the Ducks football games.

I prepared this post a month ago. This seems an appropriate day to auto-post it, as I head down to Eugene with my sons and parents to see the Ducks play the University of Southern California. Let’s go Ducks!