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I've been going on at length about the area around the Steel Bridge, looking toward downtown PDX, the Convention Center, and the river, but not to much the other direction. Here's what's the other direction; we call it the Rose Quarter, in a view that shows what general direction the MAX line goes as it comes into the Rose Quarter Transit Center there.
This is where Portland's major league sports action (that isn't soccer) happens. For the legendary Portland Trail Blazers, who won their only NBA championship in 1977, this is the center of the universe.
Decades ago, this was a commercial district and neighborhood that formed the nucleus of the old city of Albina (absorbed into the consolidated City of Portland in 1891 when Portland, East Portland and Albina merged to form the beginnings of the modern City). In the 1960s, blocks of houses and businesses, largely of Black people, were cleared off to build the edifice on the left, Memorial Coliseum (today known as Veterans Memorial Coliseum, but typically referred to by locals as just The Coliseum when we speak of it at all). Eventually it was deemed necessary, in the way sports franchises deem it so, that a modern arena grace the area; a sea of money flowed into the area and from it arose, by 1995, what we then called the Rose Garden Arena. Eventually it succumbed to the regrettable trend of selling corporate naming rights, thus, in 2013 it became Moda Center, after an health insurance provider that itself was once known as ODS.
The naming rights expire in 2023. I kind of hope they just let it go. The name Rose Garden is in the tradition of arenas like Boston Garden and Madison Square Garden and I insist that a great traditional reputation was jettisoned in favor of something lesser.
It will, however, be approaching 30 years old in 2023 ... and we all know how much sports franchises hate old clothes. Who knows what'll happen?
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