Hillsboro's rounding third base in its quest for a professional baseball team. The Yakima Bears franchise -- a minor league affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks -- has agreed to the city’s terms.
Hillsboro plans to spend up to $15 million on a 4500-seat stadium.
Hillsboro Mayor Jerry Willey says a one-dollar surcharge on tickets and parking revenue will help pay that off.
Willey says the stadium will generate revenue when the team isn’t playing – especially in the spring.
“We’d love to invite the state baseball championships to be there. We’d also love to envision maybe a three-game series with Oregon-Oregon State baseball, all of that which occurs typically sometime in May and early June.”
Mayor Willey says the deal has a “very, very small possibility” of falling through at this point. If it does, the terms allow the city to recover $150,000 from the Yakima Bears.
The next step is approval of a conditional lease -- expected to happen at a Hillsboro City Council meeting, June 26.
Hillsboro officials say they first started looking to acquire a team two years ago, when changes to a Portland ballpark forced out the minor-league Beavers. That team wound up relocating to southern California.
