Just a reminder that every review of the new Hillsboro Hops facility starts at -$43 million for…read morestate, Washington County, Tualatin Valley, and Hillsboro taxpayers, so let's see what that got us.
The fam somehow scored free (!) tickets to the Fourth of July fireworks game, so we did what I vowed to never do, paid the $9.50 in parking (because we'll never make back the investment otherwise) and went to the new ballpark.
In some ways, they listened to the complaints I've been making for years. The new place no longer angles fans directly into the setting sun, which is really the bare minimum, and actually has some hops growing on the grounds. They have roughly as many bines as I have in my backyard, but it's something. Maybe now that they're partnered with local brewery Budweiser, the team can take those hops down to the brewery in Van Nuys and make a batch of Hillboro Bud Light.
There are some local partnerships (look at that shiny Portland Cider bus) and some party decks, and I'm told they change up the menus for certain promotional nights, but that hasn't done much to change the culture of the place. During a 1-0 loss coming toward the end of a full-series sweep by Spokane, the crowd was not only as library-silent and stoic as usual, but listless. You got the sense that the baseball was a perfunctory requirement and that the fireworks display--as was so often the case at the old building's "fireworks Fridays"--was the main event in a town that lacks a civic fireworks display of its own.
Again, we didn't pay for our tickets, but the pricing at this level of play seems like madness. Yes, your get-in-the-door price is $11.50, but that's to walk the grounds and maybe sit on a berm. It's $23 to sit in the worst corner, then $30 to $60 for any non-lounge seat. Get into the lounges--your tax dollars at work--and its $85 to $135. For single-A baseball.
Never mind that you could've seen NBA basketball for less this year--and could definitely catch the WNBA, NWSL, or AUSL and better athletes for a better price. The Hops seem bent on "dreaming big" and trying to woo a coveted AA team here, regardless of what it does to attendance.
I saw MLB tout the Hops' "record" Fourth of July weekend box office, but didn't see them note that Sunday's game pulled in just above 1,200 people--or about 1,800 less than what softball's been averaging right across the parking lot. In fact, much of the Hops' attendance for this season has fallen below the 3,000 mark, which would've been a comfortable squeeze in its old 4,500-capacity digs. Now that it's allegedly seating 6,500 (though a "sold out" 4th was sub-5,500), I'm wondering if attendance means as much as amenities in their equation anymore.
They promised concerts later this year, and they're bringing in one surviving member of Chicago, but if the main draw is going to be the same sub-.500 minor-league baseball they've been pushing at taxpayers in recent years, they may be better off just hosting fireworks and taking notes when their "women in sports night" comes around.
Congratulations to the Northwest League's first-half champion Eugene Emeralds, whose city government said a word in their stadium debate that isn't in Hillsboro's vocabulary but saves taxpayers a whole lot of money: No.
