Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson is "optimistic" about reaching a deal to bring major league soccer here after a city task force voted unanimously in support of the idea tonight.

PAULSON: Says he's offered more than originally envisioned to get the deal to work...

The recommendation has strings attached, including a personal guarantee from Paulson that the city's general fund will be protected from any risk associated with the project. City council will now vote on the idea on March 11—next Wednesday, and it seems the commissioners now have Paulson over a pretty hefty barrel, aiming to get the multi-millionaire to give up as many concessions as possible on the deal, in exchange for their political support.

So: Is Paulson prepared to pursue this deal at any cost?

"I think it's a better deal for Portland, but I'm optimistic that we can get this to work," he says. "I'm doing a lot more than I've envisioned doing here, it began with a simple proposal and it's now morphed into personal guarantees and a whole lot more than we were originally envisioning. Obviously there's a point at which it becomes too much, but I'm optimistic."

If I were Paulson, I'd simply offer my testicles as collateral, and have done with it. Not that he hasn't already, of course...it's just that sometimes, balls aren't enough.

The recommendation calls for $87m in funding to renovate PGE Park and put a new triple A baseball stadium in at the current Memorial Coliseum site at the Rose Quarter. Of that, $20m would be raised from urban renewal money ($15m from PGE park, and $5m from the Rose Quarter); $25m would be raised from a spectator fund (by the city selling bonds on the open market, and paying them off with ticket sales); and $5m would be raised using the income tax from the players' salaries.

But those figures still leave a projected gap of funding gap of $37m, which the task force encouraging Paulson to fill before going ahead with the deal. Either way, the task force recommends that the gap not be filled with public money, only private sources. There's also an alternative proposal to site the baseball stadium in Lents, with disagreement on the task force over the potential cost implications—it all depends o whether the city gives up parkland for the project, which is a hugely contentious issue, by itself.

"I don't know about that [$37m] figure," says Paulson. "You're talking about a gap there that's a large number, obviously, and it's larger than the gap that I've been working with the city to try to fill."

"The gap that was discussed is not the gap as I understand it," Paulson reiterated. "And yes, there are sources for that money, some of which are private, others are tax-exempt bonding, and then there's some state support. But again, I feel optimistic that we can pull this out with the guidelines that have been suggested. I feel we've got a city that's really trying to work with us, here."

Other strings attached to the task force's recommendation include protecting the city from construction cost overruns by signing guaranteed maximum price contracts to get the stadium built; Paulson's firm, Shortstop LLC, will have to commit to help place the Spectator bonds privately if they can't be marketed on the open market (effectively, picking up the tab, "and I don't think that has become a headline, yet," Paulson said); Paulson has to promise to keep Triple A baseball in the Portland area; doing so has to be as cheap and awesome as possible; and Paulson's firm needs to commit to offering good jobs at the two stadiums in line with the city's current fair wage policy.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument against council approving the deal tonight was condition number 6: that funding the deal with urban renewal money, whether from PGE Park, Lents, or the Rose Quarter, needs to take into account the fact that other urban renewal projects may suffer in those areas. "Dedicating urban renewal dollars to the project will result in tradeoffs," says the report.

And while Mayor Sam Adams may be anxious to put his name on a building in his first term, it remains to be seen whether his fellow city commissioners might prefer to see the city's urban renewal money spent on affordable housing, street improvements, mixed use commercial/residential projects, theaters, esplanades, or whatever. Once again, the success or failure of this deal may depend on whether Adams, along with his ally on the project, Randy Leonard, can convince people of the merits of one of his big projects. It's a credibility issue, and one that could very well be impacted by the Breedlove scandal.

So far, that support hasn't been forthcoming from Adams' fellow commissioners. But there's eight days, and counting, to secure it...and you can bet your life that there'll be some intense lobbying going on between now and next week.