Portland's Memorial Coliseum -- once slated for the slagheap -- could be transformed into a public market or community center, as plans for its reuse are evaluated by the Portland Development Commission.

Veterans Memorial Coliseum was the original home of the Portland Trail Blazers and has been the center of junior hockey in town for decades. Memorial Coliseum opened in 1960 and has a very unique design: four large columns hold up the roof, allowing for glass walls on four sides of the arena and an open bowl. It's an example of the Modernist design of architecture, a style rarely found in the arena world. The expansion Portland Trail Blazers began their history there; the Beatles rocked the place in 1965.

But since the Rose Garden opened Memorial Coliseum has struggled to find a niche; it now hosts smaller events that would not fill the Rose Garden, and it's once again the home of the Portland Winter Hawks (WHL). The city looked at tearing down the arena to make way for a Portland Beavers ballpark, but that proposal died after local architectural advocates organized opposition to the plan. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places last fall; the designation allows for the reuse of the facility, but it makes it difficult to tear the place down, as Portland officials once proposed.

The Portland Development Commission is soliciting plans for the reuse of the arena. One option, of course, is to continue as it: using it for smaller events and Winter Hawks hockey. Other plans are more ambitious: a $150 million proposal would expand the facility's footprint and turn it into a performing-arts center of sorts, complete with jazz club, performance spaces and aquatic center. Another would turn the place into a year-round public market.

Whether Portland has the money to do anything ambitious with the Coliseum remains to be seen. But the fact that no one is talking about tearing it down is a giant step forward.

(Memorial Coliseum when it opened in 1960. Courtesy of the City of Portland.)