From the April 9, 2015 edition of the Portland Tribune

Opening Day is more than 400 days away, but Portland’s fledgling college wood-bat team is starting to pick off all the things it needs to do before the first Great West League season.

First up is the team name: the Portland (blank). Next week, league president and Portland team co-owner Ken Wilson is expected to announce the nickname and winner of the name-the-team contest that runs through Friday.

Fans have been asked to choose between six names Wilson says came out of focus groups: Pickles, Red Dogs, Pliers, Mud Hounds, Pixels and Posse. Online voting has been three times what was expected, Wilson says.

After revealing the nickname, next up will be a team logo, which Wilson hopes to have ready in May or June.

Uniforms will come a month or two after that, with season ticket sales to follow later in 2015.

The Great West League plans to launch its first 60-game season in early June 2016. Portland and two California cities, Lodi and Chico, already have franchises, with three more cities to be named this year.

“Our fourth team will come soon, and it will have quite a bit of a wow factor,” Wilson says.

The Portland team will play at Walker Stadium in Lents Park, and Wilson has tasks lined up to get the 59-year-old ballpark in shape for 30 home games. He says capacity will be 1,500.

About 800 existing seats will be renovated, and about 240 new field-level seats, closer to the action, will be added between the dugouts.

Additional seating will be available in four group event areas: a deck behind the 5-foot-high fence in left field, a field-level picnic area behind the 3-foot-high fence in right field, field-level tents down the right-field line and a dozen 10-foot-square tents down the left-field line.

Another feature of the redesigned ballpark will be a standing area behind home plate and above the existing walkway. “We’ll have food and beverage areas there,” Wilson says, “so you can come an hour before the game and party, or mingle there during the game. It’s not a ticketed area, so anybody can go up there.”

The goal is to have the stadium renovations done by Nov. 15.

A team office will be up and running at Walker Stadium in a month or so, Wilson says, and it will be open year-round.

Work on the field is likely to start July 15, with home plate being moved to accommodate the extra seating. Seeding of the new grass field is planned for Sept. 1.

The team also wants to have a new, “major league sound system,” Wilson says, and is leaning toward having an electronic scoreboard but hasn’t ruled out a hand-operated one, in right-center field. “We’ll make that call in May or June,” Wilson says.

The left-field foul pole will be 302 feet from home plate, and it’ll be 306 to the pole in right.

The fence will be 16 feet high from left-center to right-center, covered with green mesh and some advertising.