PORTLAND -- We'll soon know more about the latest plans to change a Portland landmark.

Planners from the City of Portland will be gathering at a meeting Tuesday night to present draft site concepts and big plans are in the works for the old Memorial Coliseum.

One possibility is tearing down the coliseum. Planners said they want to create a project that will be busy and active even during the off-season. More possible changes include shopping and residential units.

Right now, not everyone is happy with the current options.

A group of architects was pushing to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places although it won't be eligible until it's been in place for 50 years. In 1954, voters approved an $8 million bond to construct the Memorial Coliseum. Construction was completed in 1960.

Why tear it down?

“Because the coliseum's essential structure and its bones and even its walls are in great shape,” architect Kristen Minor said.

Minor sees an icon of modernism here with transparent glass walls blocked inappropriately in recent decades by black-out curtains.

The ahead-of-it's time design, however, is now mired in 2009 repair bills, says City Commissioner Randy Leonard.

“The coliseum is a nearly 50-year-old building that has 50-year-old plumbing, 50-year-old heating and ventilating system, 50-year-old roof. It is a in a state of disrepair.”

Leonard has no qualms about recommending the coliseum's deconstruction.

He brokered the deal to get major league soccer to Portland and, in the process, approved relocating minor league baseball to a new stadium where the coliseum now sits.

“First and foremost we have to have in that area something that's economically viable,” said Leonard.

“Let's have some alternatives on the table to just knocking down the coliseum,” said Minor.

Mayor Sam Adams disagrees.

He says enormous repair bills are pending so why bother slowing down the Rose Quarter redevelopment process over a building whose fate has been argued repeatedly for a decade.

“The debate about whether to use it as a big box store, to use it as an athletic center, whether to tear it down. I mean, that has been an active and ongoing debate,” he said.

The Portland Beavers will move into the new ball park to make way for major league soccer, which kicks off in 2011. PGE Park will be converted to a soccer only facility. The proposed baseball park will sit next to the Rose Garden.

The public will be able to weigh in on the project at a meeting Tuesday night. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the Left Bank building located at 240 North Broadway. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.