Blazers and City Increasingly at Odds Over Arena Funding

The debate around funding renovations to the Trail Blazers’ home arena has gone from bad to worse. 

Soon after Blazers owner Tom Dundon said he was not inclined to contribute toward $600 million in planned upgrades to Portland’s Moda Center, the team and city are increasingly at odds over a proposed term sheet that would oversee the project.

According to industry sources and multiple reports, the Trail Blazers are strongly rebuking the term sheet issued last week by the city that would require a $3 million annual payment for a property tax offset, a 20-year lease term that requires all home game at the Moda Center, and “a labor harmony agreement” likely leading to unionized jobs at the arena.

“The term sheet is a non-starter,” The Athletic reported a team source as saying. “I don’t know why they sent it to us, because they know very little of the stuff we would agree to.”

That, in turn, has sparked further pushback from city leaders, and amplified a three-way fight among the team, the office of Mayor Keith Wilson, and the Portland City Council. 

“Imagine thinking that a handshake deal with the mayor, who has NO budget authority, for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars … with ‘concepts of a plan’ was the end of the negotiation,” said Portland city councilor Candace Avalos. 

Moda Center, which opened in 1995, is owned by the city but managed and operated by the Blazers’ Rip City Management. A city vote is slated for Aug. 12 on its portion of the overall renovation funding. The project already has state funds that are approved and a county contribution also under consideration.

Getting a successful vote on the Portland City Council, however, looks to be an increasingly uphill climb. On the city’s side, there isn’t even consensus that the term sheet represents a true opening offer from city leaders. Rather, it’s still an initial draft, and even that has not generated broad support.  

“I participated in a three-plus-hour executive session where its immediate impending public release was not mentioned at all,” said Portland city councilor Sameer Kanal. 

All this has raised further chatter about the Blazers potentially leaving Portland. The team has not made any sort of threat along these lines, but there’s no debate that Moda Center is falling further behind next-generation NBA arenas such as the Intuit Dome and Chase Center in California, and what’s now being developed in Philadelphia. 

Last week, though, NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged the Portland discussions had “gone off track in various ways,” and that he “was hoping more progress would have been made by now.”

The WNBA’s Fire, owned by RAJ Sports, also play in the Moda Center. 

Local Friction 

Contributing to the rancor between the Blazers and the city is a recent Dundon appearance at a Portland Metro Chamber event in which he said he had no interest in helping fund the renovations.

“It feels like we’re making a pretty big investment by staying here and paying these tax rates,” he said.

The Portland arena situation is also not the only recent controversy for Dundon. After winning the Stanley Cup with the NHL’s Hurricanes that he owns, Dundon shocked many hockey observers by having the names of his wife and five children—each of whom has no official role with the team—engraved on the treasured trophy.