We also deserve a fair deal. Here's how we get both.
Everything below this section is history, documents, and politics. This part is just a ledger. Four ways this could go, priced in present value at the City's own 6% discount rate, over twenty years. Every figure that comes from the term sheet is the City's own.
| Portland's position | The deal as adopted |
Building sits vacant |
Lesser tenant, no public money |
Blazers stay, pay market rent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public money out | ||||
| City capital contribution | $104M | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| City ongoing capital support ($13.75M/yr × 20) | $158M | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| City operations | $9M | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Portlanders' share of the County's $88M (~80% of Multnomah) | $61M | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Portlanders' share of the State's $365M (~16% of the income tax base) | $51M | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Total out | $383M | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Money back | ||||
| Rent received | $46M | $0 | $73M | $219M |
| Payment in lieu of taxes (City share) | $17M | $0 | — | $17M |
| Total back | $63M | $0 | $73M | $236M |
| Net present value to Portland | −$319M | $0 | +$73M | +$236M |
Every cost line above is money Portlanders pay. The State's $365M and the County's $88M are shown only at Portland's share — the remaining $281M falls on Oregonians outside the city. Rent as adopted is $3.17M/year with a 3% escalator. "Market rent" is $15M/year, benchmarked to Raleigh's arena at $4.5M in a metro a third Portland's size, sharing its calendar with NC State.
Portland is $319 million better off leaving the building empty than doing this deal. Not compared to some better deal. Compared to nothing at all.
The first three columns are academic, because the Blazers are not leaving. Relocation requires a majority of thirty NBA owners who are currently pricing Seattle and Las Vegas expansion franchises at $7–10 billion each. Commissioner Adam Silver has said moving existing teams is off the table. The owners voted down the last proposed move to Seattle 22–8. Dundon paid over $4 billion for this team in March and plays rent-free in a building he doesn't own and isn't obligated to insure.
The realistic alternative was never losing the team. It was charging the tenant who was staying regardless. That's a swing of over half a billion dollars in present value, and it was available the entire time.
Here is the part that should end the conversation. Keep the $383 million public contribution exactly as written, and ask what rent would make Portland whole:
| $3.17M/year (as adopted) | −$319M |
| $5M/year | −$293M |
| $10M/year | −$220M |
| $15M/year (roughly market) | −$147M |
| $25.1M/year | break-even |
Portland would need $25 million a year to break even — well above what the building fetches on the open market. Even charging full market rent, we lose $147 million.
So the problem isn't only that the rent is too low. The public contribution is larger than the entire value of the tenancy at any rent a tenant would actually pay. Negotiating the rent line cannot fix a deal this size. The contribution itself has to come down, or Portland has to take a share of the revenue the renovation generates — which it currently does not. Rent stays fixed at $3.17 million no matter how much the improvements raise what the building earns. Every dollar of value the renovation creates flows to the operator.
It's a fair question, and it has a precise answer: it cancels out.
Whatever having an NBA team is worth to this city — civic identity, downtown energy, something to talk about with strangers — that value is identical whether Dundon pays $3.17 million or $15 million or $25 million. He's in the building doing the same thing in every one of those worlds. The benefit can't justify picking the worst column, because it appears in all of them equally.
It only matters against the vacant column. So: is having the Blazers here worth more than $319 million in present value, over and above every dollar that shows up in public revenue? The City has never produced that number. The closest thing in the record is a claim in its own Salem lobbying memo that the arena generates "$670 million in economic activity each year" — gross activity, no source attached, and no accounting for what Portlanders would otherwise have spent at restaurants, concerts, and bars across the city instead. Decades of peer-reviewed economics find that professional sports venues generate little to no net new local activity, because entertainment spending mostly moves around rather than materializing.
The honest range for a genuine externality — the value people get that isn't already captured when they buy a ticket — runs from roughly $30 million to maybe $150 million in present value. Real, worth something, and not close to $319 million.
Everything above counts what Portland residents pay. The State's $365 million comes from Oregonians statewide, and Portland is about 16% of the income tax base. Oregonians outside Portland are contributing roughly $281 million in present value toward renovating a building Portland owns, and receive nothing directly for it. Counting every public body putting money in, the deal is about $566 million negative.
Nobody at the City appears to have run this. If they had, the fact that Portland is $319 million behind a vacant building would have surfaced somewhere in eighteen months of negotiation.
The analysis above took under an hour in a spreadsheet. It's the first thing any investor does before committing half a billion dollars. Tom Dundon has a finance team that does nothing else. Portland has three law firms, a consultant, and no published model.
Assumptions, so anyone can check them: capital contributions delivered over a four-year construction window; ongoing support and both revenue streams running twenty years; escalators as adopted (3% rent, 5% PILOT); 6% discount rate, the same rate the City uses in its Spectator Fund model; Portland's share of the County at 80% of Multnomah's population and of the State at 16% of the income tax base. Move any of these and the number moves. The sign does not.
Nobody involved in this conversation wants the Blazers to leave. The team is part of Portland's identity. The Moda Center should be renovated into a world-class facility. That's not the debate.
The debate is about the terms — because right now, Portland is getting the worst arena deal in the country. And it doesn't have to be that way.
It starts with a fact most Portlanders don't know.
In 2024, the City of Portland bought the arena for $1. The land, the building, all of it. Portland owns it outright.
The Trail Blazers are the tenant. Tom Dundon — the Dallas billionaire buying the team for $4.25 billion — will be renting space in a building the city owns.
Now here's what the current deal asks Portland to do:
Imagine you own a house. You rent it to a tenant whose business earns hundreds of millions a year — and the property is central to that business. The house needs a new kitchen. Instead of the tenant paying for it — or even splitting the cost — you pay for the entire renovation. You don't raise the rent. You don't charge for the increased value. The tenant gets a nicer kitchen and all the extra income it generates. You get the bill.
That's the Moda Center deal.
Tom Dundon is buying the Blazers for $4.25 billion. He previously bought the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes for $425 million. That franchise is now worth $2.66 billion — a 6.25x return in seven years.
He received $300 million in public arena funding in Raleigh. He captured 100% of the appreciation. Portland is being asked to repeat this at double the price.
"I didn't think this was a good financial decision when I did it... how much ego I could appease of my own just to have a team."
Here's what his $4.25 billion Blazers purchase becomes over 20 years:
If you knew a house was worth $1 million and the seller was willing to take $700K, you wouldn't offer a million. You'd offer $701K. The deal you're willing to accept has nothing to do with what you can afford — it has everything to do with what the other side will walk away from.
Dundon would self-fund this renovation before walking away from a $4.25 billion asset that appreciates to $13–29 billion. The Warriors and Clippers ownership groups privately funded $1.4 billion and $2 billion arenas respectively. The question isn't whether he can pay. It's whether we'll let him not.
This is the fear driving everything. And the numbers say it's not real.
🏛️ The last NBA relocation attempt (Sacramento to Seattle, 2013) was rejected by the Board of Governors 22–8. The NBA does not want teams moving.
🗺️ The best destination markets — Seattle and Las Vegas — are being absorbed by expansion teams. There's nowhere obvious to go.
💰 Relocation would cost hundreds of millions in fees plus $1.5–2+ billion for a new arena. Self-funding the Moda renovation is vastly cheaper.
📝 Dundon already accepted a 20-year lease requirement in SB 1501. He's committed to Portland.
🧊 Even Dundon himself said: "I'm not in a big rush. I just want to make sure we do it right... there's not a deadline where it has to be done in a certain time."
The urgency is manufactured. The threat isn't real. The only question is whether Portland negotiates like it knows that.
Portland is the only deal in the last decade that combines 100% public funding with zero private capital and no lease terms. Here's how it stacks up:
Sacramento — a smaller market that faced an active relocation threat — still required the Kings to put up 52% of the cost. Portland owns its arena outright and faces no credible relocation threat. We should be getting a better deal than Sacramento, not the worst deal in the league.
Here's the part that should make you angry.
In 2023, Dundon signed an arena deal in Raleigh for the Carolina Hurricanes. The public body that owned PNC Arena hired Dan Barrett of CAA Icon to negotiate on the public's behalf. Barrett secured:
✅ $4.5 million/year in rent
✅ Ground lease payments at 6% of fair market value
✅ Payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs)
✅ 10% affordable housing requirement
✅ $10 million in team-funded improvements
Now Dan Barrett represents the Blazers in Portland. He's on the other side of the table. He knows exactly what a fair deal looks like — because he built one. Portland has hired an outside advisor — but in an advisory role with no binding authority. Barrett had the power to walk away from bad terms in Raleigh. Portland's advisor can only recommend.
Oregon is investing double what Raleigh did and receiving none of the protections Barrett himself negotiated for the public in North Carolina.
Public records obtained by KGW show that Barrett's firm — CAA Icon, now representing the Blazers — prepared the pitch deck that convinced city and state leaders to fund the renovation publicly. The entity being subsidized helped design the case for its own subsidy.
A Portland city staffer actually pushed back. Karl Lisle, the city's facilities coordinator, suggested adding Milwaukee and Sacramento to the comparisons — because they're similar markets where the team paid roughly half. Barrett dismissed both. His exact words: "As the lead negotiator for the public sector in both Sacramento and Milwaukee, I can say that the market has clearly changed and these comparables are dated."
Read that again. He used his record of protecting the public in those cities to argue against protecting the public in Portland. Then he asked city staff: "We hope that you will support the position as we work toward getting approvals."
The pitch deck cherry-picked deals from Salt Lake City, Memphis, Charlotte, and Oklahoma City — all cities with high public shares. It left out the three arenas funded entirely with private money (Golden State, LA Clippers, Seattle). It left out Sacramento and Milwaukee. And it left out Barrett's own Raleigh deal. The header claimed an "AVERAGE OF 90%" public share — a statistic that is accurate only because the sample was constructed to produce it.
The same records show the Blazers' talking points claimed it's "not possible" for the incoming ownership group to fund renovations privately — and called Paul Allen's private funding of the original arena "an outlier." The Warriors spent $1.4 billion of their own money. The Clippers spent $2 billion. But Dundon can't fund a $600 million renovation on a $4.25 billion franchise? That's not a financial fact. It's a negotiating position. And it was accepted without independent analysis.
An OPB investigation published March 12, 2026 revealed the full scope of the Blazers' lobbying campaign.
🛫 City staff took a city-paid 3-day trip to North Carolina with Blazers representatives. They toured arenas in Charlotte and Raleigh — both 100% publicly funded. They dined with Charlotte officials. They attended a Hurricanes game. They did not visit Seattle, where the renovation was 100% privately funded.
💰 The total public commitments add up to $871 million — state ($365M) + city ($405M) + county ($101M). The renovation costs $600 million. That's $271 million more than the renovation requires. Where does the surplus go?
⚠️ Blazers lobbyists told council members that "elected officials will be blamed if the team leaves Portland" and that their "political career would suffer" if they didn't agree. At least four councilors confirmed this to OPB.
👟 Nike CEO Elliott Hill emailed Mayor Wilson: "We all need to do what we can to keep the Trailblazers in Portland. Losing them will be disastrous."
One councilor refused to be railroaded. Tiffany Koyama Lane was the only council member who didn't sign the letter endorsing SB 1501. And Councilor Steve Novick said it plainly:
"It's hard for me to believe that they're going to pack up the team and leave tomorrow if we don't commit $75 million from the Clean Energy Fund in the next five minutes. I don't like the idea of being railroaded."
Here's the thing: the deal should happen. The Blazers should stay. The arena should be renovated. Nobody is arguing otherwise.
The question is whether Portland negotiates like a landlord who just spent $600 million improving a building — or like a city that's been scared into writing a blank check.
Dundon should receive zero net public subsidy.
Every dollar the public puts in should come back through lease terms, concessions, or direct cash payments.
SB 1501 requires the city to commit its own funds before the state's $365 million in bonds can be issued. That state money physically improves Portland's building — that's good for the city. But every dollar the city commits is a transaction cost — the price of unlocking the state money — not a gift to a billionaire.
The city should commit whatever the minimum is that the state will accept. Attach binding lease conditions. Recover 100% of the city's own contribution through rent, PILOTs, naming rights, revenue sharing, and community benefits.
These aren't radical demands. They're what every other comparable deal in the country includes.
Think of it this way. The state is offering to renovate your rental property for $365 million. But they'll only do it if you also chip in. So you chip in the minimum required. You renovate the building. Then you charge your tenant rent — because that's what landlords do. The tenant keeps most of the increased revenue from the nicer building. You get a fair return on a building you own. Everyone wins.
The only version where someone loses is the one where you renovate the building, don't charge rent, and hand the tenant a $600 million upgrade for free. That's the current deal.
Section 5 of SB 1501 lists five conditions before the state can issue a single dollar in bonds. Two of them require Portland's affirmative participation.
No city commitment = no joint authority = no bonds = no deal.
Every other party at the table — the state, the county, Dundon — needs Portland to say yes. That's not weakness. That's the strongest negotiating position anyone at the table holds.
You hold the only key to a room with $365 million in it. The person asking you to open the door will make billions from what's inside. All you have to do is name your price before you turn the key. Once you open the door, the money is gone and your leverage disappears.
Every term you want must be written into the agreement before you sign.
In 2017, Seattle owned an aging arena called KeyArena. Sound familiar? Here's what they did.
They put the lease out to competitive bid. Two groups — AEG and Oak View Group — bid against each other. OVG won. The result:
✅ $1.15 billion renovation — 100% privately funded. Zero city money. Zero taxpayer risk.
✅ City kept ownership. OVG leases the building.
✅ 39-year lease. City collects rent the entire time.
✅ All cost overruns absorbed by OVG. Not the city.
The renovated arena — now Climate Pledge Arena — hosts the NHL's Seattle Kraken, the WNBA's Seattle Storm, and is NBA-ready. Portland owns a nearly identical asset and is doing the exact opposite.
Here's the play Portland isn't making. The city could lease the Moda Center to any arena management company with the right to sublease to the Blazers. Multiple operators bid. Dundon can bid too — and he's motivated to, because leasing directly from the city is cheaper than paying a middleman's markup.
In economics, when this type of auction uses a second-price rule — where the winner pays what the next-highest bidder offered, not their own bid — it's called a Vickrey auction. The beauty is that everyone is incentivized to bid their true price, because overbidding carries no penalty and underbidding risks losing. Either Dundon wins by paying what the building is actually worth, or someone else wins and the city collects rent regardless. If a third-party lessee overestimates what Dundon will pay in sublease? They eat the cost, not the city. All the risk transfers to the private sector. The city can't lose.
And if the city wants to account for the civic value of having the Blazers specifically — not just any tenant — there's already a well-established mechanism for that. It's called a "scoring auction" — governments use it in defense procurement to give domestic manufacturers a preference over foreign bidders. The city names a "Blazers discount" — say, $50 million — and the Blazers' bid is treated as that much higher for the purpose of picking the winner. The discount gives the Blazers an edge, but only as much of an edge as they actually need to beat the next-highest bidder. If the gap is $5 million, the city "spends" $5 million of its $50 million authorization — not a penny more.
The result: the city explicitly names what keeping the Blazers is worth. The market handles the rest. If Dundon walks away, it was worth it by definition — the city already decided its maximum price. No blank checks. No guesswork. No regret.
"But what if the Blazers genuinely need a subsidy to stay?" The mechanism handles that too. A bid can be negative — meaning "pay us this amount to stay here." If the city's Blazers discount is large enough to cover a negative bid and still beat competing offers, the Blazers stay and the subsidy is exactly the amount the city chose to authorize. If the threat to leave is real, the mechanism pays them to stay. If the threat is a bluff, the competing bids expose it. The city doesn't have to guess which one it is. The math figures it out.
And here's why one number changes everything. The auction produces a single dollar figure — the net value of the lease. That's the foundation. Once the city has it, the city decides how to spend it. Want affordable housing near the Rose Quarter? Fund it from the lease revenue. Want community programs? Same. The city doesn't need to negotiate housing requirements into a lease with a billionaire. It just needs the money, and then it makes its own choices.
Individual items like naming rights can still be negotiated — but against the single-number baseline. If the city trades $5 million in cash rent for naming rights worth $5 million, the public can see it's dollar-for-dollar. If it trades $5 million for naming rights worth $2 million, the public can see the $3 million gap. Without a baseline number, nobody can tell whether the city got a good deal or gave away the store. Right now, there is no baseline. That's why the current deal has no accountability.
Portland doesn't even have to run this auction. But the fact that it could proves that not charging rent is a choice — a choice to subsidize a billionaire with your money.
SB 1501 path: The city commits its own money, enters a joint authority with the state, and then negotiates with both Dundon and the state over how the returns are divided. The state put in $365 million — three times the city's share. A question worth asking: for Portland to come out ahead, the state would have to accept less than its proportional return. There may be reasons the state would do that — but it shouldn't be assumed. It should be demonstrated with numbers before the city commits.
Competitive lease path: The city keeps full ownership. No co-ownership dilution. No joint authority politics. No negotiation with the state at all. The market sets the price. Dundon is incentivized to bid his true valuation to cut out the middleman. The city can't lose — every outcome is good for Portland. Seattle proved this works at $1.15 billion.
The council's message should be: "We have a zero-risk option the market will validate. Show us the state deal is better for Portland — with numbers."
The council's message should be: "We'll do SB 1501 — but only with fair terms. Otherwise, we'll let the market decide."
Here's the problem. You've now scrolled through more financial analysis of this deal than most Portland residents will ever see. You know the city owns the building. You know Dundon contributes $0. You know every other city got a better deal. You know the relocation threat isn't real.
Most Portlanders don't know any of this. They're hearing "save the Blazers" and emailing their council member to just do the deal — any deal — because they're afraid the team will leave.
That fear is what gives the Blazers' lobbying operation its power. And it puts council members in an impossible position: they can see the numbers, but their constituents can't. Demanding fair lease terms invites the attack that they're "risking losing the team." Accepting the current deal means owning a blank check. Either way, they're exposed.
Oregon pioneered something called a Citizens' Initiative Review — a process where a randomly selected, demographically representative panel of residents hears expert testimony from all sides, asks questions, deliberates, and issues a public finding. It's been used on state ballot measures since 2010. It's internationally recognized. And it's exactly what this situation needs.
The idea: convene a panel of 24 randomly selected Portland residents to examine one question — not whether the deal should happen, not whether the Blazers should stay, but: given that the city is contributing public money, what lease terms should be attached?
The deal is happening. The Blazers are staying. The panel just tells the city what a fair lease looks like.
🛡️ It gives council a shield. "A representative panel of 24 Portland residents examined the lease terms and concluded that rent and community benefits are appropriate." That's not a politician's opinion. It's a citizens' recommendation. Try attacking that.
🎯 It creates leverage before it even starts. The moment the Blazers' side learns an informed panel is going to scrutinize the terms publicly, they rationally improve their offer. They'd rather give better terms than have 24 people publish a finding saying the deal is unfair.
💡 It changes the conversation permanently. Twenty-four people who start the process thinking "just save the Blazers" will — after two weeks with the payoff matrix, the Raleigh comparison, and testimony from both sides — arrive at conclusions grounded in the actual data. Their finding becomes a public document that can never be unseen.
The panel can be selected using a publicly verifiable algorithm — the Sortition Foundation's open-source method with a random seed no one controls (like a stock closing price on a set date). Anyone can re-run the math and confirm the selection was fair. It's transparent, auditable, and uncorruptible.
If the Blazers support this deal, they should welcome an informed panel examining it. If they oppose a citizens' panel looking at the lease terms, that tells you everything you need to know about whether those terms can survive scrutiny.
The Blazers aren't going anywhere — and neither are we. Read the full financial analysis. Contact your council member. Demand a citizens' panel on the lease terms before the city signs.
Full Deal Comparison Deep-Dive Analysis