We also deserve a fair deal. Here's how we get both.
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 who's earning $350 million a year from the property. 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. And Portland has no one with equivalent authority negotiating for us.
Oregon is investing double what Raleigh did and receiving none of the protections Barrett himself negotiated for the public in North Carolina.
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.
Economists call this a Vickrey auction — competitive bidding that forces everyone to reveal their true price. 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 — it can offer Dundon a transparent "city discount" on the lease. Say, $50 million capitalized. That makes his bid look effectively larger than a competitor's. It puts a real number on what keeping the Blazers is worth to Portland — instead of leaving it as a blank check.
Portland doesn't even have to do this. 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 — and has every incentive to recoup its investment first. Portland might end up subsidizing Dundon and getting outmaneuvered by the state on the split. There's no guarantee Portland comes out ahead.
Competitive lease path: The city keeps full ownership. No co-ownership dilution. No joint authority politics. 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.
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