Since he bought the Portland Trail Blazers, Tom Dundon’s script has looked very familiar to many in the Pacific Northwest. The complaints about the Moda Center and the lease with the city, plus the penny-pinching and apparent disregard for the fan base, feel a lot like what Clay Bennett and that ownership group did after buying the Seattle SuperSonics, a group that always had the intention of moving them to Oklahoma City.
Dundon and the Trail Blazers are negotiating with Portland City officials on a new lease to that would keep the team in the city to 2050, provide much-needed arena upgrades, plus the taxes on tickets and more, with a deadline at the end of the year (before some approved government funding goes away).
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was asked about the apparent lack of progress in those negotiations, following the league’s Board of Governors meeting.
“I want to be very direct about it: I would see it as a failure if we did not keep the team in Portland,” Silver said. “I’ve spent a lot of time in that community over the years. They’ve shown amazing support for the Trail Blazers. They’re some of our best fans around the league.
“At the same time, now I speak for our WNBA team in the market as well, we need a state-of-the-art arena. I think by any objective measure now, the current building there is in the bottom measure of any arena in the league...
“It’s my hope that we can lower the temperature honestly a bit in these negotiations.”
The temperature has been high.
Negotiations should have started in earnest a couple of months ago, after the Portland City Council approved $120 million to pay for much-needed renovations to the Moda Center. Combine that with already approved state and county funds, and there is a pool of $586 million to update the arena — and Silver is right, it needs it.
The negotiations would include a new lease that would keep the Trail Blazers in Portland until 2050, an additional 20 years beyond the current lease.
The City Council also approved a terms sheet with that money, which Dundon and the Trail Blazers have said is a non-starter. That terms sheet includes a $3 million annual rent charge, on top of the fact that the city already gets a 6% tax on each ticket sold and every parking fee at the building. The Trail Blazers want all of that reduced and the new rent charge eliminated. The city’s term sheet also calls for the Trail Blazers to hire union workers for the renovations and construction process, as well as for concession workers and others on game night. The Trail Blazers have asked for increased security around the game.
There’s no real pressure on the negotiations yet, with the City Council’s final vote on a term sheet currently set for Dec. 17. As we move closer to that date, we’ll see if Dundon and the city can move toward a compromise, or if that was never Dundon’s intention and he wanted to move the team from the start.
He also may have gotten a sense at the Board of Governors meeting whether the other owners would back him in such a move, especially considering the city and regional governments did step up with the needed money.
