Rip City,
Not Rip Off

It's a definition, not a fact — and it defines the question away. Three things the sentence skips:

• The building's revenue is private. The operator — Rip City Management, owned by the same group that owns the team — runs the Moda Center and keeps the revenue from every event: Blazers games, concerts, the Winterhawks, all of it. Renovating the machine that prints the operator's revenue is value to the ownership, whoever the check is made out to.
• Public money already flows to the operator. Under the lease the City signed in 2024, the City's ticket user fees and parking revenues are paid to the operator as the “City Contribution” (Arena Operating Lease §10.9). That's not a prediction; it's an executed contract.
• The City's own principle proves the point. Its facts page says no public dollars for “tenant-specific upgrades like an owner's box.” We agree — that's exactly our standard. Now apply it honestly: the City's own study labels ~$341M of the 20-year plan as renovation and refresh of suites, clubs, bars, retail, and fan-revenue technology. By the City's own rule, that's the operator's bill — or it comes with rent and revenue sharing attached.

Who keeps the revenue, line by line — in the Renovation Study.

That's the claim — so we read both laws. Neither contains a December deadline.

• SB 1501 (the Arena Fund law) contains no date at all — only conditions: the bonds can't issue until the City signs. That's leverage, not a stopwatch.
• SB 5701 (the bill that actually authorizes the bonds) sets only biennium windows: the first $200M runs through June 30, 2027 (§4), and the remaining $165M is already enacted law for the biennium starting July 1, 2027 (§6) — it cannot “go away” in December.
• What December actually protects is a bond-sale calendar slot — the Treasurer's last routine sale of this biennium lands in early spring 2027. Miss it and, in OPB's own words, lawmakers “have a chance to introduce an identical bill” when the 2027 session convenes in mid-January. The state's own bond guide calls next-biennium reauthorization the routine remedy.
• The City's own page undercuts the “hard cutoff”: it asserts the December requirement without citing any statute — and schedules the binding “definitive documents” vote for Q1 2027 on the same page. The team is locked into Moda through October 2030 (extendable to 2035) regardless — the City can refuse any move and a judge can order the team to stay (§1.3, §4.2).
• And the rush outruns the law's own required homework: SB 1501 §6(2)(a) orders the State to retain — at its own expense — an expert in arena negotiations to review comparable NBA deals during this negotiation. What has surfaced (July 9) is a funding-and-governance summary from the state's financial advisor — the deal-terms review is still missing: no rent, relocation, or revenue-share comparison exists (the review binds no term — §6(2)(b) — and isn't owed to Council; waiting for it is Council's own choice).

The honest version: a slip costs a construction season and political momentum, and re-passage takes a real vote — the clock is real, the cliff is rhetorical. A good deal in February beats a bad deal in December. The fact-check, with the statutes →

For closing a deal — sure. For pricing one — no. A room, however skilled the people in it, can only haggle; only a market can discover a price. That's why every peer city either bid the work or benchmarked against someone who did.

The fix isn't a bigger room. It's giving whoever negotiates a published market range to negotiate from: the peer benchmarks (measured above), a competitive market test of the operator role — the no-bid status was Council's own choice, not a legal requirement — and the comparable-deals review SB 1501 §6(2)(a) already requires (at the State’s own expense; not yet begun). Then publish the draft terms and the revenue waterfall before the vote. The same five people negotiate a better deal with the market on paper behind them — and speed stops being the enemy of price.

That is not how Adam Silver described Portland when he was here. Asked directly whether Portland is a small city, Silver pointed to the metro area's roughly 2.5 million people and said Portland is larger than most American cities.

That does not mean Portland can dictate anything it wants. It means Council should negotiate from the reality that Portland is not begging for a team in a marginal market — it owns the building, has a state-backed renovation path, and is already the home of an NBA franchise.

We want to keep the Blazers, and a fair deal is how you keep them — not a blank check. Three things to weigh:

• The leverage isn't what it was. In March 2026 the NBA Board of Governors voted to explore expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas — the two cities always named as the relocation threat. Expansion means those markets get their own teams (and pay the league a multi-hundred-million-dollar fee), which removes them as places to poach Portland's franchise. Austin, Nashville, Kansas City and San Diego aren't TV-market upgrades; Raleigh is unproven; Vancouver and Mexico City are long-term concepts.
• The real lesson of the Sonics is the lease, not the subsidy. Seattle didn't lose the Sonics for being too stingy — the out-of-town group that bought the team in 2006 intended to move to Oklahoma City all along. Despite a contractual "good-faith" promise to try to stay, a co-owner admitted "we didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle" (a $250K NBA fine), and the owners' own emails — one called himself "a man possessed" to move — showed relocation was the plan from day one. No arena subsidy would have changed that. What did protect Seattle's taxpayers was its binding KeyArena lease: the city enforced it and the owners paid ~$45M (up to $75M) to leave early (ESPN). A determined owner leaves regardless — so the lease terms, not the size of the handout, are the public's real protection.
• Keeping the team and a fair lease aren't opposites. The team was just bought for ~$4.25B by owners who valued it as a Portland franchise, on a lease running through 2030 (extendable to 2035). Every city that kept its team still negotiated rent, revenue share, and relocation penalties — "pay anything or lose them" is the oldest play in sports.
• And nothing forces the decision now. Through October 2030 (extendable to 2035), the team can't relocate — or even formally pursue a move — without the City's written consent, which it may withhold “in the sole and absolute discretion of the City,” and a judge can order the team to stay (Exclusive Site Agreement §1.3, §4.2). The offer on the table asks the public to fund a ~$1 billion renovation while the operator keeps the new revenue for $1 a year — and because the team is legally parked through 2030, the City can hold out for a market return rather than sign that split on a stopwatch.

Full breakdown — every market, the NBA expansion vote, and what real relocation would require — in the Relocation Analysis & BATNA scorecard.

The Green Bay Packers are community-owned — so they can't leave, so they never threaten to leave, so they never extort the public for a new stadium. The team and the city are perfectly aligned, and the franchise is one of the most valuable and beloved in sports. The leagues' response wasn't to copy it: the NFL banned any other team from community ownership, and the NBA never allowed it — because it works for the public.

Portland can't do full community ownership. But it can demand the closest approximation: real owner capital, revenue sharing, and structural alignment between the owner's financial interest and the city's. That's all the Fair-Deal Term Sheet is — alignment, not extraction. Keep the team, renovate Moda, and make the owner's upside and the public's point the same direction.

This is the strongest argument for funding, so it's worth being precise. Yes, the City owns the Moda Center — which is exactly why the 2024 bridge lease the City already signed put the burden where it belongs:

• The operator funds capital — not the taxpayer. Under the executed Arena Operating Lease (§10.9), the City's contribution is capped at "no more than fifty percent (50%) of the actual expenditures paid by [the operator]," matched to Blazers game-day revenue — and (§10.9.1) repaid if the team leaves. "We own it, so we pay" is not what the City's own lease says.
• Repair is not the same as revenue upgrades. Maintaining a public building means a sound roof, working systems, safe exits — about $164M of genuine repair in the city's own study. It does not mean taxpayers funding $300M+ of new premium suites, clubs, and bars that generate revenue the operator keeps.
• The "public" building generates private revenue. The operator — Rip City Management, now Dundon-owned — runs the arena and keeps the event revenue. The building is public; the profits are private. That's the whole problem.

See repair vs. revenue, who paid and who profited, and the bridge lease vs. the proposed deal.

The number isn't really the issue — who pays for what is. But the framing is also off:

• $505M is a 20-year figure, not today's cost. The city's study prices today's full scope at about $253M in current dollars; the $505M is that same scope escalated and repeated over 20 years — it already includes two decades of inflation. So "add inflation to $505M" double-counts it, and the $600M ask is above even that 20-year ceiling.
• Comps usually hide a big private share. Utah's ~$900M and MSG's ~$1B projects involved large private contributions and different scopes. The number that matters is the public's share and what comes back, not the headline.
• The real question is the split. Roughly $164M is genuine repair; the rest is revenue-generating upgrades the operator captures.

Line-by-line reconciliation of the $253M / $505M / $600M figures: the renovation analysis.

We don't second-guess the experts — we use them. Every figure comes from the City's own commissioned study (Venue Solutions Group):

• The $253M is VSG's own current-dollar line-item total; the $505M is VSG's own 20-year projection. We didn't recalculate them — we reconciled them.
• The repair-vs-revenue split uses VSG's own category labels and its own High/Medium/Low priority grades. VSG itself calls the building "in good condition for its age."

So the disagreement isn't with the professionals — it's that the public is asked for $600M, above what the professionals' own 20-year plan totals, with no published breakdown of who pays for what. We're asking Council to follow the study it paid for. See the reconciliation.

And the state's own law agrees the public side needs an expert: SB 1501 §6(2)(a) requires the State to retain an arena-negotiations professional to review comparable NBA deals during this negotiation. Our ask isn't that Council take our homework on faith — it's that the State do its own required homework, in public, before the vote.

Even granting the league sets arena standards, that settles what gets built — not who pays. League-required or not, the suites, clubs, and premium areas generate revenue the operator keeps. "The NBA requires it" is an argument for the team — which just sold for ~$4.25B — to invest in its own business, the way any company meets its industry's standards. It isn't an argument for taxpayers to fund the revenue-generating work and let the operator collect on it. Keeping the building "first-class" is, in fact, already the operator's contractual duty. See who captures the upside.

It's true the building hosts far more than 41 Blazers games a year — and that argument actually cuts against public funding, not for it:

• Every one of those events — concerts, the Portland Fire, the women's Final Four, Disney on Ice, comedians — is booked and run by Rip City Management, the Dundon-owned operator, which keeps the revenue: rentals, concessions, premium seating, sponsorships, and parking on non-Blazer nights.
• So "it's not just the Blazers" means the private upside is bigger, not the public's. The public's slice of a sold-out concert is a thin parking/user-fee sliver; the commercial revenue flows to the operator.
• If the renovation lands bigger acts and more dates, that grows the operator's business — the single strongest reason the operator, not the taxpayer, should fund the revenue-generating upgrades.

"Multi-purpose venue" is real — and it's exactly why the entity that collects on every event should pay for the parts of the renovation that make those events more profitable. See who operates the building and keeps the revenue and where the revenue goes.

The team has real civic value — and we want to keep it. But "civic value" is the argument used for every subsidy, and it doesn't hold up as a blank check:

• Independent economists have studied arena and stadium subsidies for decades and consistently find they don't return their cost to the public treasury; the spending mostly shifts dollars from other local entertainment rather than creating them.
• Tax revenue "the team generates" largely substitutes for spending that would happen anyway. If officials claim a real return to schools and services, they should publish the General Fund ROI model — not just assert it.
• Civic pride is genuine, and it isn't reduced by negotiating a fair lease. We can keep the team and protect the public.

If the renovation truly pays the public back, that case can be made in numbers — and Council should require it first. See where the money goes.

We're not fighting the renovation — we support fixing the Moda Center. "Inevitable" answers whether the work happens; our question is who pays and on what terms. The work getting done doesn't mean taxpayers fund the revenue-generating parts with no lease, no rent, and no repayment. The 2024 bridge lease already proved it can get done with the operator funding capital and the public's share capped. See the bridge lease vs. the proposed deal.

If private spending really is more efficient, that's an argument for the operator to fund and run the project with its own money — not for the public to hand over $600M and hope. And "government wastes money" is a reason to attach strings — a real lease, rent, revenue share, repayment, audits — not to drop them. "Just get it done" still leaves the terms unanswered, and a fair lease doesn't slow a deal: it's what every other city negotiated while keeping its team. See the deals analysis.

"Meet in the middle" assumes the only variable is the total. It isn't. About $573M with no rent, no revenue share, and no private capital is a worse deal for the public than $253M with a lease that returns real money. (The July 17 draft does now carry a lease, a clawback, and a $3M offset — the economics column is what remains empty.) Negotiate the terms, not just the number. See the renovation analysis and the bridge-lease baseline.

No. We're Blazers fans. We support keeping the team in Portland and renovating the Moda Center. The only question is whether Council signs a blank check or negotiates a market-rate lease for a publicly owned building before committing public money.

At minimum: the full renovation scope and the VSG line-item assessment; the reconciliation of the $253M current-dollar scope, the $505M 20-year plan, and the $600M ask; a draft lease; a revenue waterfall showing who receives every major arena revenue stream; a General Fund ROI model; audited annual disclosure; and relocation protection tied to the full public investment.

The state authorized $365M in bonds, but debt service is estimated at $531–$623M over 20 years (modeled at municipal rates — method on the Economic Impact page). Add the City's $120M capital plus ~$280M of maintenance (~$14M/yr × 20), the County's reported ~$88M, and the all-in public commitment runs to $1.02B–$1.11B — more than $1 billion. (The Oregonian, more conservatively, estimates taxpayer cost alone could exceed $880M.) That's why the lease terms matter: the public should know what it gets back before the money is committed. See the funding stack.

The Oregon Arena Fund is dedicated to arena expenses — construction, renovation, operations, maintenance, debt service. Money routed there can help pay arena costs, but it does not fund schools, parks, public safety, or housing. A genuine public return should reach the General Fund, not just recirculate inside the project.

The bridge lease the City already signed required the operator to fund capital with the City's share capped at ≤50% of the operator's spend (matched to Blazers game-day revenue), promised no upfront City investment, no City debt, and no new taxes, and required repayment if the team left (§10.9 / §10.9.1). Council should explain why the 2026 terms should be weaker than the deal it already negotiated. See the bridge-lease baseline.