Portland published its proposal — $573M, every dollar public, $0 from ownership — and opened a public survey. Term-sheet vote Aug 12. Final lease vote Dec 17. The lease terms aren’t written yet. This is the window to set them.
Renovate Moda. Keep the Blazers. Make a deal, not a donation.
The Moda Center is our house — the public owns it. A landlord doesn’t fund the tenant’s renovation and hand back the rent.
We’re just going to get a market deal and we’re going to be fully committed to it.
Asked whether ownership would have “skin in the game,” Dundon said public representatives should negotiate terms that are “great for them.” We took him at his word: we wrote the market deal — line by line, every term sourced to a deal his side already signed in Raleigh.
Read the Fair-Deal Term Sheet →Portland owns the Moda Center. The public — not the team — owns the building and the land under it.
The City is about to commit $1 billion+ in public money to renovate it — for an owner who just bought the Blazers for $4.25B, pays $1 a year in rent, and is being asked to contribute $0.
Council can require a fair deal before committing that money — and they vote Aug 12.
You don’t have to be against the Blazers to want a fair deal. We’re fans — keep the team, renovate Moda, just get a fair lease first.
The ask is simple: publish the lease terms and land inside a market range before the Aug 12 vote.
Tom Dundon says he wants a market deal. Good — so let’s measure it. Here is what peer NBA cities secured for the public when tax dollars built the arena — seven things a market deal returns, each priced line-by-line on the Fair-Deal Terms.
Gov. Kotek has urged city and county leaders to confirm their commitments, while the City's own materials say the new Blazers lease terms have not yet been negotiated — so there’s still time to get them right. Council holds the leverage: under SB 1501, no bonds issue and no public money moves until the City signs. The win isn’t signing by a deadline — it’s publishing the terms and landing inside a defensible market range first.
Even the conservative, average-city floor is $450–600M — before the property-tax piece. Portland is committing $1.02B+ and getting none of it back: the only NBA deal that returns zero.
Every figure is a 20-year value, priced line-by-line with its peer precedent and the contract section it comes from on the Fair-Deal Terms. The seven cash terms shown total about $1.04B at conservative mid-estimates; the repair claim the operator already owes (~$164M) brings the count-once package to $1.1–1.2B. The $450–600M floor is the peer mean — what an average city negotiated — before a tax-equivalent PILOT. No NBA city has ended up net-positive; Portland’s is the only deal returning zero on every line.
This is the standard, not a single fixed demand. City Council should not commit the public’s money until the lease terms are public and can be measured against it.
Video evidence · Adam Silver on Portland
Two common pressure lines are that Portland is too small to have leverage, and that the NBA would be indifferent if the Blazers left. Silver's own Portland interview cuts against both.
When asked whether Portland is a small city, Silver points to a metro area of roughly 2.5 million people and says Portland is larger than most American cities.
Source clip: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with Brooke Olzendam, Portland Trail Blazers, March 13, 2026.Silver describes the franchise's long history, the league's Portland/Nike relationship, and why the NBA would not want the Blazers to leave.
Source clip: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with Brooke Olzendam, Portland Trail Blazers, March 13, 2026.Do this now
Councilors set the terms before the August 12 vote. They count constituents and check claims. Here is how to be counted — from two minutes to testimony — on the official timeline the City just published.
Both votes take public comment — you can speak in person or send written testimony through the City’s process, and speakers usually get a couple of minutes. Leave your email above and we’ll send the exact date, time, and sign-up link the moment the hearing is posted, so you can plan and prepare.
A script you can adapt: “Hi, I’m [name], a [neighborhood] resident. The Moda Center is publicly owned. Please don’t commit public money until the lease terms, revenue waterfall, and ROI model are published and land inside a market range. Will you commit to publishing the terms before the August 12 vote?”
Whatever channel you use — email, the hearing, or any public meeting — put a specific, hard-to-dodge question to your councilor, and ask for an answer on the record.
The clock · the City’s own dates
Every date below is the City’s, from its June 9 timeline. The whole deal is decided by December 17 — the state bonds expire mid-December — and the terms get set first, at the August 12 term-sheet vote.
Neither law Oregon enacted for this deal contains a December 2026 — or January 2027 — deadline. We searched the full enrolled text of both: SB 1501 (the Arena Fund law — no date at all) and SB 5701 (the bill that actually authorizes the bonds). The only enacted time limits are biennium boundaries: the first $200M of bonding authority is issuable through June 30, 2027 (§4), and the remaining $165M is already enacted law for the biennium beginning July 1, 2027 (§6) — it cannot “go away” in December.
What mid-December actually protects is a bond-sale calendar slot: the Treasurer’s last routine sale of this biennium falls in early spring 2027, with readiness review starting ~3 months earlier. Miss it, and — in OPB’s own words — “state lawmakers have a chance to introduce an identical bill” when the 2027 session convenes in mid-January. The City’s facts page, which asserts the December requirement without citing any statute, schedules the binding “definitive documents” vote for Q1 2027 on the same page. And the team is locked into Moda through October 2030 (extendable to 2035) regardless.
The clock is real — a slip costs a construction season and political momentum, and re-passage takes a real vote. But the cliff is rhetorical. A deadline driving a billion-dollar signature should be able to cite its statute — and this one can't. That gives Council the room to negotiate on the merits, not against a stopwatch.
Why your two minutes matters
The state’s $365M can’t move without the City — SB 1501, Section 5 requires Portland’s binding commitment first. So the Council vote is the gate, and the August 12 term sheet is where the terms get set.
Councilors respond to two things: constituents they can count and claims they can check. We provide both — you, through the survey, emails, pop-ups, and testimony; us, through a counter-term-sheet where every line cites a document.
When the City’s term sheet meets ours, the question in the room becomes: why is Portland’s deal worse than what this same owner already signed in Raleigh? Asked on the record, that question is how the terms change.
This is working
The City moved. 1,560+ residents have emailed Council, and the deal has been covered by OPB, KGW, KATU, KOIN, Willamette Week, and The Oregonian. None of this was the public posture four months ago — pressure on the record is what changed it.
Reading the City's June 9 page closely
The City's facts page is a start — here are three places it doesn't match the City's own documents. Not a hot take. Just the numbers.
The 2024 assessment — “not updated for inflation” — shows $482M to maintain the building.
$482M is the inflated number — the study's $505M 20-year plan minus the finished scoreboard and decommissioned ice plant ($23M) — and that plan already escalates costs 3.5%–3% every year for 20 years. The same study's today's-dollars figure is ~$253M, less than half. The reconciliation →
The arena “generates $600 million for the local economy.”
That's “total output” — gross churn. The same study puts actual tax revenue to all state and local government at $17.9M a year ($11.3M from the Blazers), and almost half the headline is a modeled multiplier on money nobody spent. The numbers, decoded →
“No money would go to the Trail Blazers or their ownership.”
The operator — Dundon-owned Rip City Management — runs the building and keeps the revenue from every event, and the 2024 lease routes the City's ticket user fees and parking revenue back to the operator as the “City Contribution” (§10.9). The City's page even concedes the principle — no public dollars for “tenant-specific upgrades like an owner's box.” Now apply it to the ~$341M of suites, clubs, bars, and retail in the City's own study. Who keeps the revenue →
The state has committed to contribute up to $365 million.
“The State of Oregon and the Legislative Assembly do not have a legal obligation to deposit moneys in the fund… The Legislative Assembly declares its current intention to issue debt instruments sufficient to yield $365,000,000” (SB 1501 §3(4)). An intention is not a commitment — so the City should not make binding commitments against a non-binding one. Council's obligations should be expressly conditioned on actual bond issuance.
“To fulfill the bond requirements, a new lease… must be signed by December 2026. Without this, the City will not receive State funding.”
Neither law contains that deadline — and the City's page cites no statute for it. SB 5701's first $200M of bonding authority runs through June 30, 2027 (§4); the remaining $165M is already enacted for the biennium starting July 1, 2027 (§6); SB 1501 has no date at all. If December slips, OPB itself reports lawmakers “have a chance to introduce an identical bill” in the session convening mid-January — and the City's same page schedules the binding vote for Q1 2027. The deadline, fact-checked →
The Fair-Deal Term Sheet — rent, revenue share, naming rights, a relocation penalty, and more — with every line sourced to a deal Tom Dundon’s side already signed in Raleigh, or the City already signed in the 2024 bridge lease.
The evidence · every number sourced
The full case lives on dedicated pages — each built from primary documents: the City's own study, the executed 2024 lease, the enrolled bill, and 16 verified peer deals. Here's the map.
Whoever you are, a fair lease serves your stake better than the deal on the table does.
We’re fans first. The surest way to keep the Blazers isn’t a blank check — it’s a published, enforceable lease that binds the team here (a real non-relocation covenant, a 30-year term). Demanding a fair deal is how you keep the team, not how you lose it.
Why a move is a bluff →We want this built — union, with a project labor agreement, local hire and apprenticeship. A published lease with a real cost cap is what locks the jobs in; a rushed, over-budget deal is what puts the build at risk. The renovation is one job; the Rose Quarter district is decades of work.
The terms that protect the build →Because the public owns the building and holds the leverage, a fair lease is the moment to bind community benefits into the district — affordable housing, local hire, anti-displacement, and a real Albina Vision Trust role. Those only happen if they’re in the lease before the vote, not “negotiated later.”
The community-benefit terms →Straight answers to the arguments we hear most — from people who want to keep the Blazers and protect the public. Each answer links to the deeper analysis.
It's a definition, not a fact — and it defines the question away. Three things the sentence skips:
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.
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 →
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.
The league's own commissioner undercuts the “too small to negotiate” talking point. Portland is a real NBA market with real leverage.
Source clip: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with Brooke Olzendam, Portland Trail Blazers, March 13, 2026.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:
Silver discusses the franchise's history, Portland's importance to the league, and the NBA's relationship with Nike — the opposite of “the league does not care.”
Source clip: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with Brooke Olzendam, Portland Trail Blazers, March 13, 2026.Full breakdown — every market, the NBA expansion vote, and what real relocation would require — in the Relocation Analysis.
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:
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:
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):
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.
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:
"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:
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 $550M with no lease, no rent, and no repayment is a worse deal for the public than $253M with a fair lease that shares revenue and protects against relocation. 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. 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.
The City's own 2023 study shows the Rose Quarter returns about $11.3 million a year in Blazers-related taxes — against a public commitment approaching $1 billion. That is a subsidy, not an investment. SB 1501 is now law, passed without requiring rent, private capital, or revenue sharing, and Portland City Council is the last stop. The Council must negotiate the lease terms before handing over the money. Portland owns the Moda Center — that ownership is leverage, but only if the Council uses it. If they sign before the public can compare the lease to low, average, and high market benchmarks, the leverage is gone forever. Email all 12 Portland City Councilors now.
This campaign began by tracking the state bill. SB 1501 is now law, but its legislative history still matters because it explains why Council must negotiate the lease in public.
We're a grassroots group of Blazers fans who want Portland to negotiate like a serious public owner. We love this team, and we expect a lease that respects the people paying for the building.
We started this campaign because no one else was making the case that Portland already owns the Moda Center, that every other city negotiated rent and revenue sharing, and that relocation shouldn't be treated as proven leverage without evidence. The early reporting was thin, and the timeline left little room for public scrutiny. So we built this site, read the bill, ran the numbers, and started organizing.
If the Council signs without negotiating, the leverage is gone forever. That's why we're here.