Renovate Moda. Keep the Blazers.
Get a market deal.

Let the market tell us. Portland is being asked for $573 million of public renovation funding, with up to $288.6 million of continuing support behind it, and no competitive process: the operator role was exempted from bidding by Council’s own choice (Ordinance 191857, findings 17–19), not by law. Only the Blazers can be the Blazers’ home team, so no one is bidding that out. But construction, district development and non-game operations are routinely bid, and operators like Oak View Group, ASM, AEG and Legends compete for exactly this work. When Seattle bid out Climate Pledge Arena, OVG privately financed the roughly $1.15B renovation with no public construction subsidy. A market test does not cost us the team; it tells us what the upgrade is really worth before we commit a public dollar.

No. The opposite: renovate the Moda Center, keep the Blazers, sign a long lease. The only question is the terms. And no vote leaves the team homeless: the Blazers already hold a contractual right to play home games at Memorial Coliseum across the plaza (ESA §1.2.3), and the City’s written consent is required for any relocation through October 2030 (extendable to 2035). “Approve fast or they have nowhere to play” is not what the agreements say.

One principle: if public money builds it, the public shares in it. A fair lease gives the public six things. On four of them the state bill is silent; on the other two it sets a floor the statute itself calls a minimum.

1. The owner helps pay for the building he profits from. The bill requires no private capital, and ownership’s construction contribution is $0 in the adopted framework.
2. Rent. He pays $1 a year today; the August 12 amendments propose $3.17M a year from a post-renovation commencement, escalating at the lesser of CPI-W or 3%. It is proposed, not signed, and the bill requires none. For comparison, not as a template, the same ownership’s Raleigh lease carries $4.5M rising to $5.5M.
3. A share of the new revenue the upgrade creates (the bill requires none).
4. The Rose Quarter on the tax rolls, with affordable housing (the bill requires neither).
5. A real penalty if the team tries to leave. §6(1)(d) does require liquidated damages, but only for outstanding bond debt, declining each year, excluding the City’s and County’s cash, and binding only the management entity.
6. Published terms and a hard cost cap. §6(1)(c) says only that the joint authority “is not required to pay for any cost overruns.” It never names who is. The contract has to.

It is the deal this ownership already signed somewhere else, which makes it a comparison, not a template. Renovating Raleigh’s arena, Tom Dundon agreed to rent ($4.5M rising to $5.5M a year), his district on the property-tax rolls, development milestones ($200M by year 5, $400M by 10, $800M by 20), 6% ground rent and 10% affordable housing, all secured by the public side’s negotiator. Different building, different financing, different market, so nothing transfers automatically. What Raleigh shows is that each of these mechanisms is workable for this ownership, so each belongs on Portland’s table, priced for Portland.

Yes, and it is specific. Under SB 1501 §5, the state cannot issue a dollar of arena bonds and no tax-capture money can flow until the City signs the lease and makes binding commitments. The statute calls its own protections the floor, required “at a minimum” (§6(1)(d)). Everything above that floor is Council’s to negotiate, through one act: not committing the money until the terms are in writing. That is the power to set the price of “yes.”

Read the two enacted laws. SB 1501 contains no deadline at all. SB 5701, the actual bond bill, splits the $365M: the $200M tranche can be issued through June 30, 2027, six and a half months after the claimed cutoff, and the $165M cannot be issued before the biennium starting July 1, 2027. So 45% of the state money cannot lapse in December under any scenario, and even the June 30 line carries forward by statute (ORS 286A.035(4)) until the next bond bill passes. So where does “December” come from? Two places, neither a statute. Council’s own August 12 resolution directs the definitive documents back by December 31, with a vote targeted for December 17. And the State’s Department of Administrative Services wants its five conditions met by the end of December so bonds can sell in spring 2027, the biennium’s last routine sale; the XI-Q bond manual’s readiness checkpoint sits about three months before a sale, which is how you land on December. That is a real calendar, not a cliff. If someone asserts a hard date, ask them to produce the statute, bond resolution or Treasury calendar.

Less than the ask, and less than it needs to know. The adopted framework describes $573 million of public renovation funding and up to $288.6 million of continuing support before financing; the $861.6M sum is neither a present value nor a binding all-in expenditure, and the complete fiscal cost is not yet established. Coming back: a proposed $3M-a-year tax offset growing 5% annually, and the proposed $3.17M-a-year rent added on the floor August 12, which starts only at substantial completion. Both are proposed, neither is signed, and the 6% ticket fee still routes into the Arena Fund before it reaches any public budget. Peer deals do not supply a single floor to quote against that: PFM’s own review for the State includes fully public renovations, and the private share across the comparables runs from zero to 100%. What they supply is a complete exchange to compare, capital, rights, risk and return, line by line. The Register sets it out at ripcitynotripoff.com/terms; the ledger is at /public-balance-sheet.

The City’s preserved maintenance claim. The lease requires the operator to keep the arena in “first-class” condition, compared with venues of equivalent age (Lease §5.4, §10.2). That claim is preserved, tolled and unvalued: the City’s condition assessment is a prospective lifecycle plan, not an established repair debt, and it does not allocate owed repair versus optional upgrade. What the covenant is actually worth needs a legal and engineering matrix. Get that valuation before any release, and do not let the covenant be quietly waived in the final documents (watch for a lease styled “superseded and replaced,” or a “novation”; a recital that a lease is not a novation does not by itself preserve the claim). And identify each public return’s lawful recipient: rent, the tax offset and any revenue share should reach the public budgets they are meant for, not simply recirculate inside the Arena Fund.

A few reasonable process gates: separate the lease vote from the funding vote; publish the draft lease, the budget exhibit, the financing plan, the County IGA and the full revenue waterfall 30 days before either; and get the comparable-deals review SB 1501 §6(2)(a) already requires, an independent review of comparable NBA arena deals in similar-sized markets, done properly and released before the vote. PFM’s overview for the State exists; it prices none of Portland’s own terms against the peers. If the deal is fair, daylight only helps it.

No. This is the substance, not a script, so you can press the negotiating team where it counts. A published public benchmark actually strengthens the City’s own negotiators (“my constituents have a number I can’t sell below”). Council holds the pen. The ask is simply this: use Portland’s leverage to get the terms in writing before the money moves, not after.