A volunteer Portland campaign on the Moda Center public-funding fight. Keep the Blazers, renovate the arena — but publish a fair lease before the public commits more than a billion dollars. Lease enforcer, not deal killer.
Portland — the public — owns the Moda Center. The City is preparing to commit $1 billion+ in public money to renovate it for an owner who just bought the Blazers for $4.25 billion, pays $1 a year in rent, and is being asked to contribute $0. Every comparable NBA city secured rent, revenue, or private capital back; the deal on the table returns the public nothing on every line. City Council votes on the term sheet Aug 12, 2026 — and under SB 1501, no bonds issue until the City signs, so the terms can still be set. The campaign's ask is simple: publish the lease, revenue waterfall, ROI model, and benchmarks, and land inside a market range before the vote.
Edan Krolewicz & Jonathan Pulvers, organizers
Message us on Bluesky: @ripcitynotripoff.bsky.social — happy to go on the record, walk through the documents, or brief your desk.
“We’re Blazers fans. We want the team to stay and the Moda Center renovated — we just want a fair lease in place before the public commits more than a billion dollars. That’s not anti-Blazers; it’s how a serious public-private deal works.”
— Rip City, Not Rip Off“Portland owns this building. The owner pays a dollar a year, just sold the team for $4.25 billion, and is being asked to put in nothing. Every comparable NBA city got rent, revenue, or private capital back. Council holds the leverage — under the law, no public money moves until the City signs. They should use it.”
— Rip City, Not Rip Off“We’re not asking Council to kill the deal. We’re asking them to publish the terms and land inside a market range before the August 12 vote. The December ‘deadline’ isn’t in either statute — there’s time to get this right.”
— Rip City, Not Rip OffHigh-resolution chart exports and the verified 16-deal dataset are available on request via Bluesky.
These questions are tracked in the public-protection matrix.
The City's facts page is a start — here are five 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 →
Rip City, Not Rip Off is a volunteer-run, unfunded campaign by Portland residents and Blazers fans. We take no money from any team, the City, or a competing developer. We read the bills, ran the numbers, and publish our sources — and we correct ourselves on the record when we get something wrong.
In the press: KATU · KGW · Willamette Week · CBS Sports
ripcitynotripoff.com · Press contact: @ripcitynotripoff.bsky.social. Every figure on this site is sourced to an enacted statute, an executed contract, a verified peer deal, or the City’s own study; primary documents are hosted on the site.