What a fair deal
actually looks like

Under enrolled SB 1501 §5, no state bonds issue and no tax-capture transfers flow until the City executes the agreements and makes binding financial commitments — the City's signature is the consideration, and every term on this page is enforceable by conditioning on it. And because the state's $365M is only a declared “current intention” with “no legal obligation” (§3(4)), the City's commitments must be expressly conditioned on actual bond issuance.

Five asks, cheapest first. (1) Publish the statute's own benchmark study before the vote: SB 1501 §6(2)(a) already requires the State to “retain a professional with expertise in arena negotiations to review information regarding recent comparable National Basketball Association arena projects in similar-sized markets” — deliver it to Council before August 12. (2) Price the alternative: publish a relocation BATNA model, city by city — the public-record version: Relocation BATNA scorecard. (3) Test sell, don't move: if the owner claims Portland is not viable, require a public record on whether a Portland-committed buyer would own the Blazers here at market value. (4) Disclose whether alternative operator economics (OVG/ASM-class) were ever solicited. (5) Don't renew the sole-source exemption for the pieces that are routinely bid — construction management, non-game operations, district development.

Update, July 9: the state’s comparables summary (PFM) is now public — funding splits and governance for six NBA peers; the deal-terms review the statute describes remains the open half. Price the contract, keep the team →

• Fee the premium seats at their premium price. Today a suite pays the fee on at most 12 regular-priced tickets per game (§28.3.2 · §28.2.2.1(a)), regardless of what the license sells for; up to two team-owned suites pay nothing (§28.3.3); and single-event premium seats are fee'd at just 90% of price (§28.2.2.1(d)).
• Close the season-premium loophole — the one the renovation widens. Premium season seats — up to 20% of capacity for Blazers games — are fee'd at a regular-seat price, not their premium price (§28.2.2.1(b)(i)). The renovation's entire product is premium season inventory.
• Stop shrinking the base. The fee runs on a “Ticket Price” already net of service and convenience charges — including fees the team pays to its own affiliate (§28.2.1) — and the operator is not liable when a third-party promoter never remits the fee (§28.1.5).
• The fixes, by number: suites at 6% of actual license revenue; single-event premium to 100%; the affiliate-netting and promoter-default holes closed (≈$2.2–2.7M/yr, ~$50M over the lease — roughly 85% of it fan-paid).
• The structural fix — 18% participation in gross premium, club, and naming revenue above a CPI-indexed, audited FY2025-26 baseline. Gross, never net — the lease makes the operator's books uncopyable (§10.14, Parking §16.9), so the share runs on contract-verifiable gross categories with City audit-and-copy rights overriding both; the baseline resets only in proportion to capital the operator funds; related-party deals at fair market value. At 18% he keeps 82¢ of every premium dollar — a market ~8% yield on the public's share would be ~$27M/yr; participation yields $5–8M/yr, already a 70%+ concession.

Capture the naming re-rate structurally, not aspirationally. Three pieces: (1) the operator keeps arena naming during the Term, but the renovated building's re-rate (the reported ~$4M/yr re-pricing toward $7–9M/yr Modeled) lands in the Term-02 participation base; (2) the 50/50 split on district and project naming the parties already signed (DA §31.2.4) carries forward; and (3) the term sheet prices the reversion: arena naming reverts to the City at lease end (§10.6 · DA §31.4), so a new multi-decade lease is a fresh naming license from the building's owner — a thing of value currently being granted at $0. (A flat 50% of arena naming is the aggressive anchor; no verified peer city achieved it.)

• End or performance-base the 25% cut. The team keeps 25% of gross non-event parking revenue on the City-owned public garages (§8.4) — with no performance test, when the operator otherwise gets only cost reimbursement and "shall not be compensated for any general administration, overhead and handling fees" (§8.1).
• Close the Arena Garage gap. The Arena Lease's definition of “Arena” (Lease §1) includes the attached garage the team conveyed to the City — yet the Parking Agreement (§3.1) still operates it as a “Private Parking Facility” whose game-day revenue flows to the operator. The package number: the City takes 30% of gross event-parking revenue from 2031 (≈$70M over the lease Modeled) and the 25% fee dies.
• Open the private-garage books. Today even the Independent Reviewer who inspects them "cannot provide copies of these documents to the City" (§16.9).
• Keep the City's protection; rebalance the team's. §4.2 (§4.2) is reciprocal: keep the sentence protecting the public garages; narrow the one that shields the operator from a fair public-parking deal. The City already approves all rates (§6.4 · §4.5).

A PILOT covenant, paid without offset, equal to the greatest of three amounts: (a) the certified pre-exemption tax bill (a documented $1.2–1.5M/yr), CPI-indexed; (b) at substantial completion, that floor plus the renovation’s exception value under the county’s own construction formula (ORS 308.153: added RMV × changed-property ratio × levy rate) — a mechanical minimum of $5.1–9.4M/yr at 50–100% value realization of the $573M package; or (c) full tax equivalency per independent MAI appraisal (income approach primary), five-year cycle — the comparables place it in the low-to-mid teens of millions. Paid directly to the taxing jurisdictions. Full methodology: the PILOT briefing paper.

Rent at the owner's own signature: Dundon's Raleigh rent is $4.5M→$5.5M/yr — ~$75M against a $300M public project. The package schedule: $2M/yr during construction, then $4.5M/yr escalating 3% from occupancy — ≈$121M over 20 years Calculated — plus a separate $2.5M per year operator-funded capital reserve (Charlotte's structure). And the drafting rule that makes every return real: every public-return stream — rent, naming share, participation, PILOT, fees — must be payable to the City of Portland directly, never deposited to or credited against the Oregon Arena Fund. Under SB 1501 §3 the fund is continuously appropriated to arena purposes — rent paid there is rent the public pays itself.

• Price the exclusive — never extend it for free. A development exclusive is what this ownership actually wants, so it's the City's biggest chip. The price is the architecture he already signed in Raleigh: milestones of $200M by year 5, $400M by year 10, $800M by year 20, drafted as City termination rights over unexercised parcels; ground rent at 6% of appraised land value with 5-year resets; district development on the property-tax rolls (ORS 307.110); 10% affordable housing on first-phase residential; and developer-funded in-tract infrastructure. If he won't pay that price: open the parcels, or bring in Albina Vision Trust / 1803 Fund directly.
• Remove the §12.5 veto so the City can dispose of public land for public benefit without the team's consent.
• Write the share the bridge lease never did. Today the City's only defined cut is 25% — and only if the team flips its development rights to an outsider (§29.4). If the team develops the parcels itself, the City's share is a ground lease left “to be negotiated” (§29.2.4(d)). Delete §29.4's flip-only structure and define the share now: the 6% ground rent, the tax-rolls covenant, and the milestones — worth ~$160M+ over the lease (Modeled; part contingent on buildout).
• Bake in binding community benefits — affordable-housing minimums, anti-displacement protections, MWESB contracting, and a guaranteed Albina Vision Trust / 1803 role.
• Capture the value uplift the public investment creates (TIF) for public benefit, governed by a joint development authority with public-majority control.

• Cost overruns: name the payer, cap the budget, close the carve-out. SB 1501 §6(1)(c) provides only the floor: the joint authority “is not required to pay for any cost overruns” — it never says who is. Four walls: (a) Name the payer — the management entity bears all overruns above the approved budget (the Cleveland, Atlanta, D.C., and Sacramento standard), as an owner-level guaranteed maximum price, with savings below the GMP shared 65/35 to the public, backed by the parent guarantee the City already obtained (ESA §4.5). (b) Define “authority-requested” narrowly — only written change directives initiated by the authority; never code compliance, field conditions, design errors, or operator-proposed changes. (c) Cap the budget at the evidence — the §5(4) approved budget must reconcile line-by-line to the City's own VSG study: a padded budget is an overrun the public pays in advance. (d) No side doors — no side agreement may absorb overrun liability, and Arena Fund moneys may not be applied to overruns the operator owes (§3 lets the authority choose to pay; “not required” is not “prohibited”).
• Cap and match the §5(5) maintenance commitment. The statute conditions the bonds on the City and County financing “maintenance and deferred maintenance” — no cap, no match requirement — while the 2024 bridge caps the City at a ≤50% match of operator spending (§10.9). Cap the ~$280M pledge, match it, and condition it on the public-return terms.
• A relocation penalty above the statutory floor. The bill's floor (§6(1)(d)) is liquidated damages of outstanding public debt only — declining yearly, excluding the County's and City's cash, and binding only the management entity. Run the nonrelocation covenant from RCM and Trail Blazers Inc., joint and several, with springing recourse to the Dundon holding entity (Term 13), keyed to the full unamortized public stack, with no demand window — replacing the bridge clawback's narrow scope (§10.9.1: City Contribution only, 12-month window, 2-year survival). Draft it as a formula: Oregon enforces liquidated damages only as a reasonable forecast of actual harm (Illingworth v. Bushong; DiTommaso v. Moak) — a headline billion-dollar figure invites a court to strike it. Peg damages to outstanding public debt + unamortized City/County capital + the present value of remaining rent, pair them with an express specific-performance clause — the provision that forced the Sonics' settlement in Seattle — and count and fee Memorial Coliseum games as home games, so the fee-free Coliseum right (ESA §1.2.3) can't hollow out the covenant.
• Fence the §6(1)(e) sword. The statute lets the operator seek injunctions against “acts or omissions of the joint authority or any public body belonging to the joint authority that materially impair” its use of the building — that includes the City. Define “materially impair” narrowly and carve out the City's generally applicable taxing and regulatory powers, audits, and public-records compliance.

Delete the Targeted Tax Reimbursement clause (Lease §3.3) — and conform the “Targeted Tax” definition it runs on (DA §28.2.4) — before anyone proposes a per-ticket fee.

Before contributing a public dollar, quantify the tenant's accrued “first-class” obligation and settle it expressly: $120M of certified necessary repair — independent owner's-rep sign-off, any shortfall converting to a liquidated cash obligation — adopted by its own resolution, and counted once, as the discharge of an existing debt, never booked as the ownership's “capital contribution.” Then restore real-time enforceability (inspection, cure, and audit rights) in the permanent lease. The kill-switch to watch: the new lease must recite that it is not a novation — a draft styled “superseded and replaced in its entirety” is the single sentence that would erase this claim instead of paying it.

The non-compete (Lease §15) must not carry forward unpriced: delete it — or narrow it with an express Memorial Coliseum carve-out, limit it to NBA-anchored arenas, and make it terminate automatically on default or on the building ceasing to be the team's NBA home.

• No NDA carryover into the permanent deal.
• Audited annual public disclosure by revenue stream, as a lease covenant.
• City audit rights with copies — not look-but-don't-take.
• Oregon supremacy. Oregon public-records law governs — the notice-the-operator duty (§11.6) dies — and disputes go to Oregon-seated, publicly filed arbitration with published awards, not a confidential AAA New York–appointed panel (§14).
• Outlive the statute's sunset. SB 1501's own quarterly-reporting oversight (§7) is repealed January 2, 2032 (§8), while the lease runs thirty years: extend equivalent quarterly reporting for the life of the lease, published.
• Put a visible price tag on the diversion. Annual public disclosure of aggregate transfers from the General Fund to the Arena Fund under §4 (data sharing already permitted, §4(4)).

• Every public protection jointly and severally guaranteed by the operator (RCM) and Trail Blazers Inc., backed by a $50M evergreen letter of credit and springing recourse to the Dundon holding entity on trigger events — relocation breach, a transfer structured to evade the covenants, insolvency of the obligors. Springing recourse costs a compliant owner nothing and trips only on the behavior it polices.
• Publish the franchise-sale assumption instrument executed at the March 2026 closing (ESA §3.3).
• Close the place-of-business hole (ESA §2) — the front office must stay in Portland, not wherever the owner lives.

Any future NBA rule change that reduces the public's defined revenue must trigger an automatic make-whole — not just a meeting (Lease §18.26). And the supremacy clause must expressly yield to the non-relocation covenant and its specific-performance remedy — so a future “league rule” can never become the escape hatch.