As promised, Portland Trail Blazers zillionaire owner Paul Allen popped over to Portland City Hall on Friday to request that the city bail him out of his arena debts. (Allen gave up all arena revenues to escape his arena creditors last year, and now is cranky that he doesn’t have those revenues left for himself.) And also as promised, Oregon elected officials aren’t exactly rushing to placate him:
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Portland Mayor Tom Potter: “Portland is very interested in keeping the Trail Blazers here. I can’t imagine them playing anywhere else. They discussed their financial situation, and we discussed ours. And that was the extent of the conversation.”
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City Commissioner Sam Adams: “We’ve been placed on notice that Paul Allen is tired of losing money. … But we are so behind on basic-maintenance city government. We are critically short on school funding. Needless to say, it’s a really awkward time for them to be raising this issue.”
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Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski: “Just to be very frank with you, they come farther down the line for me on issues that I really want to spend some time worrying about. They’re asking, how much money do you have to give us a subsidy, and I don’t have any, so that’s easy to answer.”
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City Commissioner Randy Leonard: “Do they want us to make signs that say, ‘Support your local Blazers?’ I can do that. I’ll make a sign, ‘Go Blazers. Love, Randy.’ Will that help?”
Potter has good reason for not imagining the Blazers playing anywhere else: Their lease ties them to the Rose Garden until 2025.
How can any government entity considering publicly funding an arena read these articles about Portland, and then still consider public funding? It looks to me as though owners are just looking for someone else to lose money for them. And then for Paul Allen, the world’s seventh-richest person, to complain about losing less than 1/2 of 1 percent of his net worth on this… Appalling.
I wonder about the economics of the NBA right now, too. When salaries average over $4 million, and with each owner wanting a new arena every 15 years (but with 30 year financing!), the entire economic situation of the league looks unsustainable to me. Is the NBA run by former senators, or what?
Speaking of Portland, any word of a soccer stadium for the Portland Timbers of the USL Division 1 ?
Maybe now we will stop hearing all of this silly talk regarding an NHL team potentially moving to Portland…
Washington, DC Mayor Anthony Williams needs to take a page from the “Tom Potter Book of Negotiating”
The Portland Trailblazers is a private corporation providing entertainment. How can they even consider asking for public money? That would be corporate welfare at its worst. – Michael
Hmmm, a businessman who has lost $12 billion wants us to invest in a subsidiary that is expected to lose $300 million more…Where do we sign?
If you are truly loyal fans you all would be willing to help contribute to keeping this team in this city. Why should all of the financial burden fall on Paul Allen? It would be a much better situation if we could have a public/private ownership then we would not have to put up with Paul Allens poor decision making skills, putting our team in the hole for five years.