The Portland city council is set to vote on a term sheet today for the proposed $600 million Trail Blazers arena renovations deal, and it may not look like the one that was initially proposed. Late yesterday, four councilmembers issued a proposed amendment with revised terms that include team owner Tom Dundon paying $2 million a year in rent plus $3 million a year in payments in lieu of property taxes.
Dundon’s refusal to pay rent while insisting that state, county, and city governments cover the entire $600 million renovation cost has been a sticking point for many Portland councilors and residents. The city’s share comes to $120 million toward the renovation, plus $275 million in future maintenance spending over the next 20 years; combined that would cost the city about $22 million a year to pay off, meaning even the proposed rent and PILOTs from Dundon would only cover less than a quarter of the city’s arena expenses.
Dundon, who previously said he didn’t see why he should pay anything toward arena renovations when he already pays taxes (though not property taxes), is expected to object to the new terms. “No team would sign a lease that would keep this business in the red,” Blazers president Dewayne Hankins told the city council last month, which calls for a trip to the Forbes NBA team financial figures:
The Forbes numbers are estimates, though they’ve been proven pretty accurate when actual team financial documents have leaked over the years. Regardless, even if Forbes’ estimate that the Blazers turned a $111 million profit in 2025 is off by a bit, it’s hard to see how having to make $5 million a year in rent and tax payments to their public landlords would suddenly send the team into the red.
More to come once the West Coast wakes up and Blazers officials start issuing statements, almost certainly. The council meeting to discuss the term sheet kicks off at 9:30 am Pacific time; you can watch the drama unfold on the council’s YouTube channel.
The Trail Blazers will pay Jrue Holiday $35M this season.
The other aspect of the whole Dundon thing that I’ve found perplexing about similar sagas in the past: if you’re a wannabe “major league” city looking to steal someone else’s team, there’s absolutely no reason why you should look at he’s doing and say to yourself, “Man, I would love to have this guy as the face of our city and our team.”
We’re seeing now that the Carolina Hurricanes’ success has come in spite of Dundon, rather than because of him, and that whatever is working for his team in the NHL won’t necessarily work in the NBA, a league with much higher revenue (and outlay) and much different roster construction plans.
But that’s ultimately the thing about wannabe “major league” towns. They don’t care who owns the team or how they end up running it. All that matters to them is that the team exists in their own backyard, and that being taken to the cleaners financially every 10 or 20 years is just the price you pay for (ostensibly) staying in the national conversation.
You are exactly right. St. Louis had had enough of Bill Bidwill, but Phoenix said, “Oh, let me have that guy owning a team.”
I don’t think Art Modell inspired the kind of animus we now attach to him until he actually moved the Browns, but I don’t think he was beloved. But Baltimore just wanted a team.
And there were those in Columbus who didn’t want to lose the Crew, and if getting Haslam as an owner was the cost, so be it.
It is a strange dynamic, for sure.
Ole Art was a minor leaguer when it came to the scams and scamming these current owners had going on. Let me explain old Art got his hands on the Browns in the 1960s. Actually in 1961 which was 35 years before they moved early in 1996. For all those years he played at the pretty dilapidated Cleveland Stadium which was built about 1931 and first had baseball every day starting about 1932. The NFL was in its infancy then and had teams folding all the time in places like Akron, Hammond, Portsmouth, St. Louis etc.
Art played in that total craphole of a stadium that was a dump and always called the Mistake By The Lake. I remember the Indians of the 1980s playing there and early 1990s until they moved to Jacobs Field now Progressive Field. Terrible ownership, terrible baseball. After the 1960s the Browns were no longer championship material except about 1980 and again 1986 to 1989 or so. They never won anything past the divisional playoffs. Did Art suck in a lot of ways? Yes he did but he was at the worst stadium in the league for 30 plus years from the Browns last championship in 1964. By that time the stadium was 33 years old and yet the Browns played there until December 17, 1995. Yeah Art was a miserable person and sucked for moving the Browns to Baltimore and then to the even worse Memorial Stadium for a couple of years until MT Bank Stadium was built. So that said he actually didn’t end up all that well off from Cleveland Stadium other than when he moved to Baltimore. Cleveland should have either came up with a plan B back in the 1970s to build something better than that miserable stadium that was home to the lake flies in the summer and ice and snow storms in the winter. I was a big Browns fan as a kid in the 1980s and 1990s until they went to Baltimore which was desperate for a team at the old dump Memorial Stadium from 1984 to 1996. Terrible stadium.
Nowadays Art Modell despite his move to Baltimore would at least look like a reasonable guy compared to these newer owners of the last 30 years. 35 years of play in some oversized dumpster that should have never been built and I was one of the guy that absolutely hated Art’s guts 30 years ago for ripping the original Browns away from Cleveland. However, this makes his legacy a little bit less appaling anyway when you see the current Haslams and Pegulas with billions hitting up the state and others for funding.
Under this deal, would there still be a tax on tickets (and some other things?) that go to the arena?
Another excellent question!