Category: Portland Trail Blazers

Sorry for the relative paucity of posts this week — I’ve been a little under the weather (not Covid, or so the test strips say), and the stadium news cycle was taking a bit of a summer break, anyway. But things have started picking up again toward the end of the week, and nothing will stop me from my appointed Friday rounds, so away we go:

• We start off with the latest news, which just broke late yesterday: Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett, who is in the middle of spending $115 million in taxpayer money on upgrading his 20-year-old arena with new restaurants and video boards and the like, has put the project on hold because he might just want a whole new arena instead. “Obviously we want a long-term relationship with professional sports in this city,” said Mayor David Holt in yesterday’s State of the City address. “And to do that, you have to have facilities that are current and competitive.” Being built in 2002 doesn’t count as “current” anymore, apparently, even with three rounds of renovations that were costing $214 million total, because the arena doesn’t have enough “room for all the other elements of user experience” that aren’t watching basketball, though isn’t that what adding new adjoining buildings with new restaurants was supposed to be about? Anyway, even with the Thunder signing a new lease extension until 2026, Holt says the city needs to get cracking on a new arena, because “we have non-NBA cities checking our pulse every morning” and “if we want to be a top 20 city, we have to act like it” — he didn’t say whether Bennett would move the Thunder back to Seattle or what if he didn’t get what he wanted, but sometimes the most effective threats are the ones that leave the details to listeners’ imagination.
• Clark County residents oppose “allocating taxpayer money in the budget for new sports stadiums similar to what was done to fund the Allegiant Stadium for the Las Vegas Raiders” by a 62-17% margin, yup, they’ll do that. Maybe the Oakland A’s aren’t getting a new stadium in Las Vegas so fast after all if their Oakland plans fall through — sure, elected officials can and do ignore the public will all the time, but given that public statements from Nevada officials about luring the A’s with a stadium have been lukewarm at best, this really does start to smell like savvy negotiators seeking leverage.
• Knoxville’s $74.3 million Tennessee Smokies stadium subsidy may be getting held up as a model compared to the $79.4 million the Chattanooga Lookouts owners are demanding, but it turns out that $74.3 million figure may not be the final one: Rising interest rates and supply chain issues have the price tag soaring to “not yet been determined,” which means that Smokies owner Randy Boyd’s promise not to ask for any additional public funds may go by the wayside. Neither Boyd nor the government entities involved in the stadium have actually signed any of the stadium agreements yet; both sides say they plan to come up with a plan to cover cost overruns by a July 26 meeting of Knoxville’s sports authority, but would it be crazy to suggest that “Getting too rich for our blood, let’s call the whole thing off?” be at least considered as an option?
• Speaking of the Lookouts, a Hamilton County commissioner wants to adjust the county’s spending plan to have the team owner front the money and the county repay him with tax money instead of having the county cover costs directly, because at least that would protect the public in case tax increment financing revenues fell short. This is not a terrible idea, though “don’t use tax increment financing at all, it’s almost always a terrible idea” might be an even better idea.
• New Orleans is set to get a new USL franchise, because pretty much every city is, which will play in oh, someplace. No talk yet of how much a theoretical stadium would cost or who would pay for it, plenty of time for that once soccer fever has taken hold beyond the pages of Nola.com.
• Some Brooklyn elected officials want New York City to impose a $10 million fine on the developers of the Pacific Park project (which used to be called Atlantic Yards, and which originally included the Nets arena though later those two elements were split between two different developers, really you don’t want to know all the details) because they failed to build a contractually promised “urban room” community space — one of the politicians called this a “field of schemes,” which, you know, it’s always nice to be part of the conversation, even if unintentionally.
• The Portland Trail Blazers owners may or may not be trying to get a new arena to replace its (gasp!) 27-year-old one, but in the meantime they’re getting about a $1.5 million a year property tax discount thanks to a generous reassessment of the value of the old arena after they went to court to demand one, it really does pay to be able to afford the best lawyers.
• Oh, did I forget to mention that the Chicago Bears owners’ response to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal last week to put a dome on Soldier Field was “Nuh-uh, we only have eyes for Arlington Heights, at least right now?” Well, it was, but that happened all the way back last Friday after last week’s roundup was published — I may just need to place a moratorium on things happening after 9 a.m. on Fridays, don’t make me do it.