The jumbotron at the Moda Center on Oct. 22, 2025 in Portland, Ore.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Summer is usually a slow period in Portland City Hall. But with a complex and contentious deal with the city’s NBA team to spend public dollars on the Moda Center careening toward a council vote next month, that’s not the case this year.
Last week, the city sent the Portland Trail Blazers’ management team an early draft of its term sheet. That’s a document setting the framework for negotiations between the city and the Blazers over a proposed 20-year lease, which is expected to include public financing to renovate the aging Moda Center.
Its unexpected release rattled both city councilors and the Blazers. Some on city council said the proposed terms offered little room for negotiating a good deal for the city, while anonymous Blazers sources told The Athletic that the document was a “non-starter.”
This document landed without the Blazers’ direct input. The team’s owners, who are responsible for selecting an architect to draft arena renovations, haven’t yet shared details of the planned construction with the city. The stream of information from the Blazers was further sidelined in June, after city councilors hinted at threatening legal action against the team for possibly failing to meet their current lease terms.
But a deadline to begin negotiations is fast approaching.
FILE - An undated provided photo of Raymond C. Lee.
Courtesy of City of Portland
After weeks of closed-door meetings, the city is scheduled to hold a public meeting next Thursday to discuss this term sheet and propose tweaks. City Council is slated to approve the document on Aug. 12, regardless of the Blazers’ buy-in.
To get a sense of where the city stands ahead of these talks, OPB sat down with three of the key city officials at the negotiating table Friday. That included City Administrator Raymond Lee, Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira and Senior Deputy City Attorney Ken McGair.
Here are the top six questions answered in that conversation.
Have the Blazers responded to the city’s term sheet?
Not formally. According to Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira, the city has spoken with the Blazers in the days since but has only echoed the same dissatisfaction shared in the press. He said his response was “that [the term sheet] was informed by the information you gave us, which was zero.”
“They could have said ‘We don’t like it, but we have work to do to get it to something that we want,’” he said. “That’s not how they framed it. It’s very adversarial.”
That response isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Oliveira said the term sheet’s release was meant to show that Portland is negotiating in good faith and acting reasonably, striking a contrast with what he called an “uncooperative” team.
In statements shared with OPB, a representative for the Blazers said the team has engaged closely with the city on this partnership “for decades.”
City Administrator Raymond Lee is looking beyond Blazers’ management when it comes to negotiating. He said that he considers the NBA itself another party to negotiations. That’s because the NBA’s Board of Governors – a body made up of 30 NBA owners – will need to approve the final lease agreement for it to go into effect.
“A lot of our conversations thus far have been around, ‘What does a deal look like to the NBA?’” Lee said. “And try to get any little bit of information we could get out of them.”
He said that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been quick to respond to and engage with the city.
There’s another reason the city may want the NBA in its corner: If Blazers’ owner Tom Dundon is upset enough with the lease negotiations that he proposes moving the team, he’ll need approval from the majority of the NBA Board.
FILE - Portland Trail Blazers new owner Tom Dundon, right, is seated before an NBA basketball game against the New Orleans Pelicans, Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Portland, Ore.
Jenny Kane / AP
Will Portland address the Blazers’ legal concerns?
The current five-year agreement between the city and the Blazers requires the team to maintain the Moda Center as a “first-class” NBA arena. It doesn’t define that standard. At a June council meeting, City Councilor Steve Novick questioned whether the Blazers are meeting that standard and – if not – whether the city can take legal action.
The Blazers told OPB they’ve been cautious about sharing more information with the city after hearing this threat, out of concern anything could be used against them in a lawsuit. They’ve asked the city to remove the “first-class” phrasing from the current contract.
But Senior Deputy City Attorney Ken McGair said that’s not the plan.
“We believe that keeping the status quo under those agreements and not reopening them is the best course for everybody,” McGair said. “If and when we get to a new deal, those agreements go away and we have a new understanding. We don’t need to renegotiate the past. We only want to look forward to the future.”
McGair added that, under the current lease, the city wouldn’t even be able to penalize the Blazers for shirking the “first-class” standard of upkeep. It could only be enforced after the lease ends, in 2030.
What are the city’s non-negotiables as they enter this deal?
The Blazers — and City Councilors — may want to see changes to the city’s current term sheet draft before negotiations are set into motion.
According to Lee, there are a few key things the city’s executive branch won’t be comfortable removing.
That includes the 20-year lease timeframe, a requirement that the Blazers allow Moda Center employees to unionize, annual revenue from the Blazers to the city in lieu of property taxes (currently proposed at $3 million) and some form of a community benefits plan — which could include discounts for arena visitors, transportation upgrades or other neighborhood investments.
“If those things stay intact, I believe we can get to a finish line,” he said.
Lee won’t share what items the city may be more flexible on, as that’ll be a key piece of their negotiating strategy.
What happens if the city misses its deadlines?
Since the city first began discussing its public investment in the Moda Center, city officials have pointed to a firm end-of-year deadline to get it done. That timeline comes from the state, which initiated this entire deal earlier this year by pledging to commit $365 million in state bonds to renovations if the city and Multnomah County both pitch in money ($120 million and $100 million, respectively).
According to Vince Porter, deputy chief of staff to Gov. Tina Kotek, the state wants to sell bonds in Spring of 2027 in order to conclude Moda Center construction in time to host the 2030 NCAA Women’s Final Four tournament. He told local leaders this week it would take the state about four months to prepare for a bond sale, meaning the state ideally needs a lease finalized by the end of 2026.
Lee said there’s no legal obligation to meet this deadline – it’s just “a scheduling issue” for the state. But, Lee said, that shouldn’t encourage the city to slow-walk negotiations.
If the state is unable to prepare a bond sale by the end of June 2027, the state legislature would need to vote to reauthorize a new bond to pay for Moda.
“I don’t know if the appetite is there from our state Legislature to do that,” Lee said.
Oliveira pointed out that the onus isn’t just on the city to finalize a lease by the end of the year. If the Blazers’ chilly relationship with the city doesn’t improve, it may be impossible to hammer out a lease in time.
“It’s not just the burden on the city to take action,” Oliveira said. “It’s also on the Blazers to provide us with the information to even validate those decisions.”
Blazers spokesperson Charles Boyle told OPB that if the deal isn’t finalized on deadline, “it won’t be for lack of information.”
“City staff and leadership already have more information about the arena than state leaders had when they approved funding during the session,” Boyle said.
“We’ve walked the building together and shared renovation concepts with the City over the past several months,” he continued, “but many of the specific details they’re asking for won’t exist until the design phase begins.”
There’s another deadline closer on the horizon: Portland City Council’s Aug. 12 vote on the term sheet.
If that framework doesn’t earn enough council votes to advance, Oliveira said the conversation would simply continue until at least six councilors sign off. He said any delays would only put the city under a tighter timeframe to negotiate a lease deal.
“The more we delay, the more burden it puts on our negotiating and legal teams to crank this out,” he said.
What happens to the Moda Center if the plan falls apart?
To city officials, the worst-case scenario is that they fail to strike a deal and Dundon chooses to move the Blazers out of Portland.
Losing the team wouldn’t just be an emotional blow to its local fanbase. As the Moda Center’s key tenant, it would force the city to find a new company to operate the arena, manage events and oversee its other tenants, like the city’s burgeoning WNBA team, the Portland Fire.
FILE - Flames are sprayed from the top of the goal posts during the Portland Fire starting line introduction at the Moda Center in Portland, Ore., on July 9, 2026.
Saj Sundaram / OPB
It also means the pile of state cash to put toward arena renovations would disappear, leaving the city with an arena in need of an estimated $482 million in basic maintenance.
To keep the building operational, Lee said, the city would probably look to issuing bonds. While some members of the public have suggested selling the building, Lee said that there are few buyers looking to buy an aging facility with massive maintenance costs.
“That option just doesn’t seem feasible,” he said.
Oliveira said the loss of the Blazers and money that could be used to renovate the arena would also hurt the surrounding area, Portland’s historic Albina neighborhood. That district around the Moda Center has only recently begun a new chapter, thanks to hefty investments in new development meant to restore the once-bustling Black neighborhood.
Oliveira said the current plan to renovate the arena could be a “catalyzing” investment in that neighborhood.
“I can just tell you that it’s gonna be hard to replicate that,” he said.
Why does it appear like the city is lobbying on the Blazers’ behalf?
This isn’t a standard scenario for cities considering a public investment in an NBA arena. Oliveira said that typically, when NBA teams are seeking public financing in their arenas, the teams themselves are active in campaigning.
But the Blazers haven’t stepped into that role.
“It should be the Blazers out there talking about the multiplier effect of their investment and how it’s going to create jobs and this ripple effect on development,” Oliveira said. “It should be them talking about the economic benefits of the surrounding business districts.”
This wasn’t always the case.
In February, when state lawmakers were considering a bill to finance the Moda Center, the team sent Blazers legend Terry Porter and their cheerleaders to the State Capitol to join their lobbying efforts.
“During the legislative session, we were asking legislators from outside Portland to invest in an arena far from their districts,” said Boyle, the Blazers spokesperson.
Boyle said because city leaders already helped shape the deal when it was at the state legislature, the team didn’t feel they needed to lobby Portlanders.
“As we look for efficiencies across our business operations, another PR campaign ranks below other priorities,” he said. “This decision should be made with facts, not spin.”
Oliveira said that leaves the city alone in currying public support for the investment.
“The fact that we’re having to stump for them,” he said, “is just completely backwards.”