Trail Blazers hold up city, again
Editorial: Give us $600 million or we're leaving
Do we have to knuckle under to the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers and remodel an “obsolete” 30-year-old arena to the tune of $600 million? Is the threat of moving the team so unthinkable that we would sell out all over principles, perhaps buying a few years until the next time an owner holds the leverage to play us again?
Our city and state leaders are quaking. The governor and mayor are ready to do all they can despite revenue projections supposedly making all new expenditures impossible. Even Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, who grudgingly shares vast revenues for homeless services with a city in crisis, is ready to do whatever may be necessary to keep the team in town.
Pro sports franchises cannot be purchased once and for all time. Former Blazer owners threatened to move in the 1990s before the city agreed to a package that included underwriting 22% of a new arena, donating all 30 acres in the Rose Quarter and rebuilding Interstate 5 ramps to accommodate Blazer fans. Add it all in and perhaps half the ransom came from public coffers.
But that deal expired in 2025. It’s no coincidence that the team was put up for sale when its opportunity to extract further local commitments could not be greater.
The claim has been made that the Blazers and the entire Rose Quarter, which includes Memorial Coliseum and a total of 260 events a year, generate $600 million (there’s that figure again) in economic activity. Few are qualified to dissect such estimates, which is half their power. But 130 peer-reviewed studies in cities across the country over the past 30 years have concluded that sports franchises “are not justified as worthwhile public investments,” according to research cited this month by Portland economist Joe Cortright.
If that amount were spent to support diverse local development, we would come out better and would not subject to periodic extortion.
The economic benefits of Blazer mania fall mostly to consumers of high-end entertainment. The average ticket costs about $100, and the people filling the luxury suites are not necessarily basketball fans. They are mega entrepreneurs and corporate deal-makers looking to impress others among their elite circles. Don’t ask these people how to make Portland a better place to live and work.
We cannot get off this tiger until we imagine life without the Blazers. The Portland Fire Women’s National Basketball Association team debuts this year. That’s a Portland kind of thing. The Portland Thorns have been called the most successful women’s soccer team in the world. These are teams less likely to leave us because there is no better place for them to go.
Think of the Portland Mavericks, our independent minor league baseball team in the 1970s. They represented the quirky soul of the city, the spirit to overcome adversity in our own way. No one did an economic impact statement on this operation, but its DNA is a part of us.
We can be the town desperately clutching a major league label, like the poker dupe in the “Sopranos” television series, or we can define ourselves. That’s a film I’d rather watch.
Oregon, and especially Portland need to face reality. Economically, we have become a second class state without the resources to take care of our own. We rank low or last in those things we aspire to be good at: public school achievement, housing affordability the sustainability of our health care system, behavioral health measures, the condition of our roads and bridges and the agencies responsible. Portland ranks last in major cities in recovery post pandemic. We rank high in the things we want to be low or more effective in; homelessness, overdose deaths, crime per capita, housing construction, bankruptcies and average tax rates. We have the lowest return to office rate of all major cities. Multnomah County is barely adding population while high income residents leave. We have a City and County who famously cannot cooperate on major issues like behavioral health, homelessness and public safety. Intel and Nike are struggling and laying off people, Dutch Brothers left Oregon. OHSU, our other major employer is laying off too. WE can't attract a major corporate headquarters.
The big question to me is: Why do we think we are a major sports City or State? Who wants to own a team in a financially declining, politically dysfunctional state where businesses are moving out not in in today's environment.
We are at an inflection point. Use the $600M to start working together to solve these deficiencies.
What to do with the Rose Center? I don't know, but we better start thinking outside the box. We can't replace the Keller. We have a struggling Convention Center and companion hotel which we helped finance. We have an aging Coliseum. We have struggling housing market. Let's shore up what is failing first.
Having moved to Portland from Oakland, CA, in 2015, we're familiar with the sports teams' demands for updated stadiums. We voted for a bond to bring the Raiders back from LA, then lost them to Las Vegas. I suspect Oaklanders are still paying on that Bond. Now the Oakland 'A's are halfway to Las Vegas, "temporarily" playing in Sacramento. Oaklanders are still paying.