{"id":788548,"date":"2026-07-28T03:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T03:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/788548\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T03:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T03:40:10","slug":"trail-blazers-say-theyre-considering-meeting-with-city-to-discuss-arena-lease-term-sheet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/788548\/","title":{"rendered":"Trail Blazers say they\u2019re considering meeting with city to discuss arena lease term sheet"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Portland politician said earlier on Monday that he believed an olive branch offered by the City of Portland to the Trail Blazers had been rejected by the team as the two sides remain far apart in arena lease negotiations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blazers team president Dewayne Hankins responded by saying the team has not yet decided whether its representatives will attend a City Council meeting on the arena plans Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just talking to the city administrator\u2019s staff, figuring out the best way to move forward and show up on Thursday,\u201d Hankins said.<\/p>\n

After Hankins\u2019 response, city council president Jamie Dunphy said he had been working with \u201cold information.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Dunphy sent a letter to Hankins, inviting him to attend a work session with the 12-member council to address the team\u2019s concerns about the term sheet delivered by the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m reading in the media that the Blazers would like to see some changes made to the draft term sheet that the City Council provided you last week,\u201d Dunphy wrote to Hankins. \u201cIt would be extremely helpful if you and your team joined our work session to help me and my colleagues understand your needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunphy initially said \u201cBlazers leadership\u201d told him verbally that they would not attend the meeting or respond in writing to his invitation. But hours later, he phoned The Athletic to say he received dated information regarding the Blazers\u2019 intentions.<\/p>\n

The city council is scheduled to vote Aug. 12 on the term sheet for a 20-year lease of the Moda Center. New Blazers owner Tom Dundon<\/a> said he would sign a lease with the city if the team was given nearly $575 million in public funding. The state legislature passed a bill in March that would award $365 million, contingent upon the city and county providing $208 million in additional funding to upgrade the 31-year-old arena.<\/p>\n

The city council holds the keys to $120 million of that $208 million, but said it needs to hear how the Blazers intended to use the funds. The Blazers have balked at releasing details, saying they feel they were promised a deal in March, and that they want the city to help pay for an architect to devise specific plans.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n The Portland City Council invited Blazers officials to attend a work session Thursday afternoon regarding a new 20-year lease for the Moda Center. (Portland City Council)<\/p>\n

The city had been negotiating with the team since March and initially wanted to include items such as a beverage tax, street pricing to prevent arena vendors from overcharging, and rent in the term sheet. None of those three items were in the draft the council sent to the Blazers. However, the city included a $3 million annual payment and a labor-harmony agreement that would stress the importance of hiring union workers for everything from construction jobs to concessions sales.<\/p>\n

A Blazers source, speaking on condition of anonymity to freely discuss negotiations, said the term sheet was \u201ca nonstarter,\u201d but Dunphy said he and the council have no idea what the team\u2019s issues are with the draft document because the Blazers won\u2019t communicate<\/a>, let alone show up at meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no substantive information about what they want, what they don\u2019t want or what a successful partnership with the city, county and state would look like,\u201d Dunphy said. \u201cWe heard through the press that they were dissatisfied with the term sheet, but got no feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like they are either disinterested in transparency and accountability with public dollars, which is a nonstarter, or they are simply going through the motions to run out the clock and burn any remaining goodwill in the city and wait for the government to give them an excuse and move the team,\u201d Dunphy said. \u201cI can make a guess which it is, but have no concrete details to tell me this. In life, I always try to assume the best and not assume malicious intent, but this doesn\u2019t seem like incompetence. It seems intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hankins said he wants to get a deal done and doesn\u2019t see the value in negotiating through the media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to turn the rhetoric down and not have these conversations in the media, to be honest,\u201d Hankins said. \u201cIt\u2019s not helpful. It\u2019s not effective. I just want to get a deal done, and this is not the way for us to get a deal done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Portland politician said earlier on Monday that he believed an olive branch offered by the City of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[355,6406,99],"class_list":["post-788548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}