Portland WNBA Team Breaks Ground on New Practice Facility

📍HILLSBORO, Ore. — Slowly, Portland's forthcoming WNBA expansion team has been checking things off their pre-launch to-do list. They've mostly come in the form of press releases.

Tuesday's ceremonial shovels in the dirt on the team's Hillsboro practice facility, which will be shared with the NWSL's Portland Thorns club that the Bhathal family also owns, was the one that made it feel the most real it's felt since last September's expansion announcement.

This was the third major public event in the nearly three years since the effort to bring women's professional basketball back to Portland first became public. In February of 2023, it was merely an idea, as Trail Blazers and Thorns executives crammed into the Sports Bra with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert to sell her on Portland as a market when the league was first considering expansion. 18 months later, after one false start, it was a reality, with Engelbert returning to Portland to stand on the Moda Center stage with Lisa Bhathal Merage and her brother, Alex Bhathal, to announce that the WNBA's 15th franchise would begin playing in 2026.

That was the flashiest announcement. This one was the most significant, because it felt tangible. Between now and next spring, when the WNBA team's first training camp starts, they will have to announce a name, logo, general manager, head coach and roster. But they're going to do it on this shared campus in Hillsboro, which has now, officially, gone past the stage of renderings in a press release and is under construction in the real world.

"How many times have you walked into a building that was built for women?" said Karina LeBlanc, the former Thorns goalkeeper and general manager who is now Executive Vice President of Strategic Growth Development for the Bhathals' parent company, RAJ Sports. "It's never been done before. I've played in World Cups, Olympics … I've never walked into a building that was built for the younger version of me."

In front of a crowd of young girls' soccer and basketball players from the area, LeBlanc emceed an event that included the Bhathals, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Hillsboro mayor Beach Pace and Oregon governor Tina Kotek.

The line they used repeatedly, one they also used in September at the launch event for the franchise, was a desire to turn Portland into a "global epicenter for women's sports."

The shared WNBA and NWSL ownership gives the Bhathals a unique opportunity to do that. Many WNBA franchises share ownership with an NBA team, and a few with other men's professional sports leagues (the Las Vegas Aces are owned by Raiders owner Mark Davis). But the WNBA/NWSL crossover is new, and the Bhathals are planning to pour money into a state-of-the-art training facility Lisa Bhathal Merage says will be catered to women with a "spa-type feel," private changing areas and other amenities, as well as two full-sized basketball courts and two full-sized soccer pitches.

"Nobody else has this," LeBlanc said. "We've always had the fanbase, we have the athletes, we'll have the events, but most importantly, we'll have the infrastructure."

As work begins on the practice facility, the Bhathals will continue to check items off of the WNBA team's checklist. Newly hired team president Inky Son was in attendance Tuesday, and Bhathal Merage said they plan to announce a name in the next two to three months and hope to have a general manager in place no later than six months from now.