Trail Blazers Make Their Case to State Legislature for Moda Center Renovations

📍SALEM, Ore. — The public negotiation over the future of the Trail Blazers that began last summer has ramped up in earnest over the past two weeks.

It's been going on since the day Paul Allen's estate announced last May that they were finally putting the team up for sale, and intensified when NBA commissioner Adam Silver said publicly last July that Portland would likely need a new arena.

Also kicking into high gear this month, with the $4.25 billion sale of the team to Tom Dundon's group set to close this spring, has been a widespread fear that the Blazers are on the verge of leaving Portland. That's been out there in the ether from the day the estate announced it was selling the team, and it's been turned up to 11 recently as the ownership change looms and talks begin at the government level about Moda Center renovations.

Now comes the formal rollout of Senate Bill 1501, the legislation introduced this week at the state capitol building in Salem that would secure $600 million in combined public funding from the state of Oregon, city of Portland and Multnomah County towards a major renovation of the 30-year-old arena. The Blazers launched a website on Monday that offered some renderings of what a revamped Moda Center could look like, but not much in the way of funding specifics.

At a hearing on Wednesday morning, the Oregon state senate's rules committee pressed state, county and city leaders as well as Blazers executives for those specifics.