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.
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.
“We were just talking to the city administrator’s staff, figuring out the best way to move forward and show up on Thursday,” Hankins said.
After Hankins’ response, city council president Jamie Dunphy said he had been working with “old information.”
On Friday, Dunphy sent a letter to Hankins, inviting him to attend a work session with the 12-member council to address the team’s concerns about the term sheet delivered by the city.
“I’m 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,” Dunphy wrote to Hankins. “It would be extremely helpful if you and your team joined our work session to help me and my colleagues understand your needs.”
Dunphy initially said “Blazers leadership” 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’ intentions.
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
A Blazers source, speaking on condition of anonymity to freely discuss negotiations, said the term sheet was “a nonstarter,” but Dunphy said he and the council have no idea what the team’s issues are with the draft document because the Blazers won’t communicate, let alone show up at meetings.
“We have no substantive information about what they want, what they don’t want or what a successful partnership with the city, county and state would look like,” Dunphy said. “We heard through the press that they were dissatisfied with the term sheet, but got no feedback.
“It 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,” Dunphy said. “I 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’t seem like incompetence. It seems intentional.”
Hankins said he wants to get a deal done and doesn’t see the value in negotiating through the media.
“I’d like to turn the rhetoric down and not have these conversations in the media, to be honest,” Hankins said. “It’s not helpful. It’s not effective. I just want to get a deal done, and this is not the way for us to get a deal done.”
