Trail Blazers' Moda Center Deal Isn't Nearly as Finished as It May Seem

The Portland Trail Blazers' Moda Center saga has spent the summer producing plenty of progress on paper.

Oregon authorized up to $365 million in state bonds. Portland City Council approved a nonbinding term sheet. Multnomah County advanced its own funding framework. The Blazers even officially changed owners.

For all those developments … remarkably little of the actual deal is finished.

Oregon's latest accounting of the project shows just one of the five conditions required before the state can sell those bonds for the Moda Center renovation is currently complete.

That one? The NBA approving Tom Dundon's purchase of the Blazers.

The other four remain pending.

Oregon is still waiting on the creation of a joint authority between the state and Portland, an agreement between that authority and the Moda Center's management entity, review and approval of the project's scope, schedule and budget and binding financial commitments from Portland and Multnomah County.

Suddenly, all those votes and proposals from the summer look a little more like groundwork than a finish line.

Portland City Council voted 8-4 in August to approve a term sheet outlining the framework for a potential renovation and long-term lease. That was an important step in the process, though the term sheet itself is nonbinding.

There is still plenty to turn into signatures.

Portland's current timeline calls for lease negotiations throughout September, October and November before City Council considers the lease in December. The city, state and county are also expected to finalize the joint authority this fall.

Multnomah County has unfinished business of its own. Commissioners approved a framework in August for an investment of up to $101.6 million, with the county making clear at the time that its resolution was not a final deal.

The county also established three conditions before taking additional funding action: an updated economic analysis, a workforce audit and a detailed renovation and maintenance plan.

And the clock is beginning to matter.

Oregon says the requirements attached to its contribution must be completed by the end of December to keep the state on track to sell the bonds in spring 2027 and make the money available for construction beginning that summer.

There is quite a bit waiting on the other side of those signatures, too.

One of Oregon's outstanding requirements is an agreement containing a minimum 20-year lease for the Blazers at the Moda Center. Portland's existing agreement currently commits the franchise to playing at the arena through Oct. 11, 2030.

The summer moved the Blazers closer to replacing it.

Now comes the part that actually makes all that progress binding.

After months of votes, proposed contributions and negotiations, Oregon's own checklist offers perhaps the simplest way to understand where the Moda Center saga really stands.

Five conditions … four still pending.

Portland has until the end of December to change that.