The Moda Center on Oct. 22, 2025 in Portland, Ore.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Earlier this month, Democrats in the Oregon Legislature passed a bipartisan bill that authorizes $365 million to help subsidize renovations to the Moda Center, the 31-year-old arena that is home to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The deal aims to prevent the team’s prospective new owner, Tom Dundon, from moving the Blazers out of Rip City. But it also comes with certain conditions that include the Blazers’ committing to a 20-year lease to stay at the Moda Center and the NBA’s approval of the sale of the team to Dundon and his investors.
The city of Portland and Multnomah County must also agree to pitch in hundreds of millions of dollars for the renovation.
OPB recently reported on the months-long lobbying efforts by the Blazers to pressure Portland city officials to commit public funds to upgrade the arena.
Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner and Dewayne Hankins, President of Business Operations for the Blazers, joined OPB’s “Think Out Loud” to discuss the Blazers’ future in Portland and why they support using public funds to help pay for the estimated $600 million to renovate the Moda Center.
The following are highlights from the conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
On preserving Portland’s ‘local flair’ while helping the Moda Center attract marquee events
Dewayne Hankins: “We’ve done a great job of keeping it updated for the last 30 years, so it’s certainly ready to have the 200-plus events that it has every year, but we’re trying to create the building for the future, for the next 20 years.
“We are competing to get great events, right? So we have the 2030 Women’s Final Four coming to Portland. That’s gonna be an incredible event. We would love to use that event as a stake in the ground to say we can do big events and have big events. So that would lead to like the WNBA All-Star Game or the NBA All-Star Game … Whatever we do, it has to fit Portland, [it] has to have our local restaurants, has to have our local flair, you know, the weirdness that Portland exists, that won’t go away in a renovation.
“The Portland Fire, that’s a huge organization that’s going to have a bunch of home games in the summer, and they’re gonna have their home there as well. And I think having the Blazers, having the Fire, having all the events that we do, family events, concerts, shows, what have you, we’re very aware that this is Oregon’s arena and that people when they go in there feel like they belong there.”
There’s an economic argument to be made for investing public dollars in ‘Oregon’s arena’
Wagner: “A lot of why this legislation that we passed with that big appropriation was supported by state senators from Wallowa County and Port Orford and Ashland is because they understood the economic development argument and the importance of the arena … We wanted to make sure that we were locking in a two-decade-long commitment from the anchor tenant for Oregon’s arena.
“This is a publicly owned asset right now by the city, and the state would be coming in as a partner to be able to do the renovation, make sure that things are needed so that we don’t become a flyover city, so that people are coming in.
“The way that the money is from the Legislature, we’re sequestering the anticipated income from all of that activity to be able to put into our share of what the arena costs would be. So we feel very confident there was a lot of good research done in terms of the state appropriation side on this.”
But why invest public dollars for arena upgrades when that money could instead help Oregon’s struggling schools?
Wagner: “$670 million every year of economic development in terms of Oregon’s arena, so think about losing that as an economic engine for the region … I think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. The fact that the Legislature passed the Student Success Act a few years ago and we’re bringing that funding on … I was also proud of this legislative session at the end of the session because of what we were able to achieve. We held the line in terms of not cutting additional revenue out of our schools. … I totally hear that everybody wants really good schools. They want public services that matter to Oregonians across the state, but we couldn’t be prouder of this as an economic investment.”
How real was the threat that the Blazers’ prospective new owner would move the team without a public financing deal?
Hankins: “I think for us the lobbying effort was really, really important … And when you have a team that has that few years left on their lease and you have ownership changing the way that it was, there was the real risk that the team could leave … You have cities, not that I can talk to, but that others can talk to that are pushing really hard to get an NBA team … We were hearing rumblings that those cities wanted access to this team.”
Wagner: “I still think that there is a risk. The fact that you have a different structure around how people treat professional sports franchises from what you might have seen historically. These are valuable assets that communities know that are critical to the vitality of a city and a region. And so, it’s a little bit about, you know, should we gamble on the Trailblazers leaving, or should we double down on the economic investment, the cultural asset that’s here, and the community pride that we have?”
Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner and Dewayne Hankins spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation:
