Tough city contract keeps grip on Blazers

Allen signed 30-year pact declaring team can’t move

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Mar 17, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

A legal document signed by Paul Allen prohibits him from relocating the Trail Blazers to another city while he owns the NBA franchise. If he sells the team, Allen agreed to make sure the new owner would be bound by the same conditions.

Under a 30-year “exclusive site agreement” with the city of Portland that went into effect June 23, 1993, Allen promised to keep the Blazers in Portland.

The 18-page document is signed by Allen and then-Mayor Vera Katz, among others. Parties to the agreement include Allen, the city of Portland and Trail Blazers Inc.

Three weeks ago, Allen’s representatives made public a plea to city, county and state officials for financial support for the Blazers through a proposed “public-private partnership” to help fix a “broken financial model.” A representative said then that the NBA club stands to lose $100 million over the next three years.

In meetings with local government officials, Allen’s representatives have not been specific about what sort of form that partnership could take. But there have been veiled references to Portland’s somehow losing its NBA team. In fact, in a posting on the Trail Blazer Web site last weekend, in a “Conversation with Paul Allen,” the owner broached the possibility of the team’s moving:

“I want the team to stay in Portland,” he wrote. “If this all ends up in the courts, or someone buys the team and moves it, it would be a shame.”

But the “Exclusive Site Agreement” would seem to make that impossible.

Portland Mayor Tom Potter was unavailable for comment. His press aide, John Doussard, said Potter “is aware of the document. I don’t know he has read it. We know the document exists and know what it says. I have seen the document. (But) Paul Allen has not called us up and talked about moving the team.”

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