Portland Trail Blazers
Allen purchased the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team in 1988 from California real estate developer Larry Weinberg for $70 million. He was also instrumental in the development and funding of their Rose Garden in 1993. The Blazers are valued at approximately $300 million according to a 2006 issue of Forbes. Allen has been asking Portland and Oregon officials for assistance in the financing of the Blazers since 2006, which he estimated would lose $100 million over the next three years. Then-Portland Mayor Tom Potter rebuffed the requests. Allen announced the completion of the acquisition of the Rose Garden on April 2, 2007, and stated that this was a major milestone and a positive step for the franchise. He said, “My efforts are focused on continuing to support the Trail Blazers and the long-term financial health of the franchise." As of 2010, according to a 2011 issue of Forbes, the Portland Trail Blazers were worth $356 million, ranked No. 14 out of 30 NBA teams.
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Famous quotes containing the words portland and/or trail:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester are on the trail of the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)