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PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN<\/a>) \u2013 The sale of the Portland Trail Blazers to an ownership group led by Tom Dundon has officially closed, the team announced.<\/p>\n This week the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved the transaction<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Suspect in Plaid Pantry deadly shooting turns himself in, Portland police say <\/a><\/p>\n Now Dundon\u2019s group, Rip City Rising, is assuming majority control of the Blazers, as well as the Rip City Remix, and Rip City Management.<\/p>\n Dundon enters the new role as the debate over who\u2019s paying for renovations to the Moda Center is set to heat up.<\/p>\n Sean Highkin, who covers the Blazers for the Rose Garden Report, said Portlanders should look at what Dundon did with his hockey franchise in North Carolina if they\u2019re expecting him to contribute anything to the project.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the agreement there was that he will contribute a pretty significant amount of money towards the development of stuff like bars, restaurants, entertainment districts, stuff like that around the arena that they have in Raleigh for the Hurricanes,\u201d Highkin said. \u201cAnd I think the plan is very much the same here.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n As it stands now, Highkin says the Rose Quarter does not have much of an entertainment district at all outside of the Moda Center.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the idea is to try to change that situation a little bit and get some other business things going on, and I so if there\u2019s going to be any contribution from the ownership group to the efforts, it\u2019s going to be more in that realm than it is the actual costs of the updates to the building itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At last week\u2019s board of governors meetings in New York, Highkin talked with the NBA\u2019s top executive, who he says wasn\u2019t shy about his wishes for the future of basketball in Portland.<\/p>\n \u201cThe commissioner was pretty definitive that he doesn\u2019t have any interest in seeing the Trail Blazers move to a different city,\u201d Highkin said. \u201cHe said that it was really important to Paul Allen to keep the team in Portland and that the estate wanted to honor those wishes and only talk to groups that wanted to keep the team here.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n