Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:32:00

David Bowie played the first concert with Nine Inch Nails opening, two weeks after the doors opened - and the building has anchored Oregon sports and entertainment ever since. The Moda Center, at 1 Center Court in Portland's Rose Quarter, opened as the Rose Garden on 12 October 1995. The arena was Paul Allen's project: the Microsoft co-founder and Trail Blazers owner drove the 262-million-dollar replacement for the 12,888-seat Memorial Coliseum, financed through a public-private mix including 155 million in bonds - debt that triggered a 2004 bankruptcy and forfeiture before Allen repurchased the building in 2007. The naming held out longest in the NBA: the Blazers famously declined to sell naming rights in 1995 - it just didn't seem like the Portland thing to do - before the 2013 deal with Moda Health retitled the room; in July 2024 the City of Portland purchased the arena outright, making it publicly owned. The capacity flexes with the event: 19,393 for basketball, up to 20,500 in the round, 6,500 in the intimate Theater of the Clouds configuration - the Blazers' NBA seasons sharing the calendar with the WHL Winterhawks, the WNBA's Portland Fire, NCAA tournament rounds and the touring A-list from Coldplay to Lady Gaga. The resume runs deep: the 2005 US Figure Skating Championships, three Western Conference Finals, Roger Waters filming a live DVD, and roughly 1.5 million visitors a year generating an estimated 600 million dollars in economic activity for the city. Practical notes: the Rose Quarter Transit Center puts MAX light rail at the door - far easier than the garages on Blazers nights; the 300-level corners are the value seats with clean sightlines, the Theater of the Clouds curtain configuration is worth checking on concert tickets, and the Coliseum next door still handles the overflow calendar.