On the evening of May 5th, at the Memorial Coliseum, the Portland Trail Blazers faced the Phoenix Suns in the first game of the semi-final playoff series.
Before the game started, the owner of the Trail Blazers, Tang Jianguo, formally announced that the funding for the new stadium had been fully raised. Construction was about to commence, with completion expected by January 1992, when it would officially open for use.
At that time, the new stadium would be activated to host the 1992 All-Star Game—In order to catch up with the All-Star, the construction period was reduced from two years to one and a half years.
For this project, Tang Jianguo, on the brink of bankruptcy, exerted all his energy, shuffling assets from left to right, pulling in a lot of investors, selling season tickets, issuing funds, acquiring loans, issuing bonds—more than 5 million US Dollars were raised by selling the parking lot rights, securing the final sum required.
