Front Office
The team is ultimately owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen; ownership of the Trail Blazers is via a series of holding companies which Allen owns. Vulcan Inc. is a private corporation which has Allen as chairman and sole shareholder. A subsidiary of Vulcan, Vulcan Sports and Entertainment (VSE), manages Allen's sports-related properties, including the Trail Blazers, the Seattle Seahawks NFL team, the Seattle Sounders MLS team, and the Rose Garden. The president of VSE was Tod Leiweke until he chose to leave the organization to become CEO of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Leiweke also briefly served as the president of the Trail Blazers.
The Trail Blazers as a corporate entity are owned by VSE. Allen serves as the team's chairman, and his longtime associate Bert Kolde is vice-chairman. The position of president is currently empty, with Larry Miller holding the job until resigning in July 2012. The post of chief operating officer is currently vacant; the most recent COO of the team was Mike Golub, who resigned in July 2008 to take a more enhanced role with VSE. Kevin Pritchard served as general manager of the Trail Blazers until he was fired on June 24, 2010. The announcement was issued by the Blazers' head office just an hour before the beginning of the 2010 NBA Draft. A month later, the Blazers named Oklahoma City Thunder assistant general manager Rich Cho as their new general manager. Cho was fired a year later, and director of college scouting Chad Buchanan served as interim general manager for the entire 2011–12. In June 2012, the Trail Blazers hired Neil Olshey as general manager.
Before Allen purchased the team in 1988, the Trail Blazers were owned by a group of investors headed by Larry Weinberg.
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Famous quotes containing the words front and/or office:
“I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o’-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.”
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