So what's the plan? Give the Biggis "an offer they cant refuse?" Politicians around here are just friggin unbelievable.

Don't think that isn't the vibe put out by Paulson's consultant, Don "the Don" Mazziotti. I wonder if LLP is still going to love the Don when he has to move his AAA baseball franchise out of state because he couldn't get the scam done anywhere in the Portland area.

The national powerwave of anti-eminent domain regarding publicly-leveraged private development pipe dreams like that is about to hit Beaverton like a tsunami.

Cowabunga!

Just imagine, with these idiotic greedheads' and egomaniacs' approaches to confronting a widespread economic depression and banking/insurance/finance disaster with record-setting unemployment: What if FDR & Congress had instituted squadrons of professional sports franchises instead of the WPA, the CCC, etc.?

I think this elderly Gene Biggi guy is going to have Merritt Paulson and his legal team for lunch with a little dab of horseradish on top.
I just hope they put the courtroom antics on live television. I'd love to hear this crusty old guy introduce Merritt to a little show called the Real World.
Not everyone you encounter here in Oregon is as hopelessly phony as Sammy and the Samettes. Every now and then someone like Merritt tells the chauffeur to take a wrong turn and a guy like Biggi steps forward.
It should be fun.

Little Lord Paulson will be in for a big shock if decides to take on Biggi family.... Gene will tie him up in the Courts for years just for shits and giggles.......

Ooooo....I liiiike the sounds of this.

These Biggis better not roll over like trained Shih Tsus.

"I wonder if LLP is still going to love the Don when he has to move his AAA baseball franchise out of state because he couldn't get the scam done anywhere in the Portland area."

I'm afraid that Paulson is just fine with that possibility. If he can't get some local politicians to provide him with a sweetheart deal on a new stadium, he'll "reluctantly be forced" to sell the Beavers to folks in Tucson, Ariz., or Richmond, Va.
That's still no reason to use public funds for a new stadium (or unneeded refurbishing of the old one). And I know the city will get along just fine without minor league baseball. But I'll be the one who will have to explain to a baseball-crazed 11-year-old why we can't go to the ballpark to watch the Beavers anymore.

I hope Gene Biggi is tougher than 'the Don'. Mazziotti is a 'pro', even though he is a creep. He is a bully and can be a formidable adversary.
I wish the Biggis all the luck they can muster. Go get 'em! I am glad someone is finally standing up to these thugs from NYC.

he'll "reluctantly be forced" to sell the Beavers to folks in Tucson, Ariz., or Richmond, Va.

Who would buy them right now? No, LLP is going to have to move them himself. Too funny.

have to explain to a baseball-crazed 11-year-old why we can't go to the ballpark to watch the Beavers anymore

Unfortunately, that chain of events was set into motion when Goldman Sachs Jr. bought into Portland. At that point, the alternatives were to be screwed by New York or find another pastime for your kid. I'm glad Portland didn't choose the former alternative.

Mazziotti is a 'pro'

Really? Potter ran him out of city government on a rail, and just about everything that was in play when he left went to pot. The Don is a Goldschmidt boy, and his days are over.

Here's the part I liked from the linked story. To put it in Portland terms, Gene Biggi doesn't sound like he's ready to repurpose his land:

"You can put this on a list, then it is war," the tanned, silver-haired 81-year-old said Tuesday. "It's the Biggi family and the city. And I guarantee the Biggi family is going to win. I guarantee you that."

Whatever. This is a story about a some rich guy who has a huge axe to grind with City of Beaverton because he thinks he got screwed over on some land deal about a sewer plant, or they bought some land out from under him or whatever. I could really give a flying bleep about him and his piece of land or the deal he wanted to make, but the city beat him to the punch, etc. The city should pay the man for his little slice of paradise if they want it so frikin' bad so some some other rich guy can do whatever he wants with it. I hated the whole concept of whatever Paulson and R. Leonard were trying to pull off over in Lents with a public park. Pick your battles people. Biggi loves you guys because he needs all the help he can get with the way commercial real estate prices are so depressed these days.

Can government condemn a temporary interest in land, like a 23 year lease, rather than a fee simple interest for ever and ever? If Portland can mess around with the timing of lease payments by The Paulson Gang on PGE Park then a condemning government could make an advance payment on a 23 year lease agreement. And, of course, and invaluably, exempt the land from taxation for the duration of such lease even if used by a private schmuck for private schmucky purposes for the entirety of the leasehold interest.

Can we really ignore a complete void of any articulation of "public use" of target property in year 24?

After all, The Paulson Gang only wants property-tax-free squatters rights for 23 years (a wild guess on time).

At the expiration of the 23-year squat the land would again return to the private property tax roll, for "private" (or any non-corporate) uses.

Can we really ignore a complete void of any articulation of a reason to exclude the target property from property taxation in year 24?

The city of Beavertron has been a mess for a long time. And the Biggis should fight this tooth and nail.

However, the writing and editing at the Zero (0) continues to go south. Domonic is a wild misspelling of Dominic. I guess fact checking of something so simple as a name is beyond the the pale for the current inhabitants of the Fourth Estate.

re: the Don is a pro...
I should have made myself more clear. The Don is really a wannabe pro at crooked dealings. I believe that The City Club report was the nail in the coffin that sent him packing over to Harsch Investment ( I am still trying to figure out exactly why they hired him!) and then a bit further a field, before he returned to our little puddle on the Willamette.
However, 'the Don' is a thug and bully with some connections and believe me he could make your life pretty miserable and scary IF he is still as connected as he used to be.
I hope the Biggi family can send him packing away from here again.

So I decided to look at a bit of a math lesson here for the jokers who think taking public land for a baseball stadium is justified.

The current population of the Portland metro area is about 2.2 million people. Paulsen's inflated attendance rate is about 1,500 spectators per game. So, this park will be benefiting about .1% (yeah that's one tenth of one percent) of the metro population. Not sure how that qualifies for eminent domain (under the original intentions of that power).