What we need to do is kill URAs - TOp priority. All they need is a thin excuse to funnel property taxes away from schools to the city forever (unless you can tell me the last time the killed a URA).

This is one of worse ideas (big/shiny condos that'll generate a ton of property taxes) that these wanna-be developer/politicians come up with. That's saying a lot considering the average IQ/morality of the avg pol.

I'm not sure that it's possible to make Beaverton worse than it is already - but if anyone can pull that off....

Beaverton's city government, while not nearly as dysfunctional or creepy as Portland's, has a tendency toward "imperialist expansionism"--they've had annexation designs on Aloha, Cedar Mill and Bethany for years and want to become the second-largest city in the state (annexing those areas would put them over 200,000). Not to mention the Nike HQ flap, and sticking speed cameras on roads outside the city limits in the late-90s.

If Denny Boy lets The Don have free reign with URA nonsense, you can bet they'll start trying to out-stupid Portland and SamRand. I've already seen photo-mockups of a "Canyon-Broadway couplet" lined with condo towers and mixed-use nonsense out the yin-yang. *shudders*

You'd think they'd be smart enough to see what a colossal flop The Round is and all the lawsuits that have been part of it, and not want to touch that crap with a 10-foot pole.

We had the good fortune of finally discovering where downtown Beaverton is this weekend.

It was all in the quest to find the Typhoon Restaurant. We were told in was near The Round-Beaverton's City Center....to be. Well, through the years of passing through Beaverton I knew where the continuously being built thing arose. Typhoon's address was SW Crescent. We spent 15 minutes driving around and finally found signage that directed us into a parking lot, not really a street. We saw no signage for the restaurant and had to find a human to give us directions, and she said, "right behind us between the two curving buildings and you need to walk around to the back or front, whatever you want to call it, to find the front door." We found the entry door facing a pool, fountain with light rail running right smack through the middle. We found downtown Beaverton with most of the buildings vacant.

Ahhh, isn't urban renewal fruitful with three The Round bankruptcies and numerous lawsuits. Plus, the Eco/Energy District that the project spawned is a total economic and functional failure. And Sam wants to bring a Eco/Energy District to SoWhat so that taxpayers can pay for the developers energy systems that all the rest pay for ourselves.

This property is right across the street from Stars Cabaret topless bar.

Mazziotti: "We’re guessing that this site is ideal for housing".

The folks in Beaverton do not deserve what they are getting. It looks like this project is being fast tracked - very difficult for ordinary citizens to track much less stop. Who has time to monitor all the goings on at City Hall? Who has the time to keep an eye on plots and plans that plotters and planners have for their town? The vultures work at this full time and have a staff to help. Private citizens are out-gunned in this fight.

Up until a year ago, that property had a big sign on it advertising the coming luxury condos there.

So, I'm assuming the purchase is already a developer bail out.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, it's very small old houses on big lots with some infill.

The Don looks prosperous and fairly fit these days. Too bad...
That man is a thug and a bully.

If you see a politician wearing a "JOBS" pin, run as fast as you can and make sure you don't drop your wallet.

The market value of those properties, per the tax assessor, is less than $850,000

I cannot imagine why anyone would think the Round was the real downtown Beaverton. If there is any such thing for the sprawl that is Beaverton, I'd say it would be the area sometimes known as old Beaverton. But that's just my opinion based on 25 plus years of actually spending time outside my car in the area.

And as much as I think the government of the city of Beaverton is and has been ridiculous for a long time, the people deserve better.

LucsAdvo, I agree with you that old Beaverton is more of a "downtown". But if you do some research on all the urban renewal sales job for The Round, it was touted as necessary to give Beaverton a "downtown".

I was just spoofing urban renewal sales staff like Mazziotti who said SoWhat would be the biotech center of our region with 10,000 jobs. How many sales job failures do we have to have before citizen's say "enough"?

I'd also agree that "old Beaverton" is downtown. I've always called in "Downtown Beaverton", and in fact, just about everyone I know does, too. It's not a particularly bustling place necessarily, but I think it fits the bill and they did put that snazzy new library in there.

If they did want to do any sort of "redeveloping", they'd be much better off making modest improvements to their existing downtown, rather than going neck-deep in the real estate business and repeating The Round debacle with The Don. I think a lot of Washington County cities looking to spruce up their CBDs should be looking to McMinnville (whose downtown is absolutely thriving--without URA nonsense) rather than drinking CoP Kool-Aid.

I wouldn't have a problem with these guys going out on a limb, if the electorate knew how to operate a saw...