Have faith - City COuncil honestly believes that Homer, G-E and Malsin are the ONLY people in town who know what they are doing.

More importantly a comment on the avg IQ of City Council and PDC. God, how sad.

Reach and the PDC have been in bed together for 25 years.
Nothing to see here folks. Keep moving please.

What a crock!! Affordable units that cost $240K each!

Without our crazy land use laws, that amount of money would but a 2000 sq ft home on a 1/4 acre lot. And have money left over!

Then there is the flawed concept of putting low income people in a rich area. Where are the low priced restaurants? Low cost grocery stores? Low cost shops? Low cost entertainment? But city planners don’t care about these real world details because they lie in a fantasy world.

Thanks
JK

The buy-it-for-$5-million-sell-it-back-for-$1 deal should have put three to five people in jail all by itself. Chicago with hills and rain.

A) One of the functions of government is to tell people what they can and can't do
B) The primary purpose of big businesses is to makes lots of money

A + B = 'urban planning'

Jack, it is even worse than the numbers you give on Homer's scam. He bought Block 49 for $1.6 Million then sells it for $5 Million in a down market. Go figure.

And I forgot to mention that Homer also retains the full FAR/Heights rights to the property since it is not being built out to it's potential 250 ft. height/FAR. So he can sell or use those rights somewhere else in the city. Plus, like you mention, when he was "negotiating" with PDC for Block 49 and got exclusive development and builder rights in the deal, in a URAC meeting it was asked if this was a good deal for the taxpayers of Portland. No reply from PDC staff-carry on.

Joisey and Stumptown got their instruction laid on them as it rolled downhill from D.C., where every politician goes NOwhere until institutional blackmailers have some dossier juice and a character-assassination choke-collar on him or her. You know the extortion institutions, (the familiar household names of Departments, Bureaus and Agencies), but no one may publicize or know the crimes or sociopathies, because ... well, admitting it then wouldn't be coercive anymore, would it? (See: JFK murder, Gulf of Tonkin hoax, MLK murder, 1980 October Surprise, Iran-Contra / BCCI / Cocaine Import Activity, Monica Lewinsky, Nine-Eleven Op, anthrax murders, Touch-the-TV vote fraud, Guckert etc.)

Meanwhile the average hostaged man-on-Main-Street mumbling aloud knows all about all of it. But he doesn't dare do or post a word of it lest he lose his job or mortgage ... or more. Homer 'knows' Paulson maybe, just sayin' ... mumble mumble.

" One of the functions of government is to tell people what they can and can't do."

Try this: Incoming GOP Financial Services Chairman: Washington’s Role Is ‘To Serve The Banks’, By Pat Garofalo, ThinkProgress.org, Dec 13th, 2010

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) ... said he brings a “main street” perspective to the committee, as opposed to Wall Street. “In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks,” he said.