[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Dusty

From one of the stories in your link:

How many other articles did you read? Did you have time to glance at any of City of Portland's master planning documents <<LINK>>?

"PAALF members reiterated previous demands to include an affordable housing component on the two-acre lot and issued several demands."

See, to me, that's "bad form".

IMO/IME, it is a part of a negotiating process. Some groups are going to ask. Others are going to demand. This back and forth happens all the time.

You know, Sig, maybe you can explain why people live in affordable housing in the first place.

You can find some of your answers here. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?...rdablehousing/

Originally Posted by tonyz

The reported lot has been vacant for approximately 20 years.

Presumably, no tax revenue, no water and sewer fees, no jobs, no payroll...no improvement.

Local communities play poker with developers all the time and sometimes F-up. IME, a good grocery store tends to attract residents and development...a twenty year vacant lot tends to attract...well...trash.

IME, what constitutes a "good neighbor" is going to depend upon whom one asks. Trader Joe's is not always considered a good neighbor because of the parking demand a store can generate and its impact on area traffic patterns. Also, as some of the pieces in the Oregonian indicate, TJ may not have been the best of potential neighbors in the way it approached this process <<LINK>>.

It seems that there are no objections to a local government subsidizing in partial secrecy a corporation, nor interest in the PDC's own admission that it had, in the past, contributed to gentrification in the area, nor curiosity about how such conduct might impact contemporaneous conversations about economic development.