You mean let someone else besides the planner-class decide what is best for us? Like ourselves individually?

Are you nutz? They did so well on SE Hawthorne and NW 23rd . . .

Aww, a cuddly story about gentrification, from a quintessential gentrifier--white middle class people looking for a cheap place with potential.

Worked on Alberta, didn't it? Now, we can watch the white folks get piss drunk and pass out on neighborhood lawns--and with the Mayor's implicit approval. 20 years ago, white folks would've clucked their tongues and called the police. Now, it's all part of the "art show".

Time to look around at who's living here now, people. It ain't your average family buying the $400,000 homes in the inner east side. Soon, we can all lament the disappearance of the middle class while the rich watch hipsters clean their bathrooms.

Jack should join the dark side, the tea party, that is, who believe the role of government is not to confer privileges to individuals (the progressive approach to governance) but rather to guarantee the rights of individuals to pursue the job of their liking and develop their property largely as they see fit. Bring back the Magna Carter, and down with the Progressive government of Oregon and the city of Portland.

The Magna Carter was replaced by the Gipper, who set us back further than probably anybody, even his evil spawn, the Bush family.

"Urban renewal" is not progressive. It's just valueless and crooked.

Hi Jack:
Please forward this article to PDC with a reminder that "we" the people changed their minds about their "shovel ready" mantra to demolish the Convention Plaza building smack dab in the middle of the Burnside Bridgehead project. Now we have a local developer-named Beam Development who will take a shot at filling up almost 100,000 S.F. of former wearhouse space from the 1920's.The drawings for the original building are gorgeous.
Brad Malsin, aka president of Beam has been great at finding new life for old warehouses on the close in East side and
the Burnside Bridgehead will be better off because of him and his company.
VTY,
Mike,
aka, "The Curmudgeon"

No kidding. In a city where the politicians literally sing "reduce, reuse, recycle" to pander for votes, it's amazing how quick they are to bulldoze everything over to make room for schlock from the condo weasels.

Mike...aka Curmudgeon...,

Malsin's company is okay and has done well on their own. I can't help wonder, though, if Beam/Malsin is at the trough on the Bridgehead site. I mean, will Malsin pay the $10,000,000 for the Convention Plaza building that PDC has in it, or will Malsin buy it from PDC at a discount? ....Before you go patting Malsin on the back too much, I'd like to see the numbers behind that deal. PDC has a boondogle here, and Malsin has weaseled himself into profiting from it....at taxpayer expense. Just do the math...Malsin is in line for "developer welfare".

His latest kiss-up to Leonard makes me suspicious...(http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2010/08/19/money-watch-new-big-donors-to-the-portland-fire-bond/)

Bob Clark - Magna Carter which kind of liver pill is that? One for the power drunk?

The tea party is the party of dupes and knaves bankrolled by billionaires cynically manipulating the masses.

So let me get this straight Jack - you WANT to go back to the way things were when Carter was president? The man who WAS the worst president of all time before the present white house occupant came to steal that title away from him. You REALLY want to return to that time? I will admit, Obama is trying hard to get us there, my hope (because I lived through the reign of the worthless one) is that Obama doesn't succeed in getting us there, but he sure is giving it that good ole college try. So one more time, are you, Jack, actually wishing to return to the time when Carter was president?

Very good read. What the blather's above miss, is that Planners are just Socialists.
Long live Democratic Capitalism!

native - Try to keep up....

Bob Clark wrote: "Bring back the Magna Carter, and down with the Progressive government of Oregon and the city of Portland."

Jack replied: "The Magna Carter was replaced by the Gipper, who set us back further than probably anybody, even his evil spawn, the Bush family.

"Urban renewal" is not progressive. It's just valueless and crooked."

You do get that Bob doesn't know Magna Carta from Magna Carter and that Jack was making a playful response, right?

And had Pres. Carter been given an opportunity instead of a faux hostage crisis, we'd probably be a lot farther away from oil dependency since he actually had education and experience in alternative energy forms. But hey, most right wing ideologues lack objectivity, pure and simple.

The tea party is the party of dupes and knaves bankrolled by billionaires cynically manipulating the masses.

A lot of the tea party anger I've come across is bipartisan. It is directed at the professional political class that brought us to this point.

Sure republican strategists are doing their best to tap into it, but they are not leading the way by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the largest cheers at tea party events come when a speaker condemns the role of republicans in bringing us here (e.g., selling out principles to maintain/extend power; saddling future generations with debt/liabilities for current operating expenses).

The biggest blindspots in the tea party movement (IMO) are a willingness to ignore the long term costs (blood and treasure) of military campaigns and to permit conservative leaders to treat deficit spending and tax reform as distinct subjects.

Part of the reason that the D's swept in 2008 was that so many fiscal conservatives were completely disillusioned with the state of the modern GOP. The mistake of the D's was to assume that this meant they had a mandate to expand unsustainable fiscal policies in the pursuit of progressive goals.

The floor has fallen out of that strategy, but the progressives in power can barely admit it to themselves (much less their base).

It is too easy to blame the other party for our predicament. Each brand can marshal facts to pin on the other when we all know that most of the failed policies had bipartisan support. We need to put all the former marketing campaigns of Coke vs. Pepsi out of our minds and just start cutting the high fructose corn syrup out of our diets.

I'm voting for candidates that recognize that we can't borrow our way out of things and that we can't avoid the big structural sustainability questions any longer. I expect that that I will be voting for mostly republicans this time, but I don't make a habit of voting the party line (and I would happily vote for any D candidates that could show me that they get any of this and are willing to take action).

PanchoPDX - if some party say the Libertarians were to ever grow a pair and a brain and a cohesive strategy I think there would be a ground swell of support... unfortunately, it's idiots to the right of me, idiots to the left of me, here I am stuck in the middle with you.