"The Portland Development Commission is giving the retail space to the city...."

That's what the linked document says, but a little bit of clarity is in order for those who don't know exactly what's going on.

PDC *is* the city, and this was city property to begin with. PDC pumped $900K (per Amy Ruiz) of city money into developing this retail space, will pump another $20K into it, and now the city of Portland is basically giving it away. After the initial 20 year lease, Portland will have recouped $768K of its initial $920K investment (not counting any number of incidental ongoing costs).

As with most PDC dealings, it takes a lot of hand waving to make this look like a good deal to taxpayers.

But at least there are some happy fat cats, and Sam and Randy get to play act as heroes for saving the big Oregon sign.

$240,000 is a "sweetheart deal?"

I suppose it is if you consider not letting a sign owner change two words on a goddamned sign as some sort of actual city priority.

Would $600,000 in city money to save our historic Portland Storage Company sign in SE be another sweetheart deal?