Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Amanda Fritz want to spent more than a quarter million dollars on a piece of property they've called the best option available for the homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too.

An item on next week's city council agenda, unveiled earlier this afternoon, shows Hales and Fritz will propose spending $254,044 to buy the plot at SE 3rd and Harrison from the Oregon Department of Transportation.

There's plenty of money available to meet that price. As part of a deal with Pearl District developers—reached when those same developers were doing whatever they could to keep R2DToo away from the Pearl—the city has $846,000 to play with in finding the encampment a new home.

City staffers had been casting around for an acceptable lot for a year and a half, when Fritz and Hales announced they'd found a spot in late April. It's a vacant industrial lot just east of OMSI and the new Tilikum Crossing bridge.

ODOT's said it's happy to sell the land, which the city has been testing for environmental contamination in recent weeks. The tougher part may be pushing the deal past neighbors.

As we've reported, the Central Eastside Industrial Council has asked the city to hold its horses on the move, which Hales has said should be complete by late summer. The business group has raised serious questions about the zoning rationale the city wants to use to put the well-respected homeless camp on a piece of land meant for industrial use.

And the CEIC won another influential group to its cause earlier this week, when SE Uplift—a conglomeration of southeast and northeast Portland neighborhoods—said it wants the city to slow down the process.

I'll update when more details on the proposed deal emerge.

Update, 4:19 pm: Hales is hedging a bit on the land buy.

In prepared statement, the mayor says he's up to spend money on the site even if it's not R2DToo's new home.

“The Third and Harrison site could be a good home for Right 2 Dream, which has proven to be a part of the solution for Portland’s homeless population,” Hales said in the statement. “But even if the site doesn’t work for that purpose, it may still be a good site for the city to own.”

That's a more cautious tone than Hales sounded in April when the proposal was announced, and is seemingly an acknowledgment of the concerns that have arisen (concerns that will arise in any neighborhood where the city hopes to move a resource that everybody says provides a vital service).

The release, issued by the mayor's office, also includes a statement from Fritz that acknowledges coming talks over the move.

“We need to move forward with the logistics of the purchase now, to allow time for Right 2 Dream Too and other community members to discuss how to prepare for a move before the cold, rainy season comes back,” Fritz says.

An "impact statement" filed with the ordinance also suggests R2DToo's relocation to the site is still tenuous.

There's another important part step to achieving a deal: R2DToo's board has to approve it. The organization's leaders have said they'd support the move, though they argue more, similar resources are necessary.