From Oregon Live comes the report that a Portland attorney who was fighting to keep his office building (a converted Victorian), from being taken, has prevailed.
After a years-long fight in which Randal Acker, a commercial litigation lawyer, vowed to "do eminent domain law for the next two years to save the house" if necessary, the other side relented and allowed him to keep the house in place and decided to build the Portland State Dormitory around it.
Noting the resemblance of the home to the house in the Pixar animated film Up, the lawyer recently had 400 helium filled balloons affixed to its chimney, just like in the film.
Wish we could have been there.
Turns out this did not devolve into a typical eminent domain fight and that positions did not harden, but that reasonable minds prevailed:
Construction on the $90 million College Station [dormatory] started in February. At the March groundbreaking, PSU officials and the private company building the residence hall dropped by Figo House with a plate of cookies and a hard hat.
Bill Bayliss, chief executive officer of American Campus Communities of Austin, Texas, says the presence of Figo House in the middle of the residence hall project "is just so typically Portland."
"We just love it!" Bayliss says. "It's a perfect demonstration of how the old and new can live with each other in Portland."
A colleague recently gave advice to condemnors on how to approach property owners in these type of situations. "Be nice," she counseled. Maybe she's onto something.
More on the story from the UK's Mail Online here.
File this one under heartwarming endings.
