TriMet offers a lucky developer a 99.998% discount on the Butler Block

The Portland Tribune's story today about the TriMet parking lot at SW 18th Avenue and Salmon Street, which TriMet now wants to sell for $1 to a developer, told only part of the history of this interesting piece of property.  As the story points out, the City of Portland required TriMet to provide off-street parking to replace the on-street parking that was removed from SW 18th Avenue to make room for light rail.  This lot, known as the "Butler Block" to the old-line cognoscenti, was a public parking lot in private hands; TriMet condemned it and turned it into a public parking lot.  Although TriMet ultimately was ordered to pay much more for the Butler Block, and then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up the soil, its initial offer to the private owner was only $500.  You could say that TriMet is willing to sell the block today for 1/500, or 0.002%, of what TriMet thought it was worth when it offered to buy it ten years ago.  It's enough to make Peter Minuit ask for his $24 back.