A Novel Proposed Approach - Selling to the Highest Bidder

This morning's Ace Reporter Scott Schwebke story confirms what some of us had suspected: Boss Godfrey crony Chris Peterson has wisely allowed his ill-gotten Bootjack LLC purchase option to expire.

For the benefit of readers who missed out on the substance of this story the first go-round, we link background articles here and here.

What remains apparent from this morning's article is that Mr. Peterson and his de facto business broker, Boss Godfrey, still have every intention to proceed with the transaction however. This time, they evidently plan to engineer the transaction the old-fashioned Boss Godfrey way: pegging the sales price by means of a low-ball appraisal, without ever offering the property to other potential buyers on the open market.

For those babes in the woods who are unfamiliar with the practices of the real estate market by the way, custom-designed appraisals (low-ball and high-ball) are one of the "dirty little secrets" of the real estate appraisal industry.

This morning's article notes that the Emerald City RDA board implemented new policy in the wake of the Bootjack stealth option revelation: "As a result of the Bootjack incident, the RDA has adopted a policy that requires full disclosure regarding the identity of property buyers before it approves land sales."

This improved RDA Board approach only solves half the problem however. What is needed now is an RDA policy that requires economically significant RDA-owned properties (such as these Frontrunner Station adjacent parcels) to be placed on the open market for a reasonable period of time, in order to generate competing offers.

We have already heard from one interested potential buyer who lodged a verbal $300 thousand cash backup offer with the Emerald City Economic Development Department. We are curious to know why this fact was not mentioned in this morning's Std-Ex article.

It's time, we think, for our RDA board to act on this before it is too late. At the very least, this property ought to be advertised for sale in the newspaper, if not on the Weber-Davis Multiple Listing Service.

The RDA board has a fiduciary obligation, owed to the citizens of Emerald City, to generate the highest possible sales price for any property it sees fit to remove from its inventory. Such is particularly true as to these parcels, which are key to our Emerald City downtown development.

Whether our Rip Van Winkle RDA Board will properly fulfill that important obligation is a question which remains to be answered.

A Friday morning query to our gentle readers: Will the RDA Board allow itself to be bush-wacked yet again?