Share this article! John Ross condos go cheap The John Ross tower, Portland’s largest condo building, auctioned off 47 units in less than two hours last weekend. The units were sold at significant discounts — an average of 50% off prices charged during the real-estate heyday. The John Ross condos were listed for an average … Read more
John Ross condos go cheap
The John Ross tower, Portland’s largest condo building, auctioned off 47 units in less than two hours last weekend.
The units were sold at significant discounts — an average of 50% off prices charged during the real-estate heyday.
The John Ross condos were listed for an average of $711,000 during the top of the housing market. They sold Sunday for about $316,000, according to winning bids announced at the auction.
Despite the discounts, the sell-off moves the lender closer to getting the John Ross off its books and to its goal of selling out the 303-unit building by the end of 2010. The auction sales also will reduce the lender’s costs for property taxes and insurance. If all the sales close, the auction will have produced $14.8 million in sales.
Read the full story at OregonLive.com.
Movie rental biz gets crowded
More consumers are turning to convenient services like Redbox and Netflix for their movie rentals, making business harder for traditional stores.
Blockbuster and Movie Gallery, the largest companies in the business, have closed hundreds of stores nationwide, with the latter recently filing for reorganization bankruptcy for the second time in three years.
The movie rental industry is highly competitive, with multiple rivals all vying for a piece of the $8.1 billion-a-year business, according to Adams Media Research, based in Monterey, Calif.
Traditional video stores, such as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, still have the biggest slice of the market — about $3.5 billion, said Tom Adams, president of the research firm.
Read the full story at The Register-Guard.
Chromite mining on the horizon?
Oregon’s natural chromite resources in Coos County could put the state in the same league as top producers like South Africa and Turkey.
Oregon Resources Corp. wants to begin sifting through piles of sand in the region later this year, which could eventually lead to the only chromite mine in the U.S.
The last time the heavy mineral had been produced here — and in this country — was during World War II, with a blip in the Korean War. Then 20 years ago, Oregon Resources showed up on the South Coast, looking to mine high-grade chromite ore.
Industrial Minerals Corporation LTD., based in Australia, founded Oregon Resources in 1989, specifically to mine black sands for chromite, zircon and garnet in forestlands near Coos Bay — through a one-of-a-kind chromite mining operation.
Read the full story at The World Link.
Treasury perks under wraps
News broke last week that the Oregon Treasury’s investment officers have received high-profile perks ranging from free golf to fine dining while on business trips.
But while Treasurer Ted Wheeler has said there would be significant changes to travel policies, the details of the luxurious perks are being kept secret.
The cost of that coziness is a secret. The state and investment firms say what the firms spend to fly and feed state officers is none of the public’s business. Treasury officials even refused to turn over public records — agendas for meetings involving state officials — until they were given permission by the private investment firms.
Treasury officials acknowledge they have no record of what travel benefits state employees receive from the firms. They don’t seek an accounting, either from state employees or the firms.
Read the full story at OregonLive.com.
GOP hopefuls talk economics
Allen Alley, Chris Dudley and John Lim took the stage in Eugene last weekend in their only joint Lane County appearance of the primary season.
The three Republican candidates shared many of the same views regarding the economy, health care and off-shore drilling.
All three hewed to the orthodoxy of their Republican party: the economy is a mess and, if elected, they will redirect the state after years of Democratic leadership that raised taxes and neglected private-sector job creation. They also agreed that the national health care reforms impose an unconstitutional mandate on state governments that they would oppose on legal grounds. All three agreed that oil drilling off Oregon’s coastline and nuclear energy should be pursued.
When asked by moderator Jack Roberts about whether they believed human activity was a primary cause of global warming and what should be done about it, Alley declared himself a skeptic when it comes to the scientific community’s consensus that climate change is being caused largely by the human-caused emission of carbon dioxide.
Read the full story at The Register-Guard.
