We're in the middle of an NBA lockout and that means painful cutbacks. That goes for everyone, including the billionaires who own the teams. It's impossible not to feel immense sympathy for Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen, who has decided to make the difficult decision to sell one of his private islands. Yahoo.com has the details. Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder that ranks 57th on the Forbes World’s Billionaires list with $13 billion, is offloading his private island. Allan Island, situated near Anacortes, Wash., is back on the market and at a reduced price, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Realtor.com. Allan Island has bounced on and off the sale block since 2005, when its initial price tag was $25 million. It took a $5.5 million price chop in 2006 before re-emerging with the current $13.5 million asking price. Windmere Real Estate has the listing. Allen bought the island in 1992, reportedly to build a vacation home, before snatching up the Sperry Peninsula site on nearby Lopez Island in 1996 and abandoning his original plans. Allan Island, named for a Navy hero (not the billionaire), is an almost entirely undeveloped 292-acre island jutting out of the Pacific Ocean, north of Seattle. It is one of 172 islands comprising the San Juans archipelago. The land boasts one modest house — a caretaker’s cabin fitted with water, septic and generator. There’s also a 2,400 foot grass airstrip and a boat dock, the only two means by which a person can access the island. Jeep trails wind through the acreage and beaches dapple the coastline. The island does not, however have electricity. That would cost about $3 million to pipe in, says Wally Gudgell, the property’s listing agent and a 40-year veteran of private island real estate sales. The island's Windermere.com real estate listing has some additional information. 292 acre private island SW of the City of Anacortes near Skyline Marina between Burrows Bay and Rosario Strait. Accessible by private plane, boat, or float plane with a partial breakwater and dock plus a grass airstrip. Enjoy outstanding building sites with beaches overlooking Rosario Strait, the Olympic Mtns, & Strait of Juan De Fuca. No electricity? What a dump. This is like the Sacramento Kings of private islands. And yes, you read that right: The island has lost nearly half of its asking price in six years. You've got to love the business savvy from Allen, who has honed a reputation in recent years for impatient and rash decisions and has last untold sums of money in failed investments in the technology and cable industries. For comparison's sake, the current $13.5 million asking price is a little bit more than what Blazers forward LaMarcus Aldridge is set to make in 2011-2012 but a bit less than what guard Brandon Roy will take home. http://eye-on-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/31844903
id keep it and turn it into my evil lair if i were him, complete with underwater escape shuttle and laser death ray shaped like a guitar
I think that's a pretty undeserved cheap shot at Allen. First of all, he bought the place in 1992, so even at the current price, he'll probably be selling it for more than what he paid. Secondly, he didn't buy it as an investment, he bought it to build a vacation home on. Thirdly, it's kind of hard to sell an island like that - there aren't very many potential buyers. Finally, the real estate market has declined a wee bit since 2005, as apparently everyone but this writer knows. barfo
Ben Golliver, the biggest punk among national NBA writers, wrote that. He's like Canzano, only Golliver is now national.
Why is he a punk? He's been to all the Meet and Greets and the Wheels get togethers. He's a nice guy. I think it's kind of cool to see someone who just wrote on a site like BlazersEdge and turn it into a gig like CBS Sports.
Well, Barfo noted he was taking the hackneyed shot at Paul Allen that he loses money and lacks business sense. Even if true, so what, we benefit from his largesse, but it's not so true, because he puts money into things like listening for signals from outer space and rewards for private companies beating other entrepeneurs in space launches. Allen's motive in life is more philanthropy than profit, but selfish people like Golliver deny the existence of altruism. Minutes before I read Barfo, I had read this article, in which Golliver simply lists all the players who have had any legal entanglements this summer and personally attacks each one. http://eye-on-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/31770005 Minutes before that I had read Golliver's American/ethocentric sarcasm against Deron Williams playing in Turkey. Golliver finds it incredible that anyone would ever play outside the good old U S of A. How could they stand mingling with gypsies and furriners? http://eye-on-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/view/22748484/1?mcctag=Ben Golliver He reports that Kenyon Martin may play in China, and opinionates that it makes no sense. Yeah, he knows more than Martin and his agent. As I've posted, money is not the top reason players want to play during the lockout. They just crave activity, but lazy Golliver can't understand any motive other than money, such as player boredom, owner altruism, etc. http://eye-on-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/31868947 And that only goes back ONE DAY in his CBS Sportsline articles, all the way to Sept. 10 !!!! I could keep going and going! (The Paul Allen island article was Sept. 9.)
I do know that other writer like Freeman and Quick have no respect for this guy. I guess when they are around asking questions and trying to find out stuff from players or coaches, he never asks any questions or gets in the mix. He always stands right next to them and sticks his recorder in there and gets their answers and uses the info.
... because as an opinion writer it is terrible to share you opinion... great use of the 10th grade vocabulary list though... keep it up and some day people might want to actually pay you for your writing too.
jlprk- How on earth do you know what Paul Allen's "motive in life" is? Only Paul could know that and even he may have not figured it out.
You don't get a sense of the man from all those giveaway investments? I like to read about space, and he has funded most of the prizes that have caused private investment in space in the last decade. You can't see that the guy behind the science fiction museum and the Jimi Hendrix museum isn't a conservative, hard-driving T. Boone Pickens type who would step on his grandmother to make a buck? I see indications of his inner motives all over the place. His money losses don't surprise me at all. Profit is usually not his #1 goal when he starts a project. ----------------- Anyone who's ever been around illegal drugs, even on the police side, knows that drug users plan, in the event of a bust, to 1) flush it down the toilet, and if that isn't possible, 2) eat it if it won't kill them (especially if it's just smokable, not pills, like grass). But this is brand new information to Golliver. I don't know whether he went to a religious college or where he gained his ignorance, but it just shines when he repeatedly ridicules Samaki Walker for eating the evidence. For the 3rd or 4th time this summer, I read him ridicule Walker for eating the evidence in his Sept. 6 article. Every time I think, as he tries to act superior in his law and order campaign, Golliver is showing the world his ignorance again. http://eye-on-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/31770005
I have the same reaction to people who seem to think that JR Rider's biggest transgression was not smoking pot, but smoking pot out of a soda can. Like that's some previously unheard of and unusually disreputable way to smoke pot. "Rider was caught sticking pot up his asshole with a screwdriver while performing fellatio on a donkey!" Now, the stolen cell phones - that was cheesy. barfo
That's impressive. The donkeys that I've worked with, I've never had a hand free for marijuana insertion.
Watch out for cows. Dairy farmers have to do some pretty dirty things. If you see a cow smiling at you, take my advice and head the other way.
I'm more of an amatuer criminal mastermind and am temporarily using my closet as my evil lair. It doesn't have all the standard evil lair equipment (sharks w/lasers, escape shuttles, pits of doom and fire, et al.) but it does have an impressive examples of cute shoes which number into the low triple digits.
