Philly Cradle of Liberty settled

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

 

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/54356-philadelphia-cuts-deal-with-boy-scouts-over-disputed-building

 

Basically, the city pays the CoL $825,000 which the city pretends is to pay for building improvements and the CoL pretends is really $877,000 in legal fees awarded, and the CoL vacates the building by the end of October.

 

[Kristian]

for the most part its good that this matter was eventually settled. while its unfortunate that the city did somewhat loose in this case in having to actually pay the legal fees/improvements it is a reasonable solution for all parties involved. also its not like this has any real effect on scouting. scouts rarely if ever would care about the local councils offices. scouts/scouters really only get pissed off when the council decides to sell off properties that they actually use and like such as their camps. if the overpaid pros in pa choose to they always could find some new donors to come up with the fair market rent of 200k or so a year.

[Pack18Alex]

If I recall from the story, the BSA bought the land, built the building, then out of patriotism, "donated" it to the city in return for a perpetual lease for $1 or something similar. So while it's nice that the City was forced to pay the legal bills of their nonsense, they did get to terminate the lease and steal a building that was never theirs and was only deeded to them on paper as part of the BSA being a civic organization.

 

A far better result would have been for the city to have to turn the property back over to the council since they didn't want to live by the original agreement, instead of letting them steal the building.

 

[Peregrinator]

I believe the property was always owned by the city but the BSA built the Council HQ there at the city's behest.

 

This was actually a settlement the city reached with the Council a while ago, but the Councilman whose district the building is in kept blocking the deal out of spite.