The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 29

ONLINE TODAY boston.combusiness 7 1 Ticken Local news updates I Filter Strateav and ideas BL0DD1(gg DOW JONES 13,716.95 NASDAQ 2,639.86 tT Investing: Portfolio tracking t-mail: Stock alerts, company news FULL MARKET COVERAGE, D5 The Boston Globe Wednesday, July 2 5, 2007 Foreclosure plan would make lenders pay Residents who lose homes could get cash for moving and rent By Robert Gavin GLOBE STAFF The Patrick administration is considering a plan that would make mortgage lenders pay moving expenses as well as the first and last months' rent of homeowners who lose their homes to foreclosure. The proposal is part of foreclosure prevention initiative administration officials will present today at a meeting with some of the state's biggest mortgage lenders. The plan would make lenders that foreclose on homeowners pay $5,000 for the relocation and administrative costs that nonprofit agencies would incur in finding them a new home, according to a draft obtained by the Globe. It's unclear exactly how this would work; the draft plan contains few details. Kofi Jones, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development declined to comment on the specifics of the proposal but did confirm today's meeting.

"The Patrick administration is in the process of trying to put together a comprehensive plan to try and solve this foreclosure crisis," Jones said. "We are committed to protecting homeowners and communities throughout the Commonwealth." In addition, the initiative calls on lenders to delay foreclosure proceedings in some cases; reduce loan amounts and waive prepayment penalties in others; and work with the state to transfer vacant foreclosed properties to first-time home buyers or nonprofit agencies, the draft said. MORTGAGE, Page D4 YoagMl A McDonald's TV ad by Arnold becomes latest with roots in amateur online video mi 1 1 -1 mm i 'wow 1 Steve Bailey Downtown Winn's folly House Speaker Sal DLMasi got it exactly right last week when he asked: How many times are taxpayers going to pay for Arthur Winn's deck? Boston is in the midst of the kind of building boom we haven't seen in more than a decade, and Winn is desperate to finally get a shovel in the ground on Columbus Center, his long-proposed mini-city across the Massachusetts Huiipike. The reluctant developer has a reported $40 million of his own money in the deal. Now, he says, it's our turn to give.

Winn's story if not his numbers is always the same: Blame the deck. The man has sold the HOW many same story everywhere times mUSt hehasgne.Hetoldthe uiues uiUM cityandthecommunity we pay for ne nax to Duu fe bigger than the zoning a deCK Over allowedtopayforthe thpPikp? high cost of building uicruvc. overtheturnpike.Then he used the same story with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to justify a below-market rent in negotiating a lease for the air rights. Now he is back for more, making a case for large, direct public subsidies after suggesting (at the least) that he had no plans to go that route. As DiMasi put it: How many times do we have to pay for one deck? Winn, a Republican moneybags, spent four years making his case for subsidies in every corner of the Republican Romney administration.

Here is what he heard repeatedly from the pro-business Romney people: Apply like any developer for the various housing and transportation programs, but there is going to be no special deal for Arthur Winn. Now Democrat Deval Patrick, champion of property tax relief for the little guy, is willing to write the kind of large check that Mitt Romney, our CEO governor, would not to build million-dollar condos and a luxury hotel. Patrick has signed off on $10 million for infrastructure costs from a fund the Legislature authorized for economic development This is on top of approximately $60 million in a variety of public financing sources, including loans, grants, and city bonds. DiMasi, an architect of that economic stimulus fund, is appropriately unhappy. The persistent Mr.

Winn, as always, wants more still. (It was just two years ago Winn's pal, state Senator Dianne Wilkerson, slipped $4.3 million into the stimulus bill for the deck, which DiMasi killed. Now Winn wants $20 million.) It's the deck, he says. The price of the deck, Winn says, has gone from $60 million to $160 million in six years. But an analysis completed for the Turnpike Authority in March 2006 as part of the lease negotiation put the premium of building over the turnpike far lower, $34 million.

Another study in 2002 put the premium at about $21 million. "Only $12 million of the $800 million project is direct grants," says Alan Eisner, a Winn spokesman. "The rest is low-interest loans that will have to be paid back. In the city is getting over $50 million in direct public benefits that were worked out with the community in 100 community meetings." (Public benefits, by the way, the public is now expected to fund.) In the end, Winn made a bad bet. He lost valuable time trying to squeeze tens of millions out of the public sector.

The real cost, however, was in time: While he hesitated, the cost of the project exploded from $300 million to $800 million, or so he says. Condo prices softened, and other developers leaped ahead of him in the market This is what risk is all about Columbus Center would be a good project for the city, helping to knit together the South End and the Back Bay. But not if it does not make economic sense. It is not like there aren't plenty of others things that need doing. How much, just for starters, is replacing the crumbling Storrow Drive tunnel going to cost? Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist.

He can be reached at baileyglobe.com or at 617-929-2902. MORE ON COLUMBUS CENTER To read past coverage and see a graphic of" thecenter, go to boston.combusiness. A video by two Chicago men about Chicken McNuggets caused a stir on YouTube and caught the attention of Boston ad agency Arnold. Catch a rising commercial By Keith Reed GLOBE STAFF Mi cDonald's Corp. Is the latest corporation to try to cash in on the YouTube phenomenon, and the two moonlighting comedians who threw together a Chicken presenting messages.

In this case, though, planning went out the window, and it paid off. "I can tell you I considered doing the corporate thing to it, but Arnold wanted to try to make it organic and let it live in the space from which it came from so people could relate to it more. They convinced me otherwise," said Ken Ebo, McDonald's New York marketing director and the executive who approved the ad. VIDEO, Page D4 CHICKEN DANCE See the original YouTube video and the ad at boston.combusiness. edy spots, in a commercial for McDonald's in Nev? York.

The grainy, year-and-a-half old clip features Sosa and another man who is now working on a cruise ship amateurishly rapping about Chicken McNuggets, and is another example of how content created by the masses is catching the eye of professionals in the advertising world. In fact, nearly everything about how the ad's production is a departure from tradition in the high-stakes world of advertising, where clients like McDonald's pay ad agencies like Arnold millions of dollars for well-planned campaigns that favor tested slogans in favor of edgy ways of McNuggets video and slapped it on the Internet forfunarelovin'it. Boston advertising agency Arnold is using the video, created by Fernando Sosa, a 26-year-old who does data entry by day, and Matt Mal-insky, a 35-year-bld IT manager, both of whom hustle jokes in their spare time at Chicago com Feuding owners aim to sell NorthPoint CHMESTOWN SOMERVILLE NorthPoint development Boston Scientific hit Citing the device maker's disappointing second quarter, Moody's cuts the firm's debt -rating to junk status. D2 Risky drivers? An FTC panel backs using credit scores to predict future auto insurance claims, but says they tend to penalize blacks and Hispanics. D3 Setback for reseller A judge orders a trial to determine whether a Weymouth firm's offer of an $85 Red Sox-Yankees ticket for $500 violates state law.

D3 Wyeth drug stalls The world's largest maker of hormone treatments unexpectedly fails to win US approval for its experimental menopause pill, Pristiq. D3 Lechmere CAMBRIDGE Skyrocketing market in commercial projects helped trigger decision By Thomas C. Palmer Jr. GLOBE STAFF The feuding owners that are developing NorthPoint, a commercial and residential minicity in East Cambridge, have put the ambitious project up for sale. Boston and Maine Corp, which owns 75 percent of the massive development, and minority owner Cambridge North Point LLC, have sued each other and, according to a recent court filing, were "hopelessly deadlocked" over the project's future.

But now they've agreed on at least one thing: Someone else should take over build-out of the 44-acre site, which could include up to 20 different buildings when complete. "We set aside certain differences and agreed the market is right and the timing is right to put the property up for sale," said Philip D. Kingman, senior vice president of development for Pan Am Railways the New Hampshire parent company of Boston and Maine. Atrial is set to begin soon in a Delaware court to resolve some of the many allega-tions'the partners have made against each other. But in the meantime the two owners have hired Cushman Wakefield of Massachusetts to market the former railyard, portions of which are also in Somerville and Boston.

Bids will be due in about 90 days, and the owners hope to have a sale completed in five months. Two modern condo buildings with colorful exterior panels are up on the site one complete but not yet occupied, the oth-NORTHPOINT, Page 04 6 Museum (3) of Science DETAIL if, I BOSTON Charles' fm BOSTON 500 FELT GLOBE STAFF fa HOW MONSTER WORKS WITH B0ST0N.COM Go to boston.commonster and si It crs find the job that works for you. bostocft mom ter It I I IN MORE OF THE PLACES YOU WANT THEM..