On a warm summer evening in 2009, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the Mt. Scott Community Center in Portland, Oregon, armed with bullhorns, placards, and chants. “One, two, three, four: Paulson wants to rob the poor,” they yelled. “Five, six, seven, eight: We will not cooperate.” The object of their scorn was Merritt Paulson, the 36-year-old owner of the Portland Beavers, the local minor-league baseball team. He had moved to the city two years earlier and was now trying to buy a professional soccer team as well. To make the deal work, he was asking the city for $51 million in financing—and proposing to turn a beloved neighborhood park into a new stadium. That evening’s protest was the culmination of months of community opposition. It didn’t help that Paulson’s father, the former U.S. Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., was at the time a controversial national figure, thanks to the financial industry bailout. “No subsidized ballpark for the rich boy toy,” read one sign.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review.