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  Protesters outside Gordon’s  Katherine’s hotel.

  And of course by claiming to live in Seattle, with no actual address, Gordon gets to use an accountant trick to avoid paying our sales tax!

Sondland does seem to be having branding issues since the Ukraine scandal.   The Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation, a charitable foundation that supports various community groups, has now removed Sondland’s biography and added new ones for his children.

To be fair, Mr. Sondland does make some contributions to the Seattle scene.  For example, he has, over the years donated about $300,000 to the Freye Art museum where a cafes is named for his mother.  However, for a citizen of Washington State, it is notable that Gordons’ foundation selectively supports the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the Oregon State medical school, , Oregon Ballet Theatre, and the Portland Parks Foundation.  His video, made for introducing him as EU Ambassador, shows lots of cuts from his home in Portland.  That condo in downtown Portland must have remarkable art. Gordon notes “I’m also a lover of art. Katy and I have assembled a wonderful collection. We’ve been fortunate even to loan a couple of paintings to the White House,”  According to Mother Jones, Sondland’s art collection is worth about $25 million. Sondland’s  video biography, shows off the family’s paintings.

I guess Mr. S considers Seattle to be his gefuilte fish ancestral home as a Jewish kid  growing up on Mercer Island?

Oh, the White Pages has no address for Gordon here in Seattle and he listed no personal real estate property here when he submitted the financial disclosure form required to become an ambassador.    The White Pages  does show Gordon living in Portand in this building at 750 SW Alder Street not far from Powell’s Books.  I suspect this is a pied à terre and his financial disclosure form does list a home in Portland’s West Hills.   The is relatively modest, estimated by Zillow to have a value of $2.2 million. 

Using other web tools, I did find an old address, 1531 7TH AVE # 2003.  That address is for a room in the Hotel Theodore, formerly called the Roosevelt Hotel and now owned by Gordon Sondland.  

Gordon grew up and started his hotel chain by purchasing the bankrupt Roosevelt Hotel as a 28-year-old University of Washington dropout. He renamed the hotel “The Hotel Theodore.”

The odd thing is that the Hotel says it does not have a suite that rents for more than a few days and different records for Gordon give him different room numbers in the hotel.  Perhaps Mr. Sondland sleeps in whatever room is available at the Theodore and commutes to Portland in his personal Lear Jet? Gordon has always wanted a jet and has been a pilot since age 15.  I am curious whether he bought that jet in Oregon so as to avoid paying a 10% sales tax here in his hime state? 

Gordon says he flies his own jet, registered as N820KD, a hobby he has had since he got a pilot’s license as a kid in Seattle.  Owning a Lear is not cheap. New private jets cost from $3 million up. Used ones are cheaper but annual maintenance runs from $300,000 to over a $1.000,000. By keeping his Lear in Oregon, Gordon saves about $30.000 in WA state sales taxes and, of course he also saved about 300,000 in sales tax if he bought the thing new. Sadly for Gordon, he sold his beloved jet, N820KD, last year after becoming Ambassador to the EU.  Presumably, he took a tax loss on that sale.

I became interested in where Mr. Sondland lived before the Ukraine scandal broke out.  Seattle is rather a blue enclave, even among our very wealthy. Knowing that Gordon Sondland was listed as one of Trump’s bundlers in the 2016 campaign I was surprised when this rich man was not among the Republicans asked to dinner when the candidate visited Seattle.  I suppose living in a hotel room meant that he was not on the invite list to visit a mansion on Clyde Hill. .Or, as suggested in a recent article in Crossscut, Sondland did signed up as a sponsor for the Seattle fundraiser that August  withdrew when he realized that Trump was an immoral character?   Seems that it is more likely that Gordon didn’t have the time to fly up from Portland or, perhaps, there were no rooms available at the Theodore?

Well, now the hotelier has a new address, he lives in Belgium as Trump’s amabssador to the EU.  So, he may be buying stuff in the EU.  I wonder, do diplomats pay the 21% value added tax when they live in Belgium?  Gordon sports a $55,000 dollar wrist watch made by a swiss firm, Breguet.  This puts the Jewish kid from Mecer Island in comany with oither Breguet owners including  King George III, Queen Victoria, Alexandre I of Russia, Napoléon Bonaparte, Ettore Bugatti, Sir Winston Churchill, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Gioachino Rossini, Arthur Rubinstein.  Apparently Donald Trump does not have a Breguet but they are worn by Dmitry Medvedev, and his boss Vladimir Putin.

Isn’t Gordon supposed to pay sales tax on his watch when he visits his room in Seattle?