It would have been trivial for Paul to, at any point in his life, set up trusts for his various projects - the LCM, Cinerama, the SciFi museum, MoPop, etc.
Paul was surrounded with a fleet of lawyers. These kind of trusts are not esoteric knowledge - they're something any upper middle class or upper class family is likely using to keep assets intact without going through probate.
Paul could have set up 5 foundations, given each of them an absurd initial donation of $200M each, and not noticed at all. The fact that he did not do even the minimum legal paperwork to keep them intact rather than part of his estate means that Paul never cared about these things as public benefits or experiences and instead just wanted tax dodges for his toys.
This is not a hypothetical. Without doxxing myself too much, I know some people who were involved in running Paul's household and projects. They tried to convince Paul to set up such trusts prior to his death and were not successful.
Paul's public image was fairly positive during his life but I've soured on him quite a bit as it has become more obvious that it was a facade. Perhaps his plan to turn South Lake Union into a massive park was legitimate, but the other projects were not.
Calling something a "museum", as Paul did multiple times, implies a consistency of existence and a theme that is more than just "my collection". The LCM, in particular, was unique. The Computer History Museum is great but is primarily a bunch of powered-off piles of metal and silicon. The few things that are running are demos, not interactive.
The LCM let you go up and play with nearly all of the machines. You could write a program on a PDP or an Apple. You could punch cards. You could stand in next to a powered on Cray and a Mainframe and witness how loud they were. More than the exhibits, they had a staff of people who knew the machines - who repaired them, who had worked with them, who could answer your questions about them. That kind of expertise assembled in one place doesn't exist anywhere now.
I was sad to see that most of your downtown had been replaced with Amazon campuses and seemingly sanitized, and that your council is butchering the already awful waterfront with a new highway, but at least they mounted the pink elephant sign next to some fake grass out front, and have ample parking.
In that context, I can see how a few more sentimental cultural spaces going away would hit a bit harder. Take the Showbox away and that would be another hit. But when it does, it doesn't mean the owner hates the Seattle population, it means time marches on, people value what they value, and you adapt.
What you describe is hypocrisy, not malice.
Which of course doesn’t exactly paint a rosy picture of his character or personality.
But that’s not much different from most other people, including most HN users.
Jody Allen is a complete black box that answers to no one. She doesn't care about the sports teams either, so it's a mystery why the entire org doesn't just cash out at this point.
I'm not going to say it was greed on the part of the estate, but they effectively just gave the middle finger to the museum.
> Vulcan LLC, a conglomerate that maintains the Allen family’s estate and many business ventures, has been under the leadership of Paul Allen’s sister, Jody Allen, since the former’s death. A controversial billionaire in her own right, Jody Allen has sustained her brother’s more prominent investments, like ownership of the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders. However, more niche projects like LCM+L and the Cinerama theater in Belltown (also closed indefinitely) seem to be of less interest to Vulcan’s new upper management.
https://seattlecollegian.com/paul-allen-living-computers-mus...