The city provided $3.4 million to build laboratories and offices and offered a 20-year rent-free lease.

On completion of the new athletics stadium, Cardiff City gained the 125 year rent-free lease.

Last June, the county gave the Children's Museum a 60-year rent-free lease, including utilities, and is investing $3 million in roads and infrastructure.

England holds the Island on yearly rent-free lease, and every year the lease and permit of residence is formally renewed.

A spot check of several dozen rent-free leases in three states - Georgia, Mississippi and Washington - turned up no similar transactions, officials said.

The rent-free lease, signed with Moscow in 1979, expires in 2004.

Patten, who was born in 1927, was granted a lifetime rent-free lease to the apartment.

The agreement excludes the children's museum, which has a 60-year rent-free lease, including utilities, with the county.

The company sold the building and, as of 2009, had two years left of a rent-free lease in the building.

It is these guarantees, much more than the $375 million construction cost and 30-year, rent-free lease, that seem to be stirring resentment of the plan.