fattony
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2013
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35' more and you have the tallest building in New England. As a developer, wouldn't you just go for it? Boggles my mind.
No, because that means 35 ft of extra cost. Developers don't develop for height, they develop for money. It's the same reason why developers are not proposing 800 ft towers for every project in Boston. It's simple.
The only thing I disagree with Kent on is it being simple. They choose how many units to build based on complicated models of expected sales price, construction cost, and the risk of units sitting unsold or selling below expectation. At some point they have to lock-in their best guess design based on all those tradeoffs. Every day after that they find out some new information that makes the design sub-optimal. If the market gets more favorable, they didn't build tall enough. Less favorable, then they overbuilt. By definition, everything build is sub-optimal because you can't change the plans right up to the last minute.
Clearly on the day they put the pencils down on this tower getting to claim "tallest building in Boston" didn't carry enough upside for sales to offset costs and risks.
The developers' egos are tied to size of their P&L and subsequently their bank accounts. They don't care one iota about tallest bragging rights or how the skyline looks.