Quote:
Originally Posted by fflint
In theory, if Pelli provided half as much money for a tower that was whittled down to half the size of his initial proposal, the project would still bring in roughly the sum that was initially sought, no?
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Yes, more or less (not sure about "half" the size, but considerably shorter). That's what I tried to say above.
The thing is, though, even if they get $350M from Pelli/Hines, they still come up short on the $2.4B needed for phase 2. I'm just hoping they realize they have to maximize what they get even if it means accepting a tall tower. And this is a case where if there's a demand for housing--by Daly or anyone--that will tend also to force the tower skyward since for a given height I'm sure the developer will pay less for a residential project than for office.
Finally, we need to remember that the Planning Dept. seems to want tall for tall's sake. Remember their artistic little diagrams of a triple-humped skyline and all that? They were the ones who started the talk about buildings over 1000 ft. in this area.
So maybe where we'll end up is a tower that's not 1200 or 1300 ft but maybe 1050 ft, with a residential component (a substantial part of which is "affordable') and for which Hines will pay maybe $200M or $250M. That way the planners get their new skyline "hump", the housing people get to say they extracted housing from the evil developer and, I hope, Hines gets an economically viable project. Unfortunately, the TJPA will still need a lot of money from somewhere.