Quote:
Originally Posted by reparcsyks
How is this NOT legal? How is it perfectly legal to destroy the fabric of a city and then walk away -- see Disney and Toll?
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I'm not sure if it's not legal, but it's definitely not practical. Do we really want the City reviewing developer's finances to approve a demolition? That sounds like a big overreach and a waste of resources. L&I is going to hire a real estate finance professional to make a determination whether or not a developer is adequately capitalized to approve demolition? That's crazytown. Besides potentially breaking confidentiality agreements with banks and whatnot over non-closed potential loans. There's a ton of development that takes place where the developer will start a project with their own equity and then close on a loan shortly after beginning construction. This kind of regulation would create an chicken and the egg scenario for financing where a bank isn't going to want to commit with their being an additional layer of discretionary approval over the demolition of a property for new development, and then the city isn't going to want to approve the demolition without a firm commitment which is tough to get without guarantees about the demolition which is tough to get without... and so on. For a pro-development forum this is a very anti-development proposal.
We already have a process to protect buildings from being demoed - historic designation. The City failed to do that here. That's on them. I don't think we need to create a new process with a ton of question marks for something we can already do. It was
the City that failed to act here folks, that's who we should be upset with. Covid hit and this project got stalled but of course developers are going to try to maximize their money, we shouldn't be surprised at that. The City is the one with the power over the playing field, and they shouldn't be upset when the players play the game within the rules
they created. Hopefully we learn and are more proactive about protecting properties that are worth protecting.