Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Transit facilities aren't profitable outside of Asia (Hong Kong/Singapore/Japan etc). You need hyper-density PLUS a critical mass of population which is not feasible for Landmark to build even in their wildest dreams. And to truly be like an Asian city, they'd have to cut the lanes on LSD in half and charge steep tolls to force people onto public transit.
This still doesn't make any sense. They need to drop the transit center charade and just focus on building a vertical residential community like Lakeshore East using only private funding. Surely there is some density figure at which the cost of the rail deck pencils out. If they can do some kind of entertainment district for Soldier Field and rebuild the Metra stop (as a regular stop, not a "hub"), that's just gravy.
|
What you're stating re the project having to be massive/dense enough to justify the huge upfront infrastructure costs makes sense. However, my point (which I didn't articulate nearly well enough earlier) is that there is legitimate reason to be skeptical that the private market will be there to support the unit numbers and price points that will be required to make this thing pencil out. Now, perhaps I'm not thinking long-term enough here - as in a 25-30 year buildout? If the time horizon is long enough, I suppose, the demand should inevitably be there.
Something else to consider in terms of the feasibility of something this ambitious - and I think I've brought up before - what has Dunn/Landmark verifiably developed in terms of truly large scale stuff? It's nearly impossible for me to tell, as they've been involved in lots of projects in various capacities - but to my eyes a lot of that at least appears to be providing a variety of development related services - what have they been the actual operating developer on? Moreover, who are their actual operating developer partners on this project (not to mention equity partners)?
And, completely agree on your take re transit hub. That's a fever dream.