Re: show me the money
Yeah, I got the same thing too -- in fact, for a few months back in 1999, this little 12 home infill development occupied about a third of my work time and about 40% of my public contact, even though I was handling 40 other active cases.
So, what was the big deal? In the Denver area,
every suburb wants to cash in on the affluenza that's spreading through the region. The mega-burb where I worked was trying to shed its "downscale" image, although what's considered downscale in the Denver metro area would be considered several ticks above middle class anyplace else in the United States. (That "downscale" suburb had the region's best schools and some mighty tough design regulations, too.) The homebuilder was to be one that normally built high-end product, and the models proposed were 2,000 square feet and up -- at the time, starting at $250,000. (In other Denver 'burbs, similar houses would sell for $300,000 to $400,000, but this was a suburb that elicited chuckles among the "dot-communists" and "robust e-business solutions" crowd when its name was uttered.)
The adjacent HOA had a fit, considering the proposed product to be "entry level," even though surrounding homes were similar in size and cost They wanted conditions for minimum square footage and price. I argued against that, saying that home prices were shooting up so quickly in the region, that the $250,000 that would buy you a 2,000 square foor house now would buy you 1,600 square feet next year, and 1,200 square feet the year after. Also, the price of the raw lots dictates the price of the final product; if the underlying land is expensive, the developer has to build large houses to make a decent profit. If they built small houses, it would be a money-losing proposition.
Admittedly, on the Front Range, a 2,000 square foot $250,000 house is on the low end of what's being built in the region, but c'mon, what about considering market reality. Nobody is going to built $500,000 tract mansions in the noise contour of a busy major street, next to fifteen year old $250,000 houses, in a suburb with an undeserved yet perceived "image problem." (Believe it or not, the southern end of that city was filling up with homes approaching seven digit prices, and the town was still the butt of jokes; those homes were still no big deal compared to the highest of the high end in every other town.)
The public meeting lasted forever. The infill development was approved. In the end, though, everybody hated me; my supervisor, because this project took longer than the anticipated eight weeks to process (uhhh, you mean that vurilent NIMBYs and three neighborhood meetings shouldn't have slowed things down), there were reports of unreturned phone calls (I logged an average of 40 to 50 public contacts a day while that beast was running through the works), and my work on it had a chain reaction that affected my other cases; the developer because the process took "so long;" and a powerful HOA because I was "biased" and recommended approval.
Shortly after that case was over, I was assigned to be the case manager for a proposed
commercial development. I'm glad I quit shortly afterwards, considering the presence of
several web sites offering extremely vocal opposition to the project. I would have been the most hated planner in Colorado if I remained.
