[renewiltord]

Flip the script a little if you really want to understand this. Play the role of a developer and go do some rudimentary math on what you can afford to build at what risk. Use ChatGPT to help you with the parts you don't understand.

There's no moustache twirling. Location is the number one thing people want. If amenities made the cut and could be done, they'd be done. But after parking minimums, setbacks, and massing requirements you lose a lot of sq. ft., every bit of which you need to make the money work.

Try it with a well-known locality since the laws for those are public enough to be scraped.

[FireBeyond]

And yet the commercial property developers in my town (a state capital) are perennially among the richest people in the town, and are all best friends with the planning commissioners that supposedly oversee them (as in regularly on Facebook at social and school events and hanging out and vacationing together).

You make it sound like they're barely scraping by and so the reason there's no amenities is that the local planners give them no option but to use every square foot for "maximizing value".

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I think they’ve got pretty big margins actually.