McSweeney's on the tradition of developers as Hallmark-movie villains
December 25, 2023 11:12 AM Subscribe
The villain who plans to demolish the toy shop in a Hallmark Christmas movie sets the record straight. By Joanna Castle Miller, December 2021.
To be fair, Winston George Higgensbooth Sr. makes some solid points. I expect he really wants to build luxury condos for commuters to BIG CITY who will further increase rents in Pine Creek as e-commerce hollows out the local economy, but he’s not entirely wrong. The reindeer farm workers can’t get by on seasonal labor, either.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:33 PM on December 25, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:33 PM on December 25, 2023 [15 favorites]
When I saw the headline I immediately thought of Jurassic Park.
Not that kind of developer, then.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:43 PM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not that kind of developer, then.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:43 PM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
That was awesome.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:47 PM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:47 PM on December 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: NIMBY cocoa-snorters
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:37 PM on December 25, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:37 PM on December 25, 2023 [11 favorites]
His mixed-use luxury flats will have a 10% occupancy rate while private equity firms and hedge funds take advantage of the 30-year tax abatement to balance write-offs on their other holdings.
posted by ryoshu at 1:59 PM on December 25, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by ryoshu at 1:59 PM on December 25, 2023 [20 favorites]
Metafilter: Fuck the cocoa shop lady, and the Santa hat store manager
posted by Windopaene at 2:37 PM on December 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Windopaene at 2:37 PM on December 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
Team Olde Toye Shoppe
posted by Czjewel at 5:14 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Czjewel at 5:14 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I need to send this to my brother-in-law the property developer, who I think I’ve heard make some of these arguments over the holiday dinner table a time or two. I expect he’ll love it.
(He and I actually tend to agree on most actual policy questions, despite my lefty leanings and his boring mainstream Democrat tendencies. Our main disagreement is how much room there should be for him to get rich while he builds mostly affordable housing properties.)
posted by learning from frequent failure at 5:59 PM on December 25, 2023 [7 favorites]
(He and I actually tend to agree on most actual policy questions, despite my lefty leanings and his boring mainstream Democrat tendencies. Our main disagreement is how much room there should be for him to get rich while he builds mostly affordable housing properties.)
posted by learning from frequent failure at 5:59 PM on December 25, 2023 [7 favorites]
This is the Christmas rant I need to hear since tomorrow I'll be waiting for a haircut and at least one person in the barber shop will be ranting about developers.
posted by ocschwar at 8:00 PM on December 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 8:00 PM on December 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
The punctuation is vexing to me.
Hallmark Movie Villains. Are hyphens required? If they are, how many words in that phrase carry the hyphen? What does the hyphen notate here?
Can we get some kind of commission to discuss the needs for hyphens here? Maybe some kind of planning is required? Or do hyphens need zoning?
Honestly, we can't move forward with this entire post until the planning and zoning commission has weighed in on this whole hyphen situation. I'm sorry.
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hallmark Movie Villains. Are hyphens required? If they are, how many words in that phrase carry the hyphen? What does the hyphen notate here?
Can we get some kind of commission to discuss the needs for hyphens here? Maybe some kind of planning is required? Or do hyphens need zoning?
Honestly, we can't move forward with this entire post until the planning and zoning commission has weighed in on this whole hyphen situation. I'm sorry.
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm mostly on your brother in law's side, because progressives should have bigger fish to fry than property developers who average 7% profit margins and whose activities keep many working class contractors profitably busy.
posted by ocschwar at 8:18 PM on December 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 8:18 PM on December 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
hippybear: Can we get some kind of commission to discuss the needs for hyphens here? Maybe some kind of planning is required? Or do hyphens need zoning?
The Society for the Greater-Use of Hyphens does have a sub-committee on this -- and yet but any report sent through has been sent back (reverted in e-mail) for a low hyphen, dash and minus-sign count.
posted by k3ninho at 4:19 AM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Society for the Greater-Use of Hyphens does have a sub-committee on this -- and yet but any report sent through has been sent back (reverted in e-mail) for a low hyphen, dash and minus-sign count.
posted by k3ninho at 4:19 AM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
What does the hyphen notate here?
Why, that he's a dashing villain, of course!
posted by notoriety public at 5:10 AM on December 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
Why, that he's a dashing villain, of course!
posted by notoriety public at 5:10 AM on December 26, 2023 [18 favorites]
The 'heroes' in Hallmark movies are always the worst - like they are all idle-rich with giant farmsteads and none have real jobs.
This is another difference between Hallmark and PureFlix movies - the PureFlix developers are all rooting for the small town NIMBYs, and magically have 2-3 options on where they are putting the 2nd option - so they can come across ok in the movie. You know, destroying wilderness instead because conservatives and Hollywood writers care more about historic land in cities than sprawl, even though the heroes are again idle rich with giant farmsteads.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:45 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is another difference between Hallmark and PureFlix movies - the PureFlix developers are all rooting for the small town NIMBYs, and magically have 2-3 options on where they are putting the 2nd option - so they can come across ok in the movie. You know, destroying wilderness instead because conservatives and Hollywood writers care more about historic land in cities than sprawl, even though the heroes are again idle rich with giant farmsteads.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:45 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I will 100% stand up in front of the Planning Commission and speak in favor of Winston George Higgensbooth Sr.'s proposal. And I do think that the town needs to get amenities in exchange for this, but it beats the hell out of a weed filled lot the other 11 months of the year...
I mean, hypothetically, because this obviously in no way is about my particular town.
posted by straw at 1:54 PM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I mean, hypothetically, because this obviously in no way is about my particular town.
posted by straw at 1:54 PM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m just going to stop in and say that if your town is a Christmas tree farmed, heavy Christmas touristed, artisan cocoa kind of joint in a scenic location with nice vistas and forests and a quaint walkable downtown with a gazebo and historic cottages well-decorated for the holidays, there is a 99.9% chance you are in the middle of a workforce housing crisis so existential that there will literally be no one to staff the bespoke toy shop unless you let Higgensboooth drop multi-unit affordable housing—at least—on the Xmas tree lot and Mrs McAllaister’s vacant lot where they show “White Christmas” every year. And Mr Kringlebutter will probably need to suspend his hay rides during working hours so the buses can run late
posted by thivaia at 2:34 PM on December 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 2:34 PM on December 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
Our main disagreement is how much room there should be for him to get rich while he builds mostly affordable housing properties.
None. The answer is none. The lack of humanity in even considering the question after posing demonstrates a profound moral vacuum in your BIL. And I'm told to speak well of other Mefites so I'll not elaborate further.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:43 PM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
None. The answer is none. The lack of humanity in even considering the question after posing demonstrates a profound moral vacuum in your BIL. And I'm told to speak well of other Mefites so I'll not elaborate further.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:43 PM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
To respond to your points Oschwar, what's 7% on several tens of million?
Too much.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:45 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Too much.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:45 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Land developers don't build homes.
Builders build houses. Residents make homes, if they aren't kicked out.
The imposed scarcity is the expensive part.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 2:00 AM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Builders build houses. Residents make homes, if they aren't kicked out.
The imposed scarcity is the expensive part.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 2:00 AM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
None. The answer is none.
Okay, but: that's a policy decision, made by your elected officials, at all levels of government, and by the appointed committees that created your town's various planning documents.
Housing takes capital to build. If you're building affordable housing, it takes smarts to align the various funding sources with the various requirements. It takes patience to navigate the entitlement process. It takes charisma to navigate the shouting of the NIMBYs who haven't read the plans, and who definitely haven't taken the time to understand the process, or that the building looks like a hideous mash-up of 3 different decades as done by a 4 year old in purple crayon because that's what the committee that put together the Area Specific Plan said that buildings in that area should look like.
I'm co-founder of an organization that puts on forums on housing development issues (well, okay, 4 pillars: Housing, (non-car) Mobility, Climate Change, and Municipal Finance). In between the author talks and advocacy organization presentations, we have developers come in and do presentations on their projects. It's a chance for the developer to do some public outreach with a crowd that's likely to bias to more sympathetic, and give us a chance to see what's coming.
Audience members, especially neighborhood NIMBYs, will ask "why are you building on this lot rather than...". Well, this lot is up for sale, that other lot that you'd rather have incorporated is being held by the family that inherited it until it's worth more. You wanna tackle that, go read up on Henry George, but this is housing that oculd happen now.
Or "why are the dumpsters at this end of the development that's closer to my house"? Well, because if you look at the elevation plan, that end is cut 10' into the dirt, with a retaining wall, so the sound of using them will be reflected away from the houses, where if it was at the other end of the lot, it'd be reflected towards your houses." But this is a decision that was probably made by the architects, the developer isn't paying that team to be in this meeting tonight, the developer is coordinating all sorts of other challenges, so it's up to someone else to point this out.
Or "why are you using 'market rate' labor rather than union labor?" Well, because the funding sources have this requirement rather than that one, and housing is super subsidized right now, and the other faction in your neighborhood doesn't want any 'luxury' housing built right now that might help subsidize some of this, and yeah, it'd be awesome to pay all of the labor more (even as we keep adding lanes to 101 so our labor can drive in from further and further away rather than letting any housing be built here), but of the 36 potential funding sources for this project, the requirements of all of which are being delicately balanced, that's the decision on labor that we think we can actually make pencil out.
All of these are direct examples where I've, from the side of the audience, tried to help out the presenter, without completely looking like a developer shill. And I'm not getting anything out of this other than some more housing, and hopefully density, in my community.
So the question is not "should the developer be paid less?", because the developer can always go off and find other work to do, and yes there are some privilege prerequisites but anyone who can navigate all of these issues successfully can become a developer, the question is what are we doing to impact policy to make funding sources consistent so that they can be stacked, to make good planning code that doesn't require all sorts of variances in order for construction to pencil out, to make good land use decisions so that we can build public transit networks, and to educate our friends and neighbors.
And then to find ways to restructure taxes and monetary policy so that heirs of heirs don't end up sitting on empty lots as cities grow up around them, extracting value from the community, until they've driven all of the low income labor out of town so that construction costs alone start at $450/sq.ft., before the land costs, planning policy says that you can only build low-rise, the social justice organizations are screaming if you build for anything more than AMI demographics, and we wonder why our community has such a high homeless population.
And why our transportation CO2 emissions are so high.
posted by straw at 8:56 AM on December 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Okay, but: that's a policy decision, made by your elected officials, at all levels of government, and by the appointed committees that created your town's various planning documents.
Housing takes capital to build. If you're building affordable housing, it takes smarts to align the various funding sources with the various requirements. It takes patience to navigate the entitlement process. It takes charisma to navigate the shouting of the NIMBYs who haven't read the plans, and who definitely haven't taken the time to understand the process, or that the building looks like a hideous mash-up of 3 different decades as done by a 4 year old in purple crayon because that's what the committee that put together the Area Specific Plan said that buildings in that area should look like.
I'm co-founder of an organization that puts on forums on housing development issues (well, okay, 4 pillars: Housing, (non-car) Mobility, Climate Change, and Municipal Finance). In between the author talks and advocacy organization presentations, we have developers come in and do presentations on their projects. It's a chance for the developer to do some public outreach with a crowd that's likely to bias to more sympathetic, and give us a chance to see what's coming.
Audience members, especially neighborhood NIMBYs, will ask "why are you building on this lot rather than...". Well, this lot is up for sale, that other lot that you'd rather have incorporated is being held by the family that inherited it until it's worth more. You wanna tackle that, go read up on Henry George, but this is housing that oculd happen now.
Or "why are the dumpsters at this end of the development that's closer to my house"? Well, because if you look at the elevation plan, that end is cut 10' into the dirt, with a retaining wall, so the sound of using them will be reflected away from the houses, where if it was at the other end of the lot, it'd be reflected towards your houses." But this is a decision that was probably made by the architects, the developer isn't paying that team to be in this meeting tonight, the developer is coordinating all sorts of other challenges, so it's up to someone else to point this out.
Or "why are you using 'market rate' labor rather than union labor?" Well, because the funding sources have this requirement rather than that one, and housing is super subsidized right now, and the other faction in your neighborhood doesn't want any 'luxury' housing built right now that might help subsidize some of this, and yeah, it'd be awesome to pay all of the labor more (even as we keep adding lanes to 101 so our labor can drive in from further and further away rather than letting any housing be built here), but of the 36 potential funding sources for this project, the requirements of all of which are being delicately balanced, that's the decision on labor that we think we can actually make pencil out.
All of these are direct examples where I've, from the side of the audience, tried to help out the presenter, without completely looking like a developer shill. And I'm not getting anything out of this other than some more housing, and hopefully density, in my community.
So the question is not "should the developer be paid less?", because the developer can always go off and find other work to do, and yes there are some privilege prerequisites but anyone who can navigate all of these issues successfully can become a developer, the question is what are we doing to impact policy to make funding sources consistent so that they can be stacked, to make good planning code that doesn't require all sorts of variances in order for construction to pencil out, to make good land use decisions so that we can build public transit networks, and to educate our friends and neighbors.
And then to find ways to restructure taxes and monetary policy so that heirs of heirs don't end up sitting on empty lots as cities grow up around them, extracting value from the community, until they've driven all of the low income labor out of town so that construction costs alone start at $450/sq.ft., before the land costs, planning policy says that you can only build low-rise, the social justice organizations are screaming if you build for anything more than AMI demographics, and we wonder why our community has such a high homeless population.
And why our transportation CO2 emissions are so high.
posted by straw at 8:56 AM on December 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
But this is a decision that was probably made by the architects, the developer isn't paying that team to be in this meeting tonight, the developer is coordinating all sorts of other challenges, so it's up to someone else to point this out.
Where dumpsters are located is 100% a city planning code decision. You should see the regulations for your average city. IMO city planners spend 50% of their time counting parking spots and the other 25% making up even more arcane rules on where dumpsters should be located, and 25% making up more arcane rules for FAR (how much land a building can take up) and how far it should be from the street (setback rules). It's....odd.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:26 PM on December 27, 2023
Where dumpsters are located is 100% a city planning code decision. You should see the regulations for your average city. IMO city planners spend 50% of their time counting parking spots and the other 25% making up even more arcane rules on where dumpsters should be located, and 25% making up more arcane rules for FAR (how much land a building can take up) and how far it should be from the street (setback rules). It's....odd.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:26 PM on December 27, 2023
DeepSeaHaggis: To respond to your points Oschwar, what's 7% on several tens of million? Too much.
OP here. Looks like we found the audience for the Hallmark Christmas movie! If housing is super-expensive, that must be because developers are greedy, right?
People want to live and work somewhere. Other people want to build housing for them. Problem is, in a lot of places, we regulate new housing like it's a nuclear power plant and we tax it like it's a gold mine.
The result is that housing is super-scarce, and therefore expensive: prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to force people to give up and leave. Who benefits? The maddening thing is that nobody does. It's almost entirely deadweight loss, the same as you'd get if you took a city and destroyed half its housing.
posted by russilwvong at 2:30 PM on December 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
OP here. Looks like we found the audience for the Hallmark Christmas movie! If housing is super-expensive, that must be because developers are greedy, right?
People want to live and work somewhere. Other people want to build housing for them. Problem is, in a lot of places, we regulate new housing like it's a nuclear power plant and we tax it like it's a gold mine.
The result is that housing is super-scarce, and therefore expensive: prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to force people to give up and leave. Who benefits? The maddening thing is that nobody does. It's almost entirely deadweight loss, the same as you'd get if you took a city and destroyed half its housing.
posted by russilwvong at 2:30 PM on December 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
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posted by egypturnash at 12:05 PM on December 25, 2023 [15 favorites]