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Originally Posted by CoryB
You are heavily misreading the factors in why Graham is being developed over Portage or Main. Portage Ave from Main to Colony is almost all 4+ stories of occupied buildings. Graham over that same stretch has a number of significant surface lots. Even on Main St, the west side which has decent lot size unlike the tightly packed in east side, mostly has existing buildings. Granted Main St has some buildings that are heavily underused it still costs money to tear something down. It all comes down to opportunity costs first.
From memory Broadway has similar issues, sure there is one surface lot next to the Union Center but that is more securely held than the "never to be developed" lot behind WCB. The only other real opportunity short of demoing an existing building is the surface lot next to the Subway.
Just because you don't see projects on Portage, Main or Broadway does not mean there is not interest in those streets it just means the opportunities are not currently there. No developer is going to push their land acquisition costs through the roof just to locate one block north and be on Portage Ave.
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There are plenty of streets downtown with surface lots in abundance... Graham is only one of them, yet it's the one seeing development. Not coincidentally, it has by far the best transit service and is walkable not only in the sense of its own streetfronts, but in terms of nearby shops and services (in Cityplace and elsewhere).
In other words, it has plenty of the things that draw people to an area. There's a reason that the three residential towers aren't going up on the many surface lots along York Avenue instead. Let's not forget that there are places on Portage that could support new development too... the pads at Portage Place for one, as well as some smaller commercial buildings that could be redeveloped.