[Ned.B]

^Yeah, it's rarely as simple as the market and the site demands it, so they should build them taller. There's also economic and functional implications to height. Based on my approximation, this will be a pretty slender tower at only about 80'x100' judging by the size of the site. A tower that is 50% taller will require more elevators or faster, more expensive elevators. It requires beefier structure, which would eat into the small floor plates. You can say that downtown there should be no parking requirements, but there may be issues leasing at the type of rates that top of 800 ft tall towers demand without a certain amount of parking spaces available somewhere.

Then as Bonobp pointed out, the site is currently zoned DX-16. The project per my rough calculations may be using as much as 26 FAR unless they are borrowing from some of the neighbors. That's already pretty high. To get that floor bonus of 10, the developer has to pay the city 80% of the market cost of every square foot that they add to the project. Pushing that to 39 FAR for an 800' tower may only not get Alderman and City approval, but it will be significantly more expensive for those added floors.