Quote:
Originally Posted by chris08876
High taxes...
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The special tax rate the greedy developers already agreed to pay before they bought their parcels and started construction--0.55% of assessed value--is in consideration for being allowed by the City to build taller than the maximum height limits governing their parcels, and the rate has not changed.
What changed? The assessed value of the greedy developers' land. Why did that land grow in value? In large part, because the City upzoned the land in consideration for the special tax developers agreed to pay to fund necessary public transportation upgrades to adequately serve the upzoned district.
An increase in the value of land such as what we have seen in Transbay since the Great Recession eased was and is easily foreseeable, and an ordinarily sophisticated developer would certainly have considered such easily foreseeable outcomes when agreeing to a deal with the City.
If these greedy developers had wanted a fixed fee instead of a percentage of future assessed values, then they should have bargained for a fixed fee. They did not do so. They agreed to a percentage based on assessment. Now, they apparently seek to break the deal they made but keep their gains, for nothing in return. That is bad faith, and I predict they'll lose in court if they dare show up there. Because I think they'd lose in court, I suspect the developers' threat is just hard bargaining--they want to go back and change the agreement they already made. The City may very well allow that. We'll see. I'm not going to run around like Chicken Little with 7-point font screaming the sky is falling...yet.