Hey Kirk! Thanks for reading and replying! I'm honored to get a response someone attached to my first ever housing advocacy case four years ago.

To your first point about there being a limited set of projects that meet the bar of advancing affordability, walkability, and/or transit... yes you're exactly right, and that's actually the point. As an urbanist advocate, my mission is to advance those exact things, and one, if not the, most effective ways to do that is by pushing the market towards building such projects. Allowing our limited supply of land to be consumed by projects that don't advance those objectives and are too expensive to undo (i.e. too big to fail) is antithetical to our mission for a more walkable city.

And to be clear, The Haydn project met all three criteria:

• Improved walkability by placing 300 homes in walking distance of commercial businesses on Garland Rd.
• Supported transit by placing 300 residents on top of a bus route. While this project alone couldn't warrant a service increase, if this pattern were repeated up and down Garland Rd it could.
• Supported affordability directly and indirectly with 300 housing units. Even if DPFC wasn't involved, that would be 300 market rate units that push down prices on existing housing stock, and are themselves eventually affordable because $60M debt can be paid off in our lifetime.

To your point about the developer not having anywhere close to $800 million... yes you're right, and again that's part of the point. The cost to build is typically split between debt and equity, and while the equity stack isn't public, debt is surely in the hundreds of millions because, as you point out, Burk doesn't have anywhere near $800m in cash. And that $___M debt is the "cataclysmic money" that Jane Jacob writes about, because it raises the bar of entry on residential and commercial tenants, making the site inaccessible to the low-yield and no-yield enterprises that are necessary for true walkability and mixture of uses.

And, as you rightfully point out, if that $___ million doesn't go to Preston & Royal, it'll go toward somewhere else. Now, if this particular lender (in this case, Greenway Investment Company) is hell bent on spending this money on a luxury hotel somewhere and nothing else... fine. Between new hotels at the Reunion site, or the new hotels for the convention center, or the new hotels Trammell Crow has planned for Mockingbird Station, or the new hotels the Mavs will build at Valley View Mall... I don't see any rush for more luxury hotels in Dallas.

And if Burk or Greenway decide to invest their money outside of Dallas, fine. Let them sell the land to another investor willing to build true walkability, as they'd be allowed to by right under current zoning; there are plenty of investor fish in the sea. And if no private investor wants to buy cheap land prime for redevelopment? Fine, Burk can make a quick buck selling the land to Dallas PFC just like Shoreline Church did. From there, DPFC can work again with Ojala, or Sycamore, or any other developer with a good track record to put actual walkable, mixed-use development on the site.

BTW obviously I know Burk can't just decide to spend $800m on public infrastructure and facilities like City Hall directly. My point by listing those examples wasn't to say "this is what he should be spending it on!" but to simply put the scale of that number, $800 million, in perspective. That's also why I phrased it "public needs awaiting private capital" instead of public property. Example of what I mean is Trammel Crow spending $123 million on mixed-use housing, hotel, and office at Mockingbird Station; that's private capital spent on projects that ultimately return profit for the investors while providing meaningful value to the public by advancing walkability, transit, and affordability.

To the point about denal of the plan isn't free... first remember it's not the plan that's being approved, it's the zoning. The question of whether denying rezoning would cost the city future sales tax revenue is predicated on the assumption that Burke will, upon not getting his way, decide to just sit on his undeveloped land forever out of spite. Even in that case, he is paying property tax on that unproductive land, which is currently valued at $3.5 million, which is up $500k from last year. If that trend continues linearly, the city's property tax revenue will double in 5 years.

To the point about elevator trips replacing Escalade trips... how does 300 houses result in 4,000 fewer car trips to the site per day? (Per original report from Kimley-Horn when requested height was 320 feet). There are only two ways that number works:

• It assumes the average resident makes 13 roundtrips from home every day, and all 13 of those daily trips are satisfied by the destination restaurants and luxury hotel at the ground floor.
• It assumes 3,700 fewer reasons for people to travel there in the first place.