| Page 2 of 2 < |
Finding a Moral in One Developer's Story
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
There are minor victories. The developers eventually agreed that huge glass windows over the front door of the two-story foyer -- a feature that builders love and most architects hate -- would not be allowed. They also agreed that shutters should be sized to fit each window opening, instead of the builders' standard "one shutter fits all windows" approach.
Finally, more than three years after the developers first began to put the project together, construction began.
Two years on, Rybczynski returned to New Daleville in October 2007 to find that one of the two national builders had left and only 40 of the 125 lots had been sold. With the current down market, the developers' profit margin is slowly dwindling, although they're still optimistic they'll come out ahead.
The hero of Rybczynski's book is clearly Joe Duckworth, a developer and former home builder with nearly 30 years of experience. Although many people consider developers to be untrustworthy, Rybczynski regards Duckworth and many of his colleagues as the visionaries behind change in the suburban landscape. They're risk-takers who leap into the future, surveying raw land and divining what kind of house and community will be marketable years down the road, when they have finally pulled all the pieces of the deal together. If their hunch is correct, they may make a huge of amount of money. If they are wrong, though, they can lose their shirt.
Katherine Salant can be contacted via her Web site, www.katherinesalant.com.
© 2008, Katherine Salant
