Deciphering Developer-Speak

Since New York developers love to put on a happy face while spinning their architecture plans to the public, Lost City has made a translation guide so it's a bit easier to follow along. Here are a few key phrases:

Statement: "Our design is meant to respect the historical and architectural context of the neighborhood."
Translation: "This building is not as big and ugly as we'd like it to be."

Statement: "We support the approval process."
Translation: "We promised City Hall we'd go through the motions."

Statement: "Community support is very important to us."
Translation: "We'd much prefer it if you didn't complain about what we're doing."

Statement: "We want to expand opportunities for the creation of housing."
Translation: "We want to build luxury condos."

Statement: "New York is a city rich with history."
Translation: "Go visit the museum."

We wonder how a developer would respond to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's recent statement: "if we don’t do something soon, public toilets ... may well be the only new housing available to the average working family."

Photo via Amy Rathgeb's Flickr.

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By Jen Carlson in Arts and Events on March 4, 2008 5:01 PM

Comments [rss]

BPN

I have a few translations that I learned from the developers of the One Hotel & Residences proposed for 20 W 40 St.

Statement: "We will be LEED certified."

Translation: "We will accept the lowest LEED certification because building in Manhattan conveniently presents us with most of the basic LEED criteria anyway. We will go ahead and toss a tree on the roof and call the building green.”

Statement: "We are building a green building”

Translation: "Please don’t make us do a Full Environmental Impact Study because then the neighbors would know the truth”

Statement: "We will invest more money in the preservation of the historic Knox Hat building façade”

Translation: "Our development’s daylight evaluation score is about 50 points below the zoning requirement so we are hoping that some new window replacements in the Knox Hat building would distract people from the lack of sunlight.

EastRiver

"We are building a basketball arena." is not code for anything. They're building a basketball arena! And luxury condos. Using eminent domain. And tax breaks.

Toby von Meistersinger

They forgot one:

Statement: "We are building a basketball arena."

Translation: "We are building luxury housing and getting the government to give us money to do it!"