Don’t ask, do well: Developers who seek too much risk credibility

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: The print version of this story and original digital version of this story had errors that have been corrected in this version.)

A project he is representing, Walter Fields said, would add 115 multifamily units to an existing five town homes in the Stonecrest area in south Charlotte, but to do so, his client needs a rezoning.

Fields has accompanied the project through the city’s regulatory pipeline, and on April 15, the full plan for a total of 120 dwelling units on the site — which is beside an existing 215 apartments owned by the same company — will go before the Charlotte City Council for the rezoning vote.

Fields said his client, Ram Realty Services, has “stayed consistent with the plan. We’ve solved a few problems along the way and came out, hopefully, with what we wanted.”

Still, the march of progress sometimes goes sideways.

Even backwards.

Holding high their spiffy site plans and gleaming renderings, developers walk into government offices or hearings, then sometimes walk out shortly after with their dreams, figuratively at least, shredded by an agency or town board or city council.

Eventually, perhaps after several negotiations or hearings, the two sides compromise.

That happens often enough that a developer might be tempted to try a drastic approach: Ask for every possible feature, knowing that when the government whittles away at the plan, what remains may be more than what the developer expected.

Won’t work, those in both government and the development industry say. The shoot-for-the-moon-and-hope-you-hit-something-worthwhile is a loser.

“We never had the notion,” Fields said, “that we start with 120 and bargain down.”

Fields is a longtime representative of developers in rezoning and site-plan hearings. A former member of the former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission (now the Charlotte Planning Department), Fields’ slogan is “Put your best foot forward.”

“If you want 200 (units), but go in with 300 hoping for 200, I don’t know if that’s the best,” he said. “I approach with professionalism. You don’t start off with twice as many and try to bargain down. How can you have a business model based on that kind of strategy?”

Still, the psychology of concessions governs human behavior. Robert B. Cialdini, regents professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, said when one side makes a concession, the other side will make a concession in return.

“It’s a fundamental tendency of human behavior to give back what others have given to you,” Cialdini said, which helps explain how the Epcon Communities residential project got approved in Cornelius.

Epcon had to make multiple adjustments to its Courtyards at Jetton active-adult development before finally getting the go-ahead in Cornelius, one of the toughest municipalities for developers to get project approvals.

The company, based in Columbus, Ohio, started out proposing 31 homes, then 28, and finally settled for 25. And then Epcon officials had to make architectural changes for their concept to fly.

The town Board of Commissioners, impressed by Epcon’s market research, which went a long way to justify the variances the company sought, and with Epcon’s willingness to compromise, eventually voted unanimously for the project because it upheld the spirit of the town’s restrictive codes, if not always the letter.

The key, Cialdini said, is that developers make even their original requests “reasonable and justifiable.”

By unreasonably asking for everything possible, with the obvious intention of compromising down to what the developer really wants, “You’ve labeled yourself as a trickster,” Cialidini said.

But Cialdini didn’t rule out a developer’s asking for more than he or she expects to get, “as long as you are asking for things you can reasonably defend.”

Jonathan Dehlinger, of the business psychology firm of Vernon Roche & Hodgson in Milwaukee, said it is “a common practice to ask for more than you need, even though you know you’re not going to get it.”

Although he is not familiar with any of the Charlotte-area specific cases, he said sometimes, a government body’s “throwing out seemingly helpful obstacles” could be a sign of a passive-aggressive stance.

“They’re not wanting to say ‘No,’” Dehlinger said, “but it would be more meaningful just to say ‘No.’”

Sometimes, the lack of a definitive “No” is a sign that “people want to preserve the relationship. But they’d be better off with honest communication.”

“No” looked like a possible outcome when the Charlotte Knights’ representatives first asked the Charlotte City Council for approval of the signs on the outside walls of BB&T Ballpark, which the Knights will call home in uptown starting in the 2014 baseball season.

Dan Rajkowski, general manager of the Knights, appeared at the Jan. 21 council meeting, at which the team showed some possibilities for the signs. The council was not pleased.

In an interview last week, Rajkowski said the team’s renderings that night included what he called “placeholders.”

“It started (that) we were showing where ads could be,” he said. From the council members’ responses, he added, “It was apparent that it looked like a lot (of advertising).”

And, Rajkowski said, he had the sense that the council thought “We were asking for the moon.”

So after that meeting, team executives re-evaluated. “We said, ‘We’ll probably never put a sign there, so let’s take it off,’” Rajkowski said. “We probably were not doing our best job in not conveying what those signs would be.”

The council reviewed the revised plan twice, approving it at the March 25 meeting.

Councilwoman Claire Green Fallon, who missed the March 25 meeting, said, “I’m still not crazy about” the Knights’ signage, which she said seemed like an effort “to turn Charlotte into a honky-tonk.”

But Councilman Andy Dulin, who said the first proposal “was a little bit junky and a bit cluttered,” voted for the revised plan.

Dulin said he doesn’t appreciate a developer’s arriving unprepared.

“Recently, Pulte Homes came in without any plans to show us what they wanted to build,” he said. “I said, ‘You came in here and didn’t have your act together. We’re not going to do anything tonight when you don’t even have any plans.’”

Fallon said, “You have to come with a compromise. It’s very difficult for us to approve anything when you ask for the moon. … We hear so many proposals, if you come in asking for the moon, we can’t give it to you.”

Back in Cornelius, the latest long-running drama is over the Hyundai dealership’s proposal to put up a new showroom and service center alongside the existing Hyundai building. The owner of the dealership, Rick Zoerb, got an OK from the town’s Planning Commission, but mostly frowns and furrowed brows from members of the Board of Commissioners when he appeared before them on March 4. He has been told to come back with a better plan, a building that looks more polished and classy.

His next appearance before the board will be April 26.

David Gilroy, a member of the Board of Commissioners, said he wonders if Zoerb is reversing the ask-for-everything tactic, using instead the commit-to-nothing opening move.

“Maybe that’s what we’re seeing with this proposed Hyundai dealership expansion,” said Gilroy, whose reputation is that he is very demanding of developers. “They came forward with the bare minimum, a trial balloon, then absorbed our feedback to see how much more they have to do to get approval. Isn’t that the basic first principle of negotiating, starting out asking for more than you expect and settling for less, but perhaps not as much less than if you started in the middle?”

Anyone giving that a try in Cornelius, Gilroy said, will end up paying multiple invoices to the designer.

“Developers who approach the town that way should be ready for a lot of iterations of their project, and a longer process,” he said, “than if they came forward with something more reasonable.”

Mecklenburg Times staff writers Tony Brown and Payton Guion contributed to this story.