Re: “Lakewood’s messy fight can be solved<\/a>,” Feb. 16 editorial<\/p>\n I read your editorial on the open space fight going on in Lakewood. Your suggestion that the developer should just go back to the drawing board is not realistic. If they had plans that were ready to submit for permit (which it sounds like they did), then a re-design would probably cost in the high six figures to low seven figures for a project of this size.<\/p>\n I can tell you from experience that many new multi-family developments are just not financially viable in today’s interest rate and regulatory environment. That re-design fee could be the difference between this project making financial sense and not. If we can agree that housing affordability is a bigger issue than open space, we should be bending over backward as a community to get more projects started.<\/p>\n All the fees and new green building requirements in the past decade make many potential development projects untenable. And let’s look at the alternative of no development and a vacant office building that will sit and decay over the years to come. We need to be incentivizing new development, not demonizing the developers as evil or greedy and making it harder to build in Lakewood.<\/p>\n