Interesting story but it actually is an example of a landowner's massive windfall from the presence of public transport.

Tillman cites $1M of costs, of which $200k were 'city fees' (not itemized) and the rest were presumably normal costs for developers/engineers/architects/etc (of course, these would potentially be smaller if there was less regulation). The development start to approval time of 3.5 years is not crazy for a first time 'accidental developer' working on such a large project.

After approval, there seems to have been a~12 month period of bad faith activists slowing down the project. Tillman filed a lawsuit, did a media campaign, and the project was re-approved later in 2018.

He then sold the pre-approved project to a Cresleigh Homes for $13.5 million in early 2019.

So we've had 6 years of financial delays as Cresleigh tries to fund the build vs maybe 1 year of 'bad faith' development approval delays 2017-2018.

And of course - funding the build would have been much easier if the landowner didn't want $13.5 million for an empty lot! (or $12 million if you subtract the development costs). So arguably Tillman did more to delay housing than anyone else.